From the Archive: Paul McCartney

of course, about Sir Paul McCartney. He was a guest on Inside the Studio during my friend Joe Levi's tenure as host. This interview is from two thousand eighteen, soon after the release of his stellar album Egypt Station. It became his first number one record in thirty six years, and it couldn't have been better deserved. The themes of travel mirror mind. Constantly on the move, piqued by the new,

the different, the unexpected and the fun. Each of the sixteen tracks brims with McCartney's undiminished and seemingly boundless energy and trademark gift for melody. It's a gift that he showcased most recently on Twenties McCartney three, an album recorded at his home studio in Lockdown, or as he called it, Rockdown. In honor of Sir Paul's recently announced Got Back tour of North America, arguably the summer's hottest ticket, we decided that was a good reason as any to share these

words from the master. Listen to what the man said, and enjoy Paul McCartney. Welcome to inside the Studio, Key Joe, or a very special edition of Backstage at the Paul McCartney Show. Okay, and here we are in the Winnipeg. In Winnipeg winned the Peg a few months ago. I'm walking up Park Avenue and I pass a guy coming down the street who looks remarkably like Paul McCartney Park Avenue in eighty nine street. I think, can't be Paul McCartney. No one with him, no one around did a double take.

It was Paul McCartney. It couldn't have been him, but it was. You were just walking down the street by yourself. I walked down streets therefore, walking down I've heard that, you know, I like to get out and about and people say, oh no, you're gonna have acres of security behind you and stuff. But I'd like to just get out, you know, just so as you feel like yourself instead of like a rock star. Are there times you do

like to feel like a rock star? You know, when I do the show, that's good, But then you know you need to balance it, so you get off the stage and maybe you know, like you said, you're walking somewhere. So I like to just get out like I always did when I was a kid. So you know, it's just keeps me sane, and it's it's the same feeling as when I was just walking around, only differences. I get recognized. Everyone reaches in their pocket immediately, you know, but no, I got you know, quite a lot of

freedom actually, and I value it. And then you know, if I'm out at a restaurant and stuff with my wife, someone might come over to grab a photo. I say, oh not not just now. You know, it's a private moment and most people are very cool, understand it. So I like to keep that, you know, a private bit of my life. And then I like the other bit even more because it's like, wow, this is cool. The other bit being in public, being on stage, Yeah, you

have to like it. You are playing these three hour shows. We just saw a one hour sound check, and that's something that people don't actually know that many concerts are preceded by this one hour sound check. I think you have no set list for that. Many of those songs aren't in the set, right. Yeah. No, we always do that, I mean because it's good because we need to check the instruments we're going to use, just to make sure they're all plugged in. They all work, and I mean

there was a little moment there. Normally doesn't screw up too much, but our keyboard players moog didn't work. So that's good. That's what the sound checks for, instead of just doing all the numbers from the show, which kind of spoils the show for us because when we get a bit bored doing the numbers again, we just use the same instruments we're going to use, but we switch

the numbers about. We do any old thing, you know, so we'll do kind of like skifful things, folk things, early rock and roll things, like a little solely things. Midnight Special tonight, which was kind of amazing, and we always do Midnight specially. Yeah, what you often do? You know, You've got certain songs that go way back before I started even playing, you know. I think that's like a big Bill BRUNSI song. So he's an old blues singer and they're just songs you learn along the way and

you like them. So if you get an opportunity or something like this where there's a sound check, all you really need to do is just make sure everything's working. Then you can indulge yourself and play something like that, you know, and it's nice. Keeps it all fresh, you know.

Talking about the songs, you do know, there's something I wanted to ask you about in the set list now, is in spite of all the danger, the first song recorded by the Quarryman in nineteen Oh my god, so it's now sixty years old and that can't be true. That's before my time. I will say, for those just listening at home, he could pull that off because it does look like he's not old enough to have written really,

but thank you. But that said, the amazing thing that I realized is that you know, you're performing songs from your your newest record, Egypt Station, and the very first thing you ever recorded. So the audience tonight will hear sixty years Paul McCartney songs. That's right, Yeah, yeah, it is crazy. You know, it's um I've been enjoying playing for that long, and when I do that song in spite of all the danger, which was just the first little demo we ever did with the Beatles, before we

got a record contract or anything. So I always imagine us all going to this little studio in Liverpool, all paying a pound each for five pound demo and doing this little song, you know, and it's it's so ancient that it's great for me because it's like what it is, it's like reaching back into your childhood. So it would be like somebody maybe listening to this thinking of when they were on the beach when they were one, and

it's what a great memory, you know. So it makes it special for me just thinking that, Wow, you know, it goes back really before we ever went down to Abbey Road, before we got a record, country, before you did into Hamburg, before we've been to Hamburg. Yeah, So it's a great memory for me, and I like doing it because we get the audience involved on that one,

you know, and so we have fun with it. So it is nice to be able to say this is the very first thing we ever did, first record I was ever involved with, and then we come right up to date and were saying, now this is like the most recent. Somehow it seems to fit together, you know. You know, So that's twice now that you've mentioned drawing on those childhood feelings. First when we were talking about walking around by yourself, and now when we're talking about

playing that song in spite of all the danger. Is that a wild spring for you going back to that time or holding onto that energy. Yeah, you know. It's funny.

