Live at Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas
4 October 2025
Live Review by Music Journalist: Paul Marshall
McCartney in Vegas: Eighty-Three and Still Making Us Believe in Magic.
Call it an act of bravado or a full-throttle communion with his past: Paul McCartney stepped onstage at Allegiant Stadium with one goal in mind, to make us believe, if only for a night, that time doesn’t erode the magic.
He opened with “Help!” a blast of pure Beatles-era adrenaline, resurrecting a song he’s not played live in 35 years. Right from that first chord, the spectacle was set: not a museum tour or a nostalgia trip, but a living, beating, audacious rock show.
McCartney’s Vegas stop on the Got Back tour felt like a conversation with ghosts. Early in the night he paused, mid–song banter, to say “Let’s hear it for John” as if John Lennon might step forward at any moment. Later, swapping guitars, he picked up a ukulele that had once belonged to George Harrison and offered a stripped-back “Something” a quiet, melancholy interlude in an otherwise relentless onslaught of hits.
There were other moments of poignancy: on “Here Today”, McCartney surveyed the crowd with an ache in his voice, howling at the impossibility of saying goodbye. But those pauses were brief, because McCartney, at 83, still understands that the audience demands motion, energy, spectacle.
From there, the show careened through decades “Lady Madonna”, “Jet”, “Band On the Run”, “Live and Let Die” the latter detonating with a fireworks display loud enough that Paul crouched and covered his ears. It was a reminder: this is rock & roll, after all, not a hushed reverie.
Let’s be real: his voice isn’t pristine. Age has thinned its edges, and on some of the higher registers, there’s strain. But you don’t come to a Paul McCartney show for perfect pitch, you come for the emotional ledger, the weight of history, the lineage of songs he's carried for years.
His band, with guitar work from Brian Ray, drums from Abe Laboriel Jr. held up their end without hogging the spotlight. One highlight: “Let Me Roll It” ended with him weaving in a cheeky tribute to Jimi Hendrix (“Foxy Lady”) recalling the night he first saw Hendrix in a small London club.
The encore was inevitable. And when he revived “I’ve Got a Feeling”, duetting with restored imagery of Lennon, the crowd’s roar turned to something like reverence. “I like that song,” he said, matter-of-factly, “because I get to sing with John again.”
This wasn’t a museum piece or a cautious setlist exercise. Got Back in Vegas was unapologetically bold: a showcase of endurance, memory, and a refusal to rest on laurels. Yes, McCartney's vocal power isn't what it once was. Yes, there are small cracks. But those cracks let in the light, you see the weight of loss, the glitter of triumph, the sheer improbability that he’s still here, making this many people believe, again, in the enduring power of a song.R
In a city built on illusion, McCartney offered something real: forty years of songs, refashioned for now, delivered with the heart of a man who still wants to dance.
Reviewer: Paul Marshall