Where to begin? This tour has been a surreal whirlwind of emotions and visions. A tour of firsts. Eighteen thousand one hundred and thirty people breathing as one. Smiles as plentiful and colourful as the confetti that will fall from the ceiling. Eating as a warm-up. Laughing as a vocal exercise. Walking, excitedly, to the stage hand-in-hand. Five men embracing, praying and feeling the warmth and the calm before the storm. Seas of people with their hands in the air waiting for their hero to pick them up and dust them off. Re-creating songs that are the soundtrack to everyone's life. Seven-year-olds and seventy-year-olds singing every lyric. Screaming, dancing, rocking, bouncing, crying, holding, comforting, jumping, cheering, missing, kissing, praising, laughing, wishing it would never stop. Pinching yourself and realising you are awake and this is only the first night...

Well, to choose a few highlights from the tour that rocked my world (and the U.S., I hear);... That's like picking out the most beautiful wildflower from a field full of them. Let's start at the first night of the tour. We opened in Oakland, where my father grew up. It was if we were all being carried through that show somehow. It was magic, effortless, exhilarating. Up we went, floating. When the five of us came off the stage before the first encore, the feeling of joy, triumph and camaraderie was huge... It was so fresh and new... We had only rehearsed two weeks with Paul so it could have been anything, but it was good, really good. I could feel my father smiling down at me from beyond. After the show in Boston, Paul invited the band to his house for a few days off... Paul and Heather woke us up in the late morning and made breakfast for us. We sat and talked for hours about future plans, including Paul's invitation to go play with him for the queen's golden anniversary at Buckingham Palace... Let me check my schedule... that was a great morning... ... I will never forget all the laughs, on the jet rides with Paul, at the aftershow parties and onstage. I was relieved when Paul would crack up or just wink when one of us would make a mistake during the show. There's something cool about that. Seeing the VIP ticket crew and the press officers dressed up to carry the big balloons in their pre-show cameo was worth a few laughs. Geoff Baker, in particular. White clown suit, glasses over the mask, cigarette hanging from his mouth like Keith Richards... bad clown before a crime spree...  ... But beyond these few highlights in a tour of nothing but highlights there is one... on the last night of the tour in Ft. Lauderdale we were coming to the end of the show, last encore. Paul opened The Long And Winding Road with a cool little bluesy piano lick, then the opening line... all at once, every person in our 'family' on tour jumped up from the security pit at the front of the stage and in the aisles, down the sides of the audience, at the sound desk, some 140 people holding up these large cards with big red hearts painted on them, facing us. They were wearing smiles, tears and those big hearts. I completely lost it, Paul lost it, we all were sobbing. Paul tried to sing through his tears. Big tears of joy which I will never forget. That is forever.

  Paul McCartney

What do I remember? A fantastic tour with fantastic people. The audiences, the magic of my first American tour in years, the bouquets being hurled up from a smiling, thankful audience almost made us not want to go home after our final night at Fort Lauderdale. The hundred-strong crew holding up heart cards as I started the introduction to The Long And Winding Road and got as far as "the long....." before the notes choked in my throat, an emotion-soaked tour, the nightly runner onto the bus and excited chat from the sweaty band as we recalled the evening's gig, whilst the bus lurched up the concrete ramp and out of the arena. Nikons flashing, film cameras whirling, cops' Harley motorcycles roaring past as they escorted us to and from the airport. The people in the audience, the funny faces, the emotional faces, the kids, the mums and dads shaking their hips like it would never go out of style, tears for John, Linda and George and cheers for their memories... The U.S. flags during Freedom, like poppies in a field, the fist-clenched salutes of proud Americans remembering their lost heroes. Abe thwacking his drums and cymbals and breaking a million sticks a night, Rusty and Brian jumping and whirling like demented windmills, Wix's phenomenal keyboard inventions and his increasingly eccentric introductions, reminding us how much we love to play live, rehearsals where we looked forward to what was to come, planning the pre-show and eventually seeing our friends, Michelle, Geoff, Fiona et al ballooning around the arena in their pierrot costumes. Loving Heather and I sharing the road together making new friends. Singing Getting Better for the first time since I had recorded it, the standing ovations during the acoustic set, Rusty's giant hands mashing out solos, Brian's smile telling me "good take", Wix's antics during Maybe I'm Amazed, backstage moments before the gig as we hugged and prayed and gave thanks, the ritual of the throat lozenge shared with Scotty, Woody and our backstage mates, the intense wave of energy coming off the audience, happy faces, proud faces, young faces, old, knowing smiles, emotions, that connection, never to be forgotten - that's what I remember.

