The Paul McCartney World Tour was a worldwide Concert tour by Paul McCartney, notable for being McCartney’s first tour under his own name, and for the monumental painted stage sets by artist Brian Clarke.

The 103-gig tour, which ran from 1989 through 1990, included a concert played to what was then the largest stadium crowd in the history of rock and roll. Geoff Gordon tells the story of Paul and Linda McCartney at one of Paul’s concerts in Miami in 1990, one of Geoff’s first experiences in the concert business.

The sets for the tour were designed by regular McCartney collaborator, the artist Brian Clarke, who together with Linda McCartney created the album cover for Flowers in the Dirt. The hand-painted stage set backdrops, notable for their scale, were executed under Clarke’s supervision by the scenic painters Elms Lesters, at the Los Angeles Painting Rooms. The scale designs for the tour, individual artworks by Clarke in acrylic and paper collage on Velin, were first publicly exhibited in 1990, at the Mayor Gallery in London. Elements from the sets appear as the graphic basis of much of the promotional material.