Paul McCartney makes surprise performance at Amagansett's Stephen Talkhouse

Paul McCartney took the stage at Amagansett’s Stephen Talkhouse on Tuesday around midnight for an impromptu jam with Smith & Watt Steakhouse, the pickup band of guitarist-producer Andrew Watt and Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Chad Smith.

Before a sold-out crowd of roughly 250, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer performed part of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” followed by his and John Lennon’s early Beatles hit “I Saw Her Standing There,” accompanied by the Great Neck-raised Watt, Smith, former Hall & Oates guitarist and star session player G.E. Smith (no relation), bassist Ivan “Funkboy” Bodley and singer-songwriter-actor Charlotte Lawrence.

“I was working the door out front,” Stephen Talkhouse general manager Max Honerkamp, 35, son of primary founder Peter Honerkamp, told Newsday. “Then I heard a lot of commotion. I went in through the side door and all I could see was people’s phones in my face, and normally no one’s even in that hallway. … So I grabbed a quick video and then I went to the main room,” where he saw what multiple YouTube videos captured as an exuberant McCartney, 82, dressed in a hoodie and bluejeans, singing Young’s hard-charging 1989 anthem of Reagan/Bush era haves and have-nots.

Singing duet with him on the chorus was Lawrence, currently starring in her father Bill Lawrence’s (“Scrubs,” “Ted Lasso”) Apple TV+ series “Bad Monkey.” Then as the band kept vamping, McCartney tells Watt, “OK,” followed by drowned-out comments. Then at last the music legend says, “I got it. Last number,” and segues to “I Saw Her Standing There.”

“My senior year of college I took a class in rock and roll history, thinking it was apt for my roots,” says Honerkamp, “and when we got to The Beatles, the first song the teacher played was ‘I Saw Her Standing There.’ Seeing him doing it here, that was a goosebump moment.”

McCartney, who keeps a home in East Hampton with his wife Nancy Shevell, has frequented Stephen Talkhouse for decades. “I think that was at least his third or fourth time jumping up onstage for a song, but it’s been a while,” says Honerkamp. “I don’t even know the last time he did one of own his songs. Someone told me he covered ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ the last time he did it.” McCartney performed Carl Perkins’ 1955 classic in August 1992 when he joined the NBC “Saturday Night Live” band, fronted by G.E. Smith, onstage at the Talkhouse.

“Paul dropped the mic when he finished like a rap battle and walked off. Mind blown,” read a joint Instagram post Wednesday at the account for Stephen Talkhouse and other entities. “One of the coolest things we’ve all ever seen.”

Another Stephen Talkhouse regular, former “Scrubs” star Zach Braff, also performed that night, Honerkamp says. “Zach Braff was there, too. He did that intro to [Prince’s] ‘Let’s Go Crazy’ where it’s, like, reciting, or chanting, almost, and then it goes into ‘Let’s Go Crazy.’”