Paul 'Wix' Wickens

What can I tell you about this tour? I first toured with Paul in 1989 and the tours are all special in their own way. On this tour the big feeling I get is one of love. There is a lot of love within the people working, and from the people listening/grooving/partying/singing/ crying. It's been exciting to meet and work with some great new musicians. You make a special kind of bond when you play music together and this is such brilliant music to be part of...Words can't properly describe the feeling of playing a song that has never yet been performed live, especially when it means such a lot to so many people (including me). I am always amazed at the enthusiasm that Paul has for music and playing even after all he's achieved, it's inspirational and I'm sure it is one of the factors that makes this band of five people able to give out the energy and sound that it does. For me one big difference of course is that my old keyboard partner is no longer with us, and I am reminded of that through the show especially when I have to play her lines. Music is after all really about emotion, and you get all sorts running through this show. Making new friends, meeting old ones AND playing great music... It doesn't get better than this.

Rusty Anderson

OK. Who could have dreamed in a million gazillion years that I would be ultra-insanely luck-blessed and super-gold-dusted enough to meet Paul Mcfriggin McCartney? But to actually play guitar with him? I just wanted to get that part out of the way because the continuity of daily life must be the parameter of one's moment by moment realisations. If that sounds like a conflict of interest, it is. In other words superimposing my personal lifelong Paul-from-a-distance-experience into the musician working man public reality is like playing on a bowling league in a submarine in the Grand Canyon. To hear a single A string ring out in the arena in tandem with Paul's voice resonating into every ear simultaneously, from where I'm standing, is like loitering in the vortex of a recurring supernova as the energy saturates the collective consciousness, gets recycled back to us and mutates into the next wave exchange... Now, mix that in with the incredible luxury of doing it with the best players/people I know. For anyone that's ever banged two sticks together while someone coughed you'd know when it resonates and when it doesn't. To me, its the world's funniest challenge. Playing music is like making love. That probably sounds cheesy but I really  noticed it at the Queens Jubilee gig. It's infinitely interactive and it's as deep as you want it to be. What can I say? There was a certain moment at a certain party for a certain guy that fuelled some chuckles. Well, also there was the night that the band all went dancing with the Pre-Show in a transvestite bar. Everybody got up on the bar and shook it up. Not a single wallflower. Thrift shopping with Brian in Boston was fruitful... The superbly-organised volleyball game with the band and crew. Haven't done one of those since high school. Wix, being the pro volleyball player that he is, spiked one or two with no argument. My wildcard serving won a game, then lost the next one. Then there's the Superbowl. Standing on the Astroturf field holding my laundry bag, taking pictures of Wix, then of Abe and Brian, with the Superdome audience enclosed and making its own unique ambient noise in the background. Nice warm up for some gigs, huh Paul? Well actually there was another warm-up gig: a mega-benefit concert for New York back in 2001 with David Bowie, The Who, Jagger/Richards and Eric Clapton. What's next, the space station?... Obviously, the last night of the leg in Florida was a notable one. First Paul inviting the two super-fan girls up to rock with us on I Saw Her Standing There. Then the heart signs came up on The Long And Winding Road. I about lost it. We all heard Paul losing it quite beautifully. Sometimes you don't realise that people are actually working together out of choice and a scary amount of love develops very quickly. Paul has this effect on people. It was cool to watch our set unfold from its infant stages of Paul's initial list to new suggestions from the band to the final list. Also on-stage patter ever expanding and taking shape as the tour unfolded. This is certainly the biggest tour I've ever been involved with. Now, I guess I feel christened.