McCartney doesn’t mess with success

Paul McCartney has changed an iota or two on the second leg of the tour that first hit Southern California last spring. Most notably, his three-dozen song set list Saturday at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim included “She’s Leaving Home,” a Beatles song he said he’d never played live until this portion of his warmly nostalgic “Back in the U.S.” tour.

He also added “You Never Give Me Your Money,” left out “Mother Nature’s Son” and “Vanilla Sky,” dropped his solo B-side obscurity “C Moon” and replaced it with another Wings-era tune, “Let Em In.” That kept the ratio of Beatles (22 songs) to ‘70s-’80s solo (10) to new songs (4), as well as the order they were played in, virtually the same as before.

He told most of the same anecdotes between songs, saluted departed bandmates John Lennon and George Harrison with the same songs and stories and tacitly paid remembrance to his wife of 29 years, Linda, who died in 1998 of breast cancer, with many of the love songs she inspired. He once again tastefully honored his new wife, Heather Mills, with a freshly minted ballad called “Your Loving Flame.”

While McCartney’s ‘60s peers Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones are mixing things up more on their current tours by reaching deeper into equally deep catalogs, McCartney’s mirror-perfect replica performance didn’t feel the least bit repetitive -- just joyfully timeless.

The one part of the show that gained clarity the second time around was the surreal opening in which all manner of archetypal characters parade around the arena before the Fab One arrived. What it suggested this time was that countries, cultures, kingdoms and epochs may come and go, but we’ll always have Beatle music.

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Paul McCartney

Where: Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., Los Angeles

When: Today, 8 p.m.

Price: $51.75 to $259.25

Contact: (213) 742-7340