The Driving World Tour was a

concert tour A concert tour (or simply tour) is a series of concerts by an artist or group of artists in different cities, countries or locations. Often, concert tours are named to differentiate different tours by the same artist and to associate a specific ...

by English musician

Paul McCartney Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained global fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and the piano, and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John ...

. It marked his first tour of the 21st century and of any kind since 1993's New World Tour. For the first time in nearly a decade, McCartney returned to the road following the death of first wife,

Linda McCartney Linda Louise, Lady McCartney ( Eastman; September 24, 1941 – April 17, 1998) was an American photographer, musician, cookbook author, and activist. She was the keyboardist and harmony vocalist in the band Paul McCartney and Wings, Wings tha ...

, the death of

George Harrison George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician, singer and songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Culture ...

, and

9/11 The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

. This was in promotion of his 2001 album ''

Driving Rain ''Driving Rain'' is the twelfth solo studio album by English musician Paul McCartney, released on 12 November 2001 as a double LP, a single cassette, and single CD. Background Following the example of '' Run Devil Run'' brisk production schedul ...

''.

Paul "Wix" Wickens Paul "Wix" Wickens is an English musician best known as keyboardist and musical director of Paul McCartney's touring band since 1989. In a career that started in 1973, Wickens has also worked with artists including Nik Kershaw, Bob Dylan, Joni ...

returned on keyboards and is credited as Musical Director. New to the fold were Americans

Rusty Anderson Rusty Anderson is an American musician best known for his work as lead guitarist for Paul McCartney's touring band since 2001. He has worked with an extensive list of other artists in addition to his own solo career. Career Anderson became a p ...

Brian Ray Brian Thomas Ray is an American musician best known as a guitarist, bassist and backing vocalist with Paul McCartney's Paul McCartney Band, touring band since 2002, and formerly as a musical director and guitarist for Etta James. Ray has perfo ...

, and Abe Laboriel Jr. Paul McCartney's then-fiancée

Heather Mills Heather Anne Mills (born 12 January 1968) is an English former model, businesswoman and animal rights activist. Mills first came to public attention in 1993 when she was a model and was run over by a police motorcycle in London. The accident ...

accompanied him on the tour and was in the audience for every American performance.

Background

The tour began on April 1, 2002, when the American leg was kicked off in

Oakland, California Oakland is a city in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area in the U.S. state of California. It is the county seat and most populous city in Alameda County, California, Alameda County, with a population of 440,646 in 2020. A major We ...

. The official release chronicling the first U.S. leg of the tour was the CD and DVD '' Back in the U.S.'', which itself would be promoted by another leg in the States. The second American leg was followed by visits to Mexico and Japan. A remix of The Fireman tracks and a performance by

Cirque du Soleil Cirque du Soleil (, ; ) is a Canadian entertainment company and the largest contemporary circus producer in the world. Located in the inner-city area of Saint-Michel, Montreal, Saint-Michel, Montreal, it was founded in Baie-Saint-Paul on 16 Jun ...

opened each show.

Personnel

–

lead vocals The lead vocalist in popular music is typically the member of a group or band whose voice is the most prominent melody in a performance where multiple voices may be heard. The lead singer sets their voice against the accompaniment parts of the ...

, acoustic,

electric Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

and

bass guitar The bass guitar (), also known as the electric bass guitar, electric bass, or simply the bass, is the lowest-pitched member of the guitar family. It is similar in appearance and construction to an Electric guitar, electric but with a longer nec ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

ukulele The ukulele ( ; ); also called a uke (informally), is a member of the lute (ancient guitar) family of instruments. The ukulele is of Portuguese origin and was popularized in Hawaii. The tone and volume of the instrument vary with size and con ...

– backing vocals, acoustic and electric guitars *

– backing vocals, acoustic, electric and bass guitars *

– backing vocals, keyboards,

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German language, German ', from '—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a Reed (mou ...

, acoustic guitar * Abe Laboriel, Jr. – backing vocals,

drums The drum is a member of the percussion instrument, percussion group of musical instruments. In the Hornbostel–Sachs classification system, it is a membranophones, membranophone. Drums consist of at least one Acoustic membrane, membrane, c ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a percussion mallet, beater including attached or enclosed beaters or Rattle (percussion beater), rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or ...

Tour dates

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Driving World Tour 2002 concert tours Paul McCartney concert tours

Background

Personnel

Tour dates

See also

References