Paul McCartney Claims Bruce Springsteen ‘Ruined’ Live Concerts While Launching His Photo Exhibition

Sir Paul McCartney has spoken out against having concerts that last four hours, and he is partly blaming Bruce Springsteen for starting the trend. While a guest on the podcast Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend, McCartney exclaimed that Springsteen “ruined it for everyone.”

McCartney discussed how he misses the days when handfuls of artists would play one show. The former Beatle told Conan, “These days, pretty much there’s main act and there might be a warm-up act. Then [the 1960s], it was a lot of people on the bill because nobody did long, now people will do three or four hours. I blame Bruce Springsteen – I’ve told him so, I said ‘it’s your fault man’.”

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When asked the question of whether Springsteen “ruined” the old-school concert experience, McCartney replied, “He did. You can’t now do an hour, we used to do a half hour. That was The Beatles thing – half an hour and we got paid for it. I tried to work out why was it so short.

“Well, because there were a lot of people on the bill, and I think when you went to a thing if you were a comedian the promoter would say ‘how long can you do? Four minutes?’ The guy would say yes, so they would do four and so we thought, ‘well, half an hour that’s like epic’… It didn’t seem strange,” McCartney added.

McCartney appeared on Conan’s podcast in part to promote his new photo exhibition, “Paul McCartney Photographs 1963-64: Eyes of the Storm,” which was held at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The exhibition features himself, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr at the height of Beatlemania. The photos are also featured in a book titled 1964: Eyes of the Storm, which was released on June 13.

According to NPR, McCartney was very open about discussing the photographs. He said, “Most of them I don’t remember taking because it was a whirlwind. I’m very proud of being part of the working class, which I think you guys would call blue collar. If you’re looking for photos, they’re often the great faces. The faces where there’s a story behind them.”

Dr. Nicholas Cullinan, the director of the National Portrait Gallery, shared his thoughts regarding McCartney’s exhibition, according to Daily Mail. He said, “The McCartney exhibition is very interesting. Actually, Sir Paul approached us I think back in 2020 and said he had found these photographs which he remembered taking but thought had been lost. And so we sat down with him and began going through the photographs and they are really extraordinary.”

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(Photo Credit: Steve Thorne/Redferns/Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images for MPL Communications)