Paul McCartney plays The Beatles’ Help in full for the first time since 1965

Paul McCartney performing onstage in 2024 — (Image credit: Jim Dyson/Getty Images)

Paul McCartney’s solo career has seen him revisit countless Beatles songs over the years, from early hits such as Love Me Do and Eight Days A Week to late-period classics such as Let It Be and various elements of the medley that closes Abbey Road.

But there are many more Beatles songs that McCartney has never played live as a solo artist, sometimes partly due to his unofficial policy of steering away from songs that were mostly written by his late bandmate John Lennon.

However, audience members at the opening show of his current US tour, at the Santa Barbara Bowl in Santa Barbara, California on Friday September 27, got an unexpected surprise when McCartney opened his set with the Fab Four’s 1965 anthem Help! for the first time in 60 years.

McCartney has played a section of the track before, but that was as part of a medley of Lennon songs during Macca’s Flowers In The Dirt tour in 1989 and 1990. The last time Help! was performed in its entirety was by The Beatles themselves on December 12, 1965, at the Capital Theatre in Cardiff, Wales – the same year the song and its parent album of the same name were released.

With a capacity of just over 4500 people, the Santa Barbara Bowl is the smallest venue on McCartney‘s US tour. The show itself was only announced two weeks ago, and fans were required to store their phones in secure pouches.

Much of McCartney‘s set was given over to Beatles songs, including a virtual duet with Lennon on 1970’s I’ve Got A Feeling.

The tour continues on September 29 at Acrisure Arena, Thousand Palms, California.

Paul McCartney soundcheck 9-25-2025 Santa Barbara County Bowl - YouTube

Watch On

Paul McCartney setlist, Santa Barbara Bowl, California, September 26, 2025

Help!
Coming Up
Got To Get You Into My Life
Let Me Roll It
Getting Better
Let 'Em In
My Valentine
Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five
I've Just Seen A Face
Love Me Do
Dance Tonight
Blackbird
Now And Then
Lady Madonna
Jet
Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da
Get Back
Let It Be
Live and Let Die
Hey Jude

Encore:
I've Got a Feeling
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)
Helter Skelter
Golden Slumbers
Carry That Weight
The End

Artists

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