Paul McCartney Talks Beatles & Wings with Stephen Colbert, Performs 6 Songs Live

The Col­bert Report opened last night with a seg­ment called “Stephen Col­bert’s Trib­ute to Hav­ing Paul McCart­ney on His Show, Fea­tur­ing Paul McCart­ney, With Spe­cial Guest Stephen Col­bert.” And, for the next 12 min­utes, Paul and Stephen cov­ered a lot of ground. Because McCart­ney has just released mate­r­i­al from Wings — a 1976 con­cert film called Rock­show and a reis­sue of Wings Over Amer­i­ca — the con­ver­sa­tion begins with the Wings era: how Mac­ca start­ed all over again; drove to gigs in a van, with no hotel reser­va­tions booked; even­tu­al­ly record­ed a fine album (Band on the Run) in Nige­ria, amidst a cholera out­break; and began per­form­ing live for the first time in years … which led to inevitable ques­tions about the Bea­t­les: why they stopped per­form­ing live in 1966, and how their song­writ­ing evolved. It all ends with inter­view­er and inter­vie­wee singing a charm­ing duet of Irv­ing Berlin’s 1936 clas­sic “Cheek to Cheek.” Lat­er, McCart­ney treat­ed the Col­bert crowd to six songs. We’ve embed­ded a cou­ple of clips below. You can watch the full 60-minute show here.

Lis­ten to What the Man Said

Birth­day

via Rolling Stone