Paul McCartney and Neil Young joined together for a medley of Beatles songs and performed a tribute to John Lennon at the Desert Trip festival in Indio, California, on October 8.
Following Young’s opening set, McCartney invited him onstage for performances of “A Day in the Life” and the 1968 White Album oddity “Why Don’t We Do It in the Road,” during which Young cut loose with a blazing guitar solo.
McCartney and Young also performed “Give Peace a Chance,” Lennon’s debut 1969 recording with the Plastic Ono Band, tagging its singalong chorus onto the end of “A Day in the Life.”
McCartney and Young have performed together numerous times over the years, including at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, in 2004, to benefit Adopt-A-Minefield, which raises awareness of land mines, and at the 2004 Bridge School benefit. Young also inducted McCartney into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 and performed a rousing cover of the Beatles’ “I Saw Her Standing There” when McCartney was honored as the MusiCares Person of the Year in 2012. That event marked the reunion of Young and Crazy Horse for the first time in eight years.
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Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.
