Paul McCartney live: RFK Stadium, Washington, DC

Paul McCartney performed at the RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, USA, on 4 July 1990.

It was the 91st date of the Paul McCartney World Tour, which lasted for 102 dates across 14 countries between September 1989 and July 1990, and the first of two nights in Washington, DC.

Part Five of the tour – from Washington D.C. to Chicago during the hottest July in history – was never meant to have happened.
When the tour was first planned, the wrap party was scheduled for April (after Rio) and no buts.
However, ‘no’ is not a word logged in the vocabulary of Barrie Marshall (tour promoter and born optimist).
So, the story goes, Barrie went to Macca with a plea along the lines that as Paul had just set a world record in Brazil wouldn’t it be a groove to keep going for just a little bit…just a weenie couple of weeks….well, a month would be better, just a little month… oh, come on, pleeeeeeeease, the tour’s cooking… oh, won’t you stay just a little bit longer…?
That sort of thing.
‘Sure,’ said Mac, ‘I’m up for it. But you’d better check with Linda.’
Barrie worried. Linda, he knew, loved being at home, with the horses, the kids, the countryside. Would she want to keep schlepping around yet another bout of customs, flights, check-ins, limos, hotel rooms. check-outs…
‘Sure,’ said Linda, ‘I can do another month. I’d like to….but if I can do another month on the road, Barrie then you can go veggie.’
And so it was that an extra 636,500 people got to see the Get Back Tour and Barrie Marshall got to improve his waistline.
Leastways, that’s the story and I’m sticking to it (well, at least before this proof gets to The Editor).
Anyway, Macca wanted to play Washington on Independence Day -as we did – if only to say ‘Hey America, they say it’s your birthday’ before launching into the good old party stomper from The Beatles’ White Album.
Washington was hot; 98 degrees in the street and an extra 10 inside the R.F.K. Stadium where Linda, during soundcheck, suggested that the band’s now-favourite Ray Charles jam number should be re-titled ‘Don’t Let The Sun Catch You Burning’.
It took a full three minutes for the crowd to stop hollering before Paul could launch into Figure Of Eight at the start of the show. This being July 4th, public holiday, most of the crowd appeared to be getting close to being out of it. The near-crippling heat provided the excuse to see off a six-pack every half-hour of the show and the sick-sweet haze that sort of hung above much of the stadium indicated that the drought hadn’t hurt the local herb crops any.
‘It’s too darn hot,’ said Macca, shedding the jacket and launching into Birthday.
Given the heavy intake of booze and, ah…things, plus the sheer surprise at the song’s addition to the show, the response was explosive. Pot-bellied geezers leapt on chairs, which promptly collapsed beneath them, blondes whipped off tops to hurl at the stage – by the end of the set the ‘pit’ looked like some huge Janet Reager jumble-sale – and even the securityguards gave up looking stern in the aisles and bopped there instead.
By the time he sang ‘Happy Birthday Dear America’ to ’em at the end, their grins reminded you of the words of another fan – way back in the winter in Chicago – who’d said ‘I don’t care if I die and go to Hell tomorrow… because I’ve been to Heaven tonight’.

Geoff Baker, publicist
Club Sandwich, Winter 1990/91

McCartney’s band was Linda McCartney on vocals, keyboards, and percussion; Hamish Stuart on guitar, bass guitar, and vocals; Robbie McIntosh on guitar and vocals; Paul ‘Wix’ Wickens on keyboards and vocals; and Chris Whitten on drums and percussion.