Former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney (news) said on Sunday he would postpone the final and biggest concert of his current world tour in Melbourne out of respect for the victims of the Bali bomb blasts.
The only Australian show on November 23 in front of over 30,000 fans was to be McCartney’s first date Down Under in more than a decade, but the singer’s spokesman said a nationwide tour was now under consideration for 2003.
“As a mark of respect to both the families who have lost loved ones and to the families of the injured, I have decided to postpone my planned concert in Melbourne as this is not the appropriate time for a rock show,” McCartney said in a statement.
Around 90 Australians were among the more than 180 mainly holidaymakers killed in the nightclub bombings on the Indonesian resort island of Bali earlier this month.
“There’s no way we could come down there and do what is a joyous 36-song show in what Paul feels is one of the most tragic occasions in Australia’s peacetime history,” Geoff Baker, the singer’s spokesman, told Reuters from Las Vegas.
The McCartney tour will now move from the United States, where the singer is performing more than 40 shows, to Mexico and end in Osaka, Japan.
The Victoria state government came under fire earlier this month after it agreed to pay the wealthy musician an undisclosed amount for the exclusive rights for the show in Australia’s second biggest city.
