The Desert Trip mega-festival of rock greats is meant to be historic and Paul McCartney on Saturday served as a willing instructor, presenting a musical journey from pre-Beatles fare to hip-hop collaboration.
Tearing through a three-dozen song set that enraptured a 75,000-strong crowd in the California desert, McCartney welcomed to the stage fellow rock elder Neil Young — the day’s other performer — for a mash-up that built into the anthem “Give Peace a Chance.”
Desert Trip, forecast to be the most lucrative music festival in history, is bringing together six of the biggest names in rock over back-to-back weekends with identical lineups.
The festival opened Friday with the Rolling Stones who, in their signature blues rock style, played an unexpected cover of “Come Together” by The Beatles — the fellow British rock superstars often viewed as the Stones’ rivals.
The former Beatle returned the favor a day later by performing the early Stones single “I Wanna Be Your Man” — which was written by McCartney and John Lennon.
The still lissome 74-year-old turned his set into a retrospective, reaching back to 1958’s “In Spite of All the Danger,” an early and often forgotten song by The Beatles’ early incarnation, The Quarrymen.
McCartney — whose audience appeared younger than the Stones’ baby boomer-dominated crowd on Friday — quickly swung back to the present. He summoned his raspiest voice for “FourFiveSeconds,” his 2015 collaboration with rap and R&B mega-stars Kanye West and Rihanna.
The ex-Beatle also paid tribute to his late bandmates Lennon and George Harrison. For Harrison, he played the deceased songwriter’s “Something” off the “Abbey Road” album — on ukulele, with McCartney trying twice after finding the instrument out-of-tune.
“At least it proves we’re live, right?” he said.

Source: Arab News