Which night of Paul McCartney ‘s 2025 tour was the official opening night — Friday, where he played an only recently announced gig at the Santa Barbara Bowl, or Monday, where he did what had long been announced as the first show, at the Acrisure Arena in Palm Desert? That may seem like a small and unimportant distinction to the non-Macca-heads among us. But for anyone planning to attend his road show coming up, or just following it vicariously, there were good reasons to be curious about the differences between the two shows. (Which is, of course, why we did the vigorous journalistic duty of attending both; see our r eview of Friday night’s Santa Barbara gig here .) It has to do with the geeky task of nailing down his setlist for the tour, yes, but more significantly, it has to do

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