Go Behind-The-Scenes of the ‘Out There’ Infographic

We recently published a new infographic detailing some of the most extraordinary things that are done to create an event as big as Paul's 'Out There' tour. If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out by clicking HERE!

The PaulMcCartney.com office had a lot of fun coming up with the different tour items to investigate, but how did we reach some of the figures? Let us take you behind-the-scenes of the 'Out There' tour infographic - read on to find out how four of the facts were researched…

WALKING FROM LONDON TO LIVERPOOL 2.5 TIMES:
We think one of the most impressive facts on the infographic - and the one that started all of this off - was the question of just how much does Paul walk each show? To get this fact we researched available information for how many steps, on average, people do over the space of around 2 1/2 hours. Paul's set lengths average between 2 hours 50 for indoor shows, and 2 hours for festivals so we thought 2.5 hours would be a good median.

The NHS' website states that an average person will take around 10,000 steps over the course of 2.5 hours. Not being folks who take the research of others without checking, we did a couple of tests in the office (resulting in a lot of walking around London one weekend!) and sure enough, that figure was pretty much spot on! So using that as the base figure, we worked out that Paul will have averaged around 4,000 steps an hour. We had already worked out approximately how many hours Paul spent on stage - 254 - and again, using the NHS' data (and our own research) we know there are approximately 2,000 steps in a mile.

So, we did the maths:
4,000 steps per hour timesed by 254 hours = 1,016,000 steps
1,016,000 steps divided by 2,000 steps per mile = 508 miles
According to Google Maps, London to Liverpool is approximately 220 miles via the M40 and M6

So that's how we came to the figure of Paul walking the equivalent of London to Liverpool around 2.5 times on stage during the 'Out There’ tour dates**.**

THE AMOUNT OF TIME SPENT ON STAGE:
As mentioned above, Paul's indoor shows average 2 hours and 50 minutes. When he appears at festivals, the average set length is 2 hours. As we know the number of shows Paul has played on the tour so far - 91 (86 gigs and 5 festivals) -  we got out the calculators once more and did the maths:

Average length of Paul's gigs = 170 minutes timesed by 86 = 14,620 minutes
Average length of Paul's festival appearances = 120 minutes timesed by 5 = 600 minutes
14,620 plus 600 = 15,220 minutes or 254 hours or 10.5 days!

THE NUMBER OF STRINGS USED ON STAGE:
For this fact, we spoke with guitar tech extraordinaire Keith Smith, a stalwart of Paul's touring crew. He told us that there are on average 40 guitars on tour at any one time. Each of these guitars will require 6 strings and then again on average, around ten of those guitars will be restrung each gig. So armed with that information, we took to the calculators again:

40 guitars timesed by 6 strings a piece = 240
60 new strings per show timesed by 91 concerts = 5,460
240 plus 5,460 = 5,700

HOW MANY TIMES DOES PAUL SING THE WORD 'LOVE' ON STAGE?:
Now this fact was down to good old plain researching and number counting by the MPL office!

We keep a record of every setlist Paul plays (which you can check out in the Tour Archives section of the website!). So we looked through the total number of songs that Paul has played on the tour so far - 3,631 - then looked at the lyrics for each of these and counted up the number of times the word 'Love' appears. This mammoth task gave us the figure of 9,105... but in actual fact, when you keep in mind that Paul often ad libs on stage,  it's very possible that he has sung 'love' even more. So we can now officially declare that Paul's concerts are a very loving place to be!

Putting together the infographic was a lot of fun, but we could not have done it without the help of Stuart Bell, Diane Eichorst, Phil Kazamias, Keith Smith and Ben Martin, so a very big thank you for all of your help!

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Watch the 'Out There' infographic animations by Michael Kingett on the tour's YouTube playlist below: