McCartney to play concert at Target Field

Nearly 50 years after his first performance in Minnesota as a member of The Beatles in 1965, rock legend Paul McCartney will make his return to the Twin Cities this summer in a concert at Target Field.

McCartney's global "Out There" tour will feature a performance at Target Field on Aug. 2, the Twins announced on Monday. It'll mark McCartney's fifth time playing in the Twin Cities, and his first Minnesota show since 2005.

Tickets for the show will go on sale at twinsbaseball.com on April 28 at 10 a.m. CT. Tickets for season-ticket holders will go on sale on Friday at 2 p.m., and American Express card members can purchase tickets before the general public beginning Thursday at 10 a.m. through Sunday at 10 p.m.

"This is incredibly exciting not only for the Twins' organization but for Paul McCartney fans all over the Upper Midwest," said Twins senior director of corporate communications and broadcasting Kevin Smith. "I think with the overwhelming success we had here with the first two shows with Kenny Chesney, it shows that Target Field is a major outdoor concert venue in the Upper Midwest. To be able to host Sir Paul McCartney is an honor more than anything else."

McCartney played in Minneapolis with Wings in 1976 and again during solo tours in 1993 and 2005, and his latest stopover comes during a triumphant tour that has taken him around the world. McCartney began his current concert tour in Brazil and has visited 23 cities on three continents.

McCartney will be playing Target Field for the first time since the ballpark opened in 2010, and his concert will include numbers from all five decades of his chart-topping career. The native of Liverpool, England, has sold more than 100 million albums and 100 million singles with The Beatles, and after, and he's written or co-written 32 tracks that have reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list.

McCartney was originally slated to play a concert at Target Field in 2011, but it was cancelled because of scheduling issues. This will be the third major concert at Target Field, as country star Chesney played there in both '12 and '13. He was joined by Tim McGraw in '12 and Zac Brown Band in '13.

The inaugural concert in 2012 drew a total of 43,897 fans, which set an attendance record for Target Field that was broken the next year with 43,940 fans attending the second concert at the ballpark. The Twins expect another sellout for McCartney.

"We think it's gone exceedingly well," Smith said. "When you put 40,000 fans, and many of them on the field, for a non-baseball game, it can be a little challenging. But I think we've learned a lot from the first two concerts. The grounds crew has a better feel for how to protect the field and get ready for the next homestand."

Target Field is the only Major League ballpark on the docket for McCartney's tour, which will also include stops at NBA arenas in Dallas, New Orleans, Atlanta and Salt Lake City, and NHL arenas in Pittsburgh and Nashville. McCartney has also played at global destinations over the past decade such the Colosseum in Rome, Moscow's Red Square, London's Buckingham Palace and the White House.

"To be able to host a living, breathing music legend is just incredible," Smith said. "He's run the gamut. He's been a performer for more than 50 years. To be able to have him come to Target Field and play for the fans is going to be really special."