Ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney will play his first gig on Irish soil in almost 40 years when he takes his European tour to Dublin's RDS arena in May.
The Back In The World tour will come to Dublin on May 27th for one night. It will be McCartney's first Irish gig since The Beatles played their only Irish show at Dublin's Adelphi Cinema in November 1963.
In a statement yesterday McCartney said he is looking forward to returning to Ireland. "Playing in Dublin is going to mean a lot to me because Ireland is such a special place for me. My mother originally hailed from Ireland, it's where Heather and I chose to get married and I have a lot of ties with the land and the people. It's been a long time since I played there, so I'm hoping that this will be one rocking night to remember.
"I think people are going to like this gig. When I was thinking of what songs to play I just imagined myself as one of the audience and thought 'What would I like to hear him play?' So that means we'll be playing some of my Beatles stuff, rather a lot of Beatles stuff actually, some Wings stuff and some more recent stuff. So basically the show pretty much spans my whole career. And I'm really getting off on playing it all with my new band, their energy and musicianship is phenomenal."
McCartney will play a two-and-a-half hour set. It will include at least 22 Beatles songs and over a dozen other songs. When The Beatles played in Ireland in 1963 they performed just 11 songs.
The Back in the World tour spent 18 weeks on the road last year and was seen by about one million people. It visited the US, Canada, Mexico and Japan. The Dublin date will be the last of 12 planned European dates. Before the Dublin gig McCartney and his band will play throughout the UK and Germany and will take in some cities in Austria, Spain and Barcelona.
Tickets will be available from Ticketmaster from 9 a.m. on February 27th on 1890 925 100 at a cost of €75 for general admittance and €105 for seating.
