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It was 33 years ago tonight (November 23rd, 1989) that after a 13-year-stretch, Paul McCartney returned to the North American concert stage for the first of a five-night stand at the L.A. Forum. McCartney's band featured wife Linda McCartney on keyboards, Average White Band co-founder Hamish Stuart on guitar and bass, Former Pretenders lead guitarist Robbie McIntosh, keyboardist Paul “Wix” Wickens, and drummer Chris Whitten.
McCartney's last North American trek had been the blockbuster 1976 Wings Over America tour, and Wings' 1979/1980 tour was canceled after only 20 UK shows following his infamous January 1980 pot bust in Tokyo. Following the Japan debacle and John Lennon's murder the following December, McCartney continued to record and wrote and starred in the big budget, big screen flop Give My Regards To Broad Street, which was universally panned.
By the time of the 1989 tour, McCartney had released four studio albums — Pipes Of Peace (1983, #15); Give My Regards To Broad Street (1984, #21); Press To Play (1986, #30); and Flowers In The Dirt (1989, #21) — which, to that date, marked his worst charting releases. McCartney also hadn't racked up a Top 20 single hit since 1985's “Spies Like Us” scored him his last Top Ten hit to date. His 1987 double-album solo retrospective All The Best! only rose as high as a dismal Number 62.