Paul McCartney, Nearly 80, Captivates an Entire Stadium Together with Surprise Guests

East Rutherford, N.J. — It was a venture into the forbidden hinterlands for a pair of Manhattanites trying to traverse ten miles to a mythical destination named after a swamp. Out of an abundance of caution, we left at 5:00 p.m. on Thursday for Paul McCartney’s eight o’clock show at MetLife Stadium. We arrived at 8:15, and you’d think we’d have been offered at least a free stadium weenie in acknowledgment of the torture corridor through which we had just crept.

A fair description of the journey would have made Sir Francis Drake curl into the fetal position and demand to speak to his therapist. “I’m never doing this again,” grumbled my companion, who is unaware of my secret plan to forcibly entertain her with an Elton John performance in the Meadowlands next month. My strategy for that Saturday night show is to depart by Tuesday morning, at the latest.

It was the last appearance of McCartney’s North American Got Back tour. Sir Paul had vowed to go on “promptly at 8” but this apparently meant 8:40, after a jolly warm-up image reel of McCartney and his former bandmates on two colossal video screens, set to goofy remixes of his hits.

“Can’t Buy Me Love” kicked it off, setting the tone for an evening of familiar favorites that included some of McCartney’s hardest-rocking Seventies numbers — “Junior’s Farm,” “Band on the Run,” and “Jet.” As he usually does, he added the Beatles’ “Lady Madonna,” and performed “Blackbird” and “Here Today” as per usual, with explanations about how they are (respectively) about the civil-rights movement and John Lennon. Even the deep cuts didn’t vary much; he did the bluesy, gospel-tinged “Let Me Roll It” again, and “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” again, and though his 1976 ditty “Let ‘Em In” isn’t exactly a pumped-up crowd pleaser, he did that as well. He didn’t perform “Silly Love Songs” from the same album, and after attending many McCartney tours, I think I’ve never heard him perform it. A welcome addition, though, was “Getting Better,” which, along with “Hello Goodbye,” is one of my two favorite Beatles numbers. McCartney doesn’t usually include it, but did a spirited take on it with his usual backing band, the highly entertaining drummer Abe Laboriel Jr., the sly-looking Paul “Wix” Wickens on keys, and the able guitarists Rusty Anderson and Brian Ray.

Even the between-song patter was much the same as usual; as he has before, McCartney told the audience he knows which songs we like because he can see the lights from people eagerly recording on their phones. When performing an unfamiliar number, though, he looks out and sees “a black hole.”

This was all meant to soften us up for some less-loved numbers. He again played the relatively recent and somewhat obscure efforts “My Valentine” (2011, which was accompanied by video from a decade ago of Natalie Portman and Johnny Depp offering the lyrics in sign language), “New” (2013), and “Dance Tonight” (2007), accompanying himself delightfully on a mandolin. As on other recent tours, he opened “Something” by playing the first verse on just a ukulele that George Harrison gave him, and expanded the number to a huge production the way it sounds on the record. “Live and Let Die” was, as always, the night’s biggest spectacle (pyrotechnics, fireworks), and McCartney closed the main set with his usual sing-along approach to “Hey Jude.” (“Now just the men! “Now the girls!”)

McCartney is nearly impossible to knock off his script, but with his 80th birthday following two days after the concert, he did take a moment to acknowledge the many signs celebrating the occasion. (One guy was holding a sign indicating he’d seen Paul perform 130 times, and McCartney was duly impressed.) As this was New Jersey, Jon Bon Jovi and his impossibly thick thatch of hair came out to sing “Happy Birthday” bearing a clutch of balloons. Luckily, Bon Jovi didn’t pollute the stage for too long, but the introduction of another “local boy” inspired some feverish murmuring. On came Bruce Springsteen, and McCartney stepped back to support him on a duly marvelous rendition of “Glory Days.” Then Springsteen stepped back to repay the favor as McCartney took over on “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

You can hardly ask for more than that from a rock show. McCartney’s voice is badly scarred and weakened by age, so he needed his characteristic must-please-everybody showmanship to make the night a typically delirious one for his fans, most of whom appeared to be well over 50. How else could he possibly end a stadium show than by blasting us with confetti? After jamming with Springsteen again, swapping hot guitar licks on “The End,” he departed with the words, “All that remains to be said is. . . see you next time!”