In the Beatles, even when we were like maybe twenty four years old or something in the height of the Beatles, we often would we were trying to work out something on a song or what we're going to do with the recording, we'd often say, what would we have done when we were seventeen, and we check back to our seventeen year old selves, who we thought like we're like the coolest opinion in the world. Well, we would have said, yeah, do it, Yeah do it man, or no way, that's

no good. You know. So you always refer to that period, you know, it's your formative period. So when you get a lot of your ideas, and in my case, if you're writing songs, those memories are very rich wells of inspiration.

So you know, I can just think. I remember walking along the road with our guitars on our backs, me and John just before we were famous, you know, and me writing let us to people, dear sir, we are a rock combo, and you know, we would love to play at your place, you know, so all that sort of stuff. It's kind of like magic for me. I think also because of how far I've come. So you've got that very early innocent period, and then we get

famous with the Beatles. Well before that, we go to Hamburg, as you say, and then we get famous with the Beatles, and then we get the American fame, and then we make records and we we go through our various phases. So it's a long, long, long journey. And then right now, you know, here I am, you know, making a new album in Egypt Station, and long behold, it goes to number one in America. You know, you can imagine, you know, we're partying that night was a party, we'll see. I

want to ask you about that. Egypt Station enters the charts at number one, So I guess that, if you're keeping score at home, that's your first record to debut at number one since the Beatles. Since the Beatles and the first number one, and I believe thirty six years. So what was the party? What was the well, you know,

the great thing was after the show. Sometimes if the guys don't have to load out, if they're all in a place and we're going to play the place tomorrow, which was that occasion, I'll say, okay, let's all get together, have a little drink of something to eat, and we get the crowd, and so we all get to hang with each other because it's a bit like a family, your tour family, you know. So we all get together and then our DJ who comes with us on the tour,

he'll DJ some nice dance music stuff. So we were going to have that little party anyway. And then suddenly that afternoon, right after sound check, on my phone, I get the message bank congratulations requiescunt it in the morning and I'm just about to go to the dressroom, which I stopped going, Oh wait a minute, hey, guys, I announced to everyone every number one, you know. So that party that evening, that was special because we had a

real great reason to celebrate. We were going to celebrate anyway, just having a party, but it became really special. We danced the night away. Baby. I was talking to someone at your label in Los Angeles Capital and the people, well, they said back at you. They said, we're amazed at how hard this guy works, seventy six years old, three hour concerts. But also he's out there doing things, taking

advantage of opportunities we bring him. If we bring them to a twenty three year old the artist, they might complain. I was like, yeah, let's do it what I always do. Promoting a record used to be quite boring because they would trot out the same old things. You've got to go there, you've got to do thirty six interviews. We're going to take you to some place central in Europe where all the European territories can come in. And how it was that was Cologne. They always say you're going

to Colone and said why Cologne. So well, it's in the middle of Europe, and we'll bring the Italians, the French and Swiss and everybody in. And so I kind of did it, thinking what I've got to promote the record, But it was a deadly ball. It was really like, oh no, not that again. So I kind of rebelled one day and the meeting I said, look, you know, let's make it something that we're excited about. Because if

we're excited, we actually have a good time. So let's cook up some ideas that are like fun and they're different, and it's not going to Cologne and would end this interviews. So we had some great little things. We had playbacks at the studio in l A. We were working at Henson and we had these little playbacks for I Heart. These are great little sessions. We just cranked it up, played the album for them. So that was easy. That wasn't like the concer to Debbey Road that you did.

And then we did we did a CAVN. We went back to my old school and the little concert there, so you know, it made it fun, it made it interesting, and each little thing was different, and so it was, yeah, capital we're happy. But I was happy with the ideas we were cooking up together, you know, as long as

they were good ideas that were exciting everyone. We had a blest You worked with great Kurtin and Ryan Tater this record, and Ryan and you did the single for you or some might hear it the way I do M, which would be a knott of your word. And we can say it for you. There we go, so give you. If you give someone a present, you don't say this is for you. You go, this is for you, for you, okay, if you h okay. So this is my story and

I'm sticking to it, okay. And yet I was immediately reminded of something I grew up reading a Grill Marcus essay in the Old Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll about the Beatles, where he recalls hearing I saw her standing there on the radio immediately in the days after the first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. He writes, Paul's one two three, fuck opening. How in the world did they expect to get away with that? And the thing is is, after I read that, I

never heard it another way. I always heard it, but I'll never hear an other way. Now. It wasn't that, But I like it, man, you know, you know, it's a kind of nice thing when people kind of misinterpret what you've doneal they put extra meaning on it. I mean, I did the song Hi Hi Hi, which we'll do tonight, and there's a line in it which I was kind of writing just like surrealist lyrics. I was like, so I wrote, I wrote lie on the bed and get

ready for my polygone. It doesn't mean anything was a polygon, you know, but people thought it was get ready for my body Gune. I thought, you know what, that is better if you ever sung it that way. Okay, So you know, sometimes the misinterpretation is actually better than the real lyric. You know. Tell me you've said that the songs you you worked on with Greg, you brought into the studio, but when you worked with Ryan Tedder, he

