In 2005, Paul McCartney performed at the Super Bowl, and Keith Richards had a suggestion for the songs he should play. McCartney refused to take Richards up on a dare to play an old Beatles song. Here’s why he said he couldn’t play the song and what he decided to play instead.
Keith Richards told Paul McCartney to perform a song at the 2005 Super Bowl
Shortly before McCartney took the stage at the 2005 Super Bowl, he vacationed in Parrot Cay, where Richards has a home. McCartney dropped in on him one afternoon. While they had never been particularly close, they formed a friendship.
“Paul started to turn up every day, when his kid was sleeping,” Richards wrote in his book, Life. “I’d never known Paul that well. John and I knew each other quite well, and George and Ringo, but Paul and I had never spent much time together. We were really pleased to see each other. We fell straight in, talking about the past, talking about songwriting.”
Naturally, McCartney’s upcoming Super Bowl performance came up in conversation. Richards told him he should play an early Beatles hit, but McCartney refused.
“I dared him to play ‘Please Please Me’ at the Super Bowl, but he said they needed weeks of warning,” McCartney said. “I remembered his hilarious takeoff of Roy Orbison singing it, so we started singing that.”
What songs did Paul McCartney play at the Super Bowl?
McCartney didn’t take Richards up on his dare, but he did play several Beatles songs at the Super Bowl. He opened with the 1965 Rubber Soul song “Drive My Car” before jumping into 1970’s “Get Back.”
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McCartney played one non-Beatles song, “Live and Let Die,” which he originally recorded with his band Wings. He closed out the show with another Beatles classic, encouraging the audience to sing along to “Hey Jude.”
Keith Richards played the Super Bowl with The Rolling Stones 1 year after Paul McCartney
Just one year after McCartney’s performance, The Rolling Stones took the stage at the 2006 Super Bowl. They performed “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” “Start Me Up,” and “Rough Justice.”
Certain lines of “Start Me Up” and “Rough Justice” concerned the NFL, so they turned down the volume of Mick Jagger’s microphone as he sang the offending lyrics. While the band agreed to this, they reportedly weren’t happy about it.
“The Rolling Stones thought the censorship of their songs by the NFL/ABC was absolutely ridiculous and completely unnecessary,” their rep Fran Curtis told Billboard. “The band did the songs they were supposed to do and they sang all the words. There were many many conversations back and forth and the band clearly was not happy about it.”
The NFL denied that the band was upset, saying that they had seemed fine with it in the lead-up to the game. Regardless, the set was well-received and a long time coming; Jagger joked that they had been around so long that they could have played “Satisfaction” at the first-ever Super Bowl.
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