The Late Show With Stephen Colbert came to an end last night (21 May) with a very special surprise guest – literally - switching off the lights: Paul McCartney.
Macca’s presence was significant since the show is, well, was filmed at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, famous, of course, for being the site of the Beatles record-breaking appearance on Sullivan’s TV show in February 1964, seen by a mind-boggling 73 million Americans.
The 83-year-old Beatle, who releases his The Boys Of Dungeon Lane album next week, spoke about his memories of that first US TV appearance: “We were a little bit nervous, but we’re young kids and we’re sort of full of ourselves. It was very exciting. America’s where all the music we loved came from - rock ‘n’ roll, the blues and the whole thing, even going back to Fred Astaire. The land of the free; the greatest democracy,” he recalled, before adding, perhaps pointedly: “That was what it was, and still is, hopefully.”
And it was McCartney who played the show out with The Beatles' Hello Goodbye, which featured another of the last show’s guests, Elvis Costello, Jon Batiste, Louis Cato and Colbert himself on backing vocals. At the song’s Hawaiian-style coda, other guests from the show came on stage, then crew members, before the scene cut to Colbert and McCartney in the theatre’s basement, debating who should be the one to cut the power on the show.
Earlier on, Colbert had got to fulfil a long-time wish by performing Jump Up, a somewhat obscure Elvis Costello song, with its composer.
Back in 2012, in an interview with NPR Live, he spoke about his admiration: “I love the song because it’s sort of a satirical song… I’ve always loved that line ‘it’s a two-horse race, and he changes bets like it was another brand of cigarettes.’ And back, long before I did political satire, I thought, yeah, isn’t that interesting.”
And so departs one of the mainstays of late night TV, for it’s not just Colbert that’s leaving but The Late Show itself – CBS announced it was cancelling it last year, with the network claiming the decision was financial and nothing at all to do with Colbert’s criticism of Trump.
Music has always been a key part of the show’s format and its termination means there’s one less nightly slot for live music on network TV. Whatever your shade of politics, that has to be a crying shame.
