Before Paul McCartney stepped into view Saturday at Allegiant Stadium, two giant video boards flanking the stage offered a vision worthy of an overture: his iconic Hofner bass guitar suspended in a canopy of stars, illuminated from below by the sweeping beams of a mass of spotlights.
As the lights glowed upward, the final orchestral swell from The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” filled the air — strings and horns climbing together before collapsing into that famous, reverberating piano chord.
Unseen voices followed, intoning the closing line from “The End,” the farewell couplet of “Abbey Road”:
“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”
More than two and a half hours later, McCartney himself delivered those same words as the night’s benediction. In between, he and