Paul McCartney Turns Lights Out in Ed Sullivan Theater for Colbert Finale
Paul McCartney, a surprise guest on the final episode of “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” provided a poignant capper to the series by being given the ceremonial honor of turning out the lights in the Ed Sullivan Theater, a location with which he has plenty of history.
The final number had McCartney and Colbert singing the Beatles‘ classic “Hello Goodbye,” accompanied by Elvis Costello, former band leader Jon Batiste and current band leader Louis Cato, eventually joined on stage by a parade of staffers dancing through and around the stag in a line, as the house band finally gave the ’60s tune a New Orleans-style coda.
Then Colbert was seen in a filmed bit taking McCartney backstage to the electrical breakers, where the legendary rocker was seen flipping a switch that not only turned the lights out but sent the Sullivan Theater into a green interdimensional portal introduced earlier in the show by Neil deGrasse Tyson.
The symbolic gesture followed McCartney’s stint as the show’s final interviewee as well as last musical performer, in which the host asked him to share stories about his first visit to the theater 62 years ago.
“Hello Goodbye” was not the only musical number toward the end of the extended final telecast. In another filmed segment, Colbert was joined by Costello and Batiste for a seated rendering of a song that was surely unfamiliar to 99% of the viewing audience: “Jump Up,” a bluesy song Costello wrote in the mid-1970s that was not released until decades later, as a demo included as a bonus track on a “My Aim Is True” deluxe edition.
Source: variety.com/Chris Willman
