In recent years, a surprisingly large number of dead musicians ranging from Whitney Houston to Tupac have been reanimated in concert settings via holograms. It almost always feels ethically dubious, and it’s usually pretty unsettling to witness. But Paul McCartney has come up with a tasteful alternative to a hologram to reunite with his late bandmate John Lennon during his live shows; on Thursday night, McCartney sang along with video footage of Lennon performing “I’ve Got a Feeling” during the Beatles’ 1969 rooftop concert.
McCartney sang his portion of the song live to kick off the encore of his show in Spokane, WA, during the first night of his current American tour. When it was time for Lennon’s verse (“Everybody had a hard year, everybody had a good time…”), the screens behind McCartney projected video footage of the late singer while his isolated vocal tracks played. The result is a surprisingly touching “reunion” between Lennon and McCartney that never crosses over into the exploitative, icky realm of a hologram.
“So Peter Jackson, the director of the Get Back film, he texts me one day,” McCartney told the crowd in Spokane after finishing the song. “He says, ‘We can extract John’s voice, and he can sing with you live,’ and I thought, ‘Why not?’”
You can watch the performance in the video below, or revisit everything we learned from watching Jackson’s lengthy The Beatles: Get Back documentary here.
More Like This
Thanks for reading InsideHook. Sign up for our daily newsletter and be in the know.
