The 60-year-old Rock Hall of Famer confirmed on Wednesday that he will make his Russian concert debut this year, an open-air performance in Moscow's Red Square scheduled for May 24.
McCartney says the gig fulfills a lifelong dream, especially since he and fellow Mop Tops had their music banned in the Soviet Union during their 1960s heyday and he never managed to do a solo gig there as the Cold War lingered.
"I've long wanted to play in Russia, but for a number of years, when the Communists were in power, they didn't want me to," Sir Paul says in a statement. "I'm delighted that at last I can play there."
No doubt Macca will make those Moscow girls really scream and shout.
McCartney will stick to a similar set list as his 2002 Back in the U.S. tour. He says he'll perform a 36-song, three-hour show that will feature more than 20 classics from the Beatles catalog, including the aforementioned "Back in the U.S.S.R."
"I've never even visited Russia as a tourist, so it's exciting for me now to be getting to perform there with a band and finally be singing "Back in the U.S.S.R." and all these other songs for people, who, I've got a feeling, might be ready for it," McCartney says.
His closest previous brush with the Russians came in 1988, when he released an album of cover tunes, CHOBA B CCCP (aka Back in the U.S.S.R.), exclusively in the Soviet Union.
The Moscow concert will be the only Russian date on the former Wing man's global Back in the World trek, which kicks off in Paris on March 25.
Other stops include Barcelona, London, Antwerp, Copenhagen, Munich, Stockholm, Vienna and Dublin.
McCartney will also play Scotland--where he owns a country residence and recorded some of his earliest music--for the first time since 1990. That gig is being hyped as the biggest concert ever there and is expected to draw upwards of 60,000 people.
When not touring, McCartney could easily content himself with counting his cash. He raked in more than $103.3 million to become the top touring act for 2002, according to concert industry trade Pollstar. He also tops Rolling Stone magazine's just released list of the top moneymakers of 2002, earning $72.1 million, mostly from concert ticket sales.
Meanwhile, McCartney has a little side band called the Beatles that will be releasing some new music and videos later this year (and undoubtedly help augment the income). He's been tinkering on a special stripped-down edition Let It Be reissue to coincide with the DVD release of the film, which is getting a digital polish and will include unreleased archival footage. And the long-awaited DVD release of the Anthology is due out April 1. The five-disc set includes never-released jam sessions featuring McCartney, George Harrison (news) and Ringo Starr (news).
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