wanted to make it up in the studio. Yeah, tell me a little bit about putting that song for you together. As you say. When I was working with Greg, which was most of the time, I had a lot of songs I wanted to record, so I came in and we worked on them together, but they were ready written. And then there was a period there where Great couldn't work. But I had a couple of weeks off, so I took one of the weeks as a holiday. Uh, And then the other week my manager said, you want to

keep the momentum going. You know, you're on a bit of a role here, and if you want to keep it going, you know, I can suggest other people you might work with. You know. So he sent me a few suggestions and I liked what I was hearing that Ryan was doing. I didn't know much about him. Maybe I phoned him up and we had a great conversation. So I said, well, come to my studio in England and we'll just figure it out. We'll just think of something, you know. So I said, I've got a couple of

songs we could do these. He said, no, no, let's let's just make it up because we didn't have long We just had the seven days. It might have even been five days, and so we just made them up. And we ended up making up three tracks. And where you when you say make them up? Were you writing side by side? Were you trying just having ideas, you know, just throwing ideas out. He'd sort of say, what about

yeah do John Dudandu. I go yeah, da Dado. So I go out on the mic and go yeah Dado, And they think, oh God, let us stick some words in, Hey you want Udandu and I eventually put some words to it, and then we put a beat to it, and I put some guitar on or bass on or whatever, and him and his co producers zac you know, they just got grooving with the sounds, and I'd get sort of thinking of what I was going to do on the vocal. They throw ideas out and he said what

about that? He said, well, let me try it, you know. So some of the things didn't work. We can those. It was funny because because of this method of working, the trouble was often that yeah do dad dudando becomes yeah, I love you baby, and it's like, this is a bit boring. So I said to Ryan in the middle of the week and I said, hey, know, man, I said, I'm known for doing songs like eleanor Rigby or you know, Live and Let Die, which you've got a little bit

of meaning to them, you know. So I said, I'm not sure I can do this. Hey, I love your baby. I said, well, I'll tell you what. So we decided what we would do was we'd carry on like that and then I'd revisit it and come up with what I thought were better lyrics. So that was how how we did it. It made a lot of it up as we went along and thought that was good, but the bits I thought were a bit corny. I just rewrote and then went in and fix the vocal with

these new words. You know. A week or sore ago, I was in Los Angeles. I saw a band, Lake Street Dive, terrifically talented band and the will turn and they do in their set let me roll it, and it's it's great. And afterwards I was talking to them, that's terrific, and they looked at me and they shrugged. Yeah,

it's a Paul McCartney song. But then they started talking about for You, and he's got a song out now, and the thing is it's so on trend, like it's got these the drum track and these little drops in it. So they were like amazed at that classic McCartney melodicism up against the sort of modern touches that Bryan Tyler brought to it. Yeah, well that's that's what it was. Yeah, Ryan brought that to it, and say, Zac's called producers, a young guy called Zac, and the two of them

took care of that side of things. What's about this you know list? So they would take a little bit of my vocal and speed it up and drop it back in and do these little crazy things. And you know, the idea was if I didn't like it, I go, oh no way, man. But most of the time, I go, that's cool. I like that. There were three tracks. Only one has been released from that week, but the others

are pretty good too. And then when you were working with Greg that's over a longer period, and you've said that one thing it charged those sessions was seeing this documentary Howard Goodall did about the rerelease the fiftieth anniversary set of Sergeant Pepper's that you actually had this experience of learning wait, wait, that's how we did it. Yeah, yeah, you know. I mean I wasn't really gonna watch this because you know, it's like I thought, well, I kind

of know everything he didn't tell me. I know about this, But then he started in on Penny Lane. It hooked me in because he started to say, oh, now Paul wants to go higher, but he actually modulates down a key. I'm going, did I Oh, wow, that's good. I'm getting impressed by this young twenty four year old's work. You know. Now I'm intrigued. And he got to this bit where he sort of said and the Penny Lane piano. I thought, yeah, okay, I know I played it. I know how that went.

And he said, it's not just one piano and I'm certainly there, going, yeah it is, what do you mean it's not just one? And he's so he starts going back to the multi tracks and he goes, well, there's this one piano. I said, yeah, that's it, and he goes and then they've got this little spiky piano and then he plays and there's this very trebling, little ding ding ding piano playing along with it, and he goes on.

Then there's this harmonium, and it turned out I'd forgotten, but we'd put all these layers into this piano that eventually sounds like one very groovy piano, so much so that I believed it myself. So I went in the next day with Greg and I said, why wait a minute. You know, so this is a really great idea. So we started messing with like harpsichords and piano and mixing them and getting them very exact so you couldn't tell it was two pianos, but it was like a hybrid.

That's kind of interesting way to work. And you've been working for almost a year at that point, so were you going back and adding or retexturing tracks that you don't the truth We've been doing a bit of that anyway, because the rerelease of Sergeant Pepper, I was inspired by how experimental we were and the inspiration that we'd had for Sergeant Pