Chris Holmes picked up a guitar in seventh grade in Lake Forest. Now he stands behind a cockpit-like console in a cream suit, spinning Beatles remixes for arena crowds moments before Paul McCartney takes the stage.
Holmes, a DJ and multimedia artist who grew up in Lake Forest, has warmed up McCartney's concert audiences since 2011. A profile in the University of Chicago Magazine, published in the Summer 2026 issue, traces his winding path from the North Shore to one of the most coveted gigs in live music.
"I dropped a remix that I'd made of 'Paperback Writer' and Paul loved it," Holmes told the magazine, recalling a 2009 Grammy Night party in the Hollywood Hills where he and producer Nigel Godrich co-hosted. McCartney, who attended because Godrich had produced his album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, danced in front of the DJ booth all night.
Shortly after, Holmes was invited to open for McCartney at Coachella in front of 60,000 people. The touring relationship stuck.
From Lake Forest to Hyde Park
Holmes started playing guitar and synthesizers in seventh grade and graduated from the University of Chicago in 1994. He was drawn to Hyde Park by a high school fascination with composer Philip Glass, a UChicago alumnus. On campus, Holmes served as program director at radio station WHPK, where he hosted a show about UFOs, and worked as a projectionist at Doc Films.
He mingled with Chicago's alt-rock scene in the early 1990s. Liz Phair borrowed Holmes's nickname for the then male-dominated Wicker Park neighborhood for the title of her 1993 album Exile in Guyville.
Holmes's band Yum-Yum released an album on a sub-label of Atlantic Records in 1996. The group sometimes performed in pink bunny suits. The label folded.
Rabbit holes that paid off
After Yum-Yum, Holmes played keyboards with the Smashing Pumpkins, collaborated with Sinéad O'Connor, and eventually moved to Los Angeles, where he built a 3,000-strong record collection and started DJing parties. He had songs placed on the TV series The O.C. and co-wrote a song with Mandy Moore.
Holmes told the magazine his career has been "a series of hyperfocused events and projects" driven by a brain that runs at full volume, with each year bringing something more interesting to chase than graduate school.
He has a wrist tattoo reading "FLOW" in thick black letters.
Beyond McCartney's tours, Holmes co-produced a Netflix documentary about the band Devo that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2024, according to his Wikipedia page. He is also developing The Psychedelic Mixtape: The Visionary Experience, an immersive show using 12K-resolution projections of pulsating lights synced to music, alongside voice recordings of Aldous Huxley, Joseph Campbell, Ram Dass, and Timothy Leary.
Holmes lives in Woodland Hills, California, with his wife, Melinda Lee Holm, a writer and Tarot reader. Fifteen years in, he still precedes McCartney onstage, grooving in that cream suit, helping transport crowds from stress to joy before a Beatle walks out.
