Yesterday and Today

In the latter days of February 1990, Paul McCartney reached several key milestones on his return to the road - first up a lifetime achievement award at the 32nd annual Grammy Awards! This recognition of Macca's solo efforts in particular reached Paul at a career high, as his world tour set its sights on the second major moment of that month - a triumphant return to Japan. A decade after his infamous drug bust, The Paul McCartney World Tour successfully reached the stage of the Tokyo Dome to rock the country that had been so bitterly robbed of the final Wings tour. And while the early months of the new decade were dominated by Paul and co, another former Beatle was preparing new music as well...

It's a new year, a new decade, and a new leg of the Paul McCartney world tour to ring in 1990! From Birmingham to Wembley, Detroit to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati to Indianapolis, Paul and the band continued their ultra-successful concert experience - wowing audiences and charming critics along the way. In fact, some critics known for their harsh takes on Macca in the past - namely Rolling Stone Magazine - were themselves caught up in the mania, with cover features aplenty praising Paul's passion for live performance and cheering the strength of the Flowers in the Dirt LP. With February fast approaching, a fourth leg stood poised to continue the stadium domination even further...

The finale of 1989 - and of the 80s - is here! And this decade just refused to go out without a bang, as Paul McCartney's World Tour rolled up to Chicago, Montreal, Toronto and the legendary Madison Square Garden! Macca's triumphant return to MSG was the culmination of his grand return to form, embraced by the public and critics alike on the back of both Beatles nostalgia and a strong new offering Flowers in the Dirt. It was a decade that began on an incredible low for Paul - the Japan bust, the murder of John Lennon - but which ended on a career high for the solo output of the Beatle who had so much to prove following the band's split now two decades prior. Next for Paul? Bigger hills to climb in the 1990s...

It's November 1989 and a major decade in Beatles history draws to a close...but not without a few more surprises in store. First up on the 8th, a milestone on the road to reconciliation for the former Beatles and John Lennon's estate, as The Beatles v Capitol lawsuit is finally settled (and in doing, paving the way for potential new product in years to come). Paul McCartney's momentous year continues on with the release of the new single Figure of Eight (plucked from the Flowers in the Dirt LP) and on the 23rd the second leg of his World Tour began in the US. Plus new Beatley-contributions from Eric Clapton, and a legal battle for Ringo Starr in Georgia...

The Yesterday & Today Podcast is celebrating 200 episodes with a special all-new discussion around an exciting collection of Beatles news magazine rarities! In a segment we call WE READ THE NEWS TODAY, hosts Wayne and Paul Kaminski are joined by Take it Away co-founder and co-host Chris Mercer to read, review and examine a selection of contemporaneous Beatles news magazine sources from during and after the band's time together. From John Lennon's illuminating 1974 Crawdaddy feature, to TIME Magazine's exploration of the "new" Beatles in September of 1967, this episode offers a glimpse into the minds of journalists and critics that analyzed the Beatles story in real time at various points in the band's history and beyond. We'd like to thank Chris for joining us in this fun conversation, and a huge thanks to all of you listeners who kept this podcast going for 5+ years, hundreds of thousands of downloads, 190+ countries and 200 episodes & counting!

It's the fall of 1989 and the Paul McCartney World Tour is officially underway! Along the way on the road with Macca were the lessons gleaned from tours past - including the notion that his band ought to be broken-in in front of friendly or otherwise European crowds before heading to the UK or North America. And so it was on September 25th that the McCartneys - along with guitarist Hamish Stuart, keyboardist Paul "Wix" Wickens guitarist Robbie McIntosh and drummer Chris Whitten - hit the stage in Oslo, Norway for a series of engagements up and down the continent for the next several months. Paul's tour was met with praise from fans and reviewers alike, and would serve as exactly the boost he needed to sustain a hefty touring schedule for the foreseeable future - as well as serving as an overall template for future tours to come. As McCartney won the hearts and minds of Europe, Ringo Starr was making a return of his own, playing the Budokan in Japan for the first time since the Beatles themselves performed there live in 1966...