Sir Paul McCartney joked that Bruce Springsteen has “ruined it for everyone” as fans now expect three to four-hour gigs.
The 81-year-old former Beatle has blamed The Boss, 73, for starting the trend of performing mammoth sets that go on for hours, unlike in the legendary Liverpool group’s 60s heyday when they barely played for an hour if fans were lucky.
Speaking on Conan O’Brien’s ‘Needs A Friend’ podcast, he said: “These days, pretty much there’s the main act and there might be a warm-up act.
“Then [the 1960s], it was a lot of people on the bill because nobody did long, now people will do three or four hours. I blame Bruce Springsteen – I’ve told him so, I said ‘it’s your fault man.”
The ‘Let It Be’ hitmaker added: “You can’t now do an hour, we used to do a half hour. That was The Beatles thing – half an hour and we got paid for it.
“I tried to work out why was it so short. Well, because there were a lot of people on the bill, and I think when you went to a thing if you were a comedian the promoter would say ‘how long can you do? Four minutes?’.
“The guy would say yes, so they would do four and so we thought, ‘well, half an hour that’s like epic’… It didn’t seem strange’.”
Last year, Macca celebrated his 80th birthday with a three-hour headline set at Glastonbury.
Meanwhile, Springsteen is set to play American Express presents BST Hyde Park in London not once, but twice with The E Street Band on July 6 and July 8.
The ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ hitmaker and his band are playing their first live concerts in the UK since the 2016 ‘River Tour’.