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Newcastle Herald
Newcastle Herald
Sage Swinton

30 trucks and hundreds of staff: the efforts to set up Paul McCartney concert

Almost 1000 workers will be on hand at McDonald Jones Stadium on October 24 as Beatles superstar Paul McCartney performs in Newcastle for the first time.

The bump-in began on October 18 for the major music event, with up to 30 semi-trailer trucks set to ferry in equipment for the stage show.

"So there's flooring for field protection, all the stage elements that come in to build the actual stage itself," McDonald Jones Stadium venue manager Dean Mantle said.

"All the seating will need to come in for the field of play - that's 10,500 seats. They've started to come in today and they'll be set up over the weekend and then your production elements will start to kick in on Monday."

Machinery setting up for the concert. Picture by Jonathan Carroll
Signs at McDonald Jones Stadium welcoming Paul McCartney. Picture by Jonathan Carroll
Up to 30,000 people are expected to attend the event. Picture by Jonathan Carroll

While the details of the stage production will remain secret until concert day, Mr Mantle said the set-up was similar to Elton John in January.

The event is not yet sold-out but is expected to go close by the time Tuesday arrives.

"I'd say there will be 28,000 to 30,000 people," Mr Mantle said.

"We're still selling tickets, there's not a lot left, but certainly there are tickets available.

"I'd expect to see us almost reach our capacity, which is around 30,000.

"If people are thinking about wanting to come, now is the opportunity to still get in.

"It's going to be another amazing event that we will probably not get to see again here in Newcastle and the more that Newcastle supports these events the more opportunity we are going to have to actually host them."

Between 150 and 200 staff are on hand at any given time to bump-in the equipment. On show day, between 850 and 950 people including front of house, security, catering and customer service staff are expected to be at the stadium.

That also includes staff to manage traffic. A hiccup in the first Elton John concert was a lack of buses before and after the event, but Mr Mantle said that was rectified for the second concert and should be even further improved for Paul McCartney.

"We've done extensive work on a traffic management," he said.

"We've gone through and really looked at every part of our traffic management to ensure that we've got it covered off.

"We've enhanced some elements of that, particularly for buses. We've streamlined the entry exit process for those buses. We've created easy access for guests.

"There shouldn't be any issues with wait times in terms of buses trying to get in and access the car park where they had to last time.

"We're really confident that the small tweaks that we've made to particularly the buses because I think that was probably the only sort of real speaking point we had last time.

"We've well and truly covered that off. The number of buses is very similar to what we had for the second Elton show.

"We've done some things around the routing to make sure that the time for the buses to get to and from where they're dropping people off and back to the stadium for a second run is a little bit shorter. So the regularity of those buses is going to be really frequent and I'm thinking we should be able to clear the site really quickly this time."

However he still urged concert goers to give themselves plenty of time to get into the venue.

"People should get on the website and make sure they're across all the details in terms of how to get here, where they can and can't park, where the shuttle buses run from to make the night as smooth as possible," he said.

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