Paul McCartney in Rio: driving rain, the world record and real emotions

— a thread for the 30th anniversary of concerts at the Maracanã Stadium

Concerts in Rio were the part of the world tour during 1989/90 - The Paul McCartney Tour - his first major tour in TEN years and his first world tour in 13 years and it coincided with the release of Flowers in the Dirt.

That tour was epic and the most successful in Paul's career - they travelled 100,331 miles and played to a total of 2,843,297 fans over 102 gigs: including ELEVEN concerts at Wembley Stadium, gigs from Oslo to Tokyo, Rio to Liverpool, Seattle to Madrid.

"Come the day of the first gig we’d sold not that many tickets. You really don’t fancy the idea of staring at rows of empty seats. If I’m not selling out I’ll start to feel like past-it actor. But I think it was because there was a tropical rainstorm for the previous days"

"One of the journalists said, What are you going to do about the weather, Paul? I gave it a straight face and said, It will clear up. Which sent them off giggling while they wrote their notes."

"That evening, when it had been pissing down all day, ten minutes before we went on it stopped. Like, hallelujah. Jammy git! We had a blinder of a show. It was frightening before we went on, the sheer size of it, but we were played in, and once we hit the stage we were all right"

The second gig on April 21st, 1990 set the world record for Largest Concert Audience For A Rock Artist - 184,000 people in Maracanã!

"The Maracana Stadium in the 90s: that has to be a special show. We know all the stories — the rain, rain, go away, come another day! And there’s me saying ‘Don’t worry, it’ll stop.’ Then it did, 10 mins before the show — and all my crew have been praying to me ever since!"

"People say to me ‘Weren’t you nervous?’ We’d been on tour so long, we knew it, I must admit that Wix and Robbie did have 2 brandies before they went on. But I can’t do that, because I forget the words if I have a drink. So I just have a smell of theirs. Magnificent, great show."

From the article written by a fan who was in that concert (link below):

"Inside the Maracanã Stadium, you could only hear people singing, clapping, looking from the side and laughing for nothing, amazed to be there and to be part of that crowd of strangers - sharing a dream."

"When Paul played “Yesterday”, the stadium lit up with lighters on. Next to me, a couple started dancing together. And so, suddenly, they were no longer 40 years old, but 16, without seeing anything else, except each other. And I thought "this is it"

"And then I looked from the side. Everyone I could see was singing [Hey Jude]. And I put shame aside for once and cried openly while singing. I never felt that same emotion again, being part of something of the crowd, feeling the electricity of being here and now."

Thank you for reading, I hope you liked this thread! If you wanna watch this concert, here are the links:

20th April:
21st April:

Thanks to the author of the article about the concert I used here! [PT]: https://www.omelete.com.br/musica/paul-mccartney-no-maracana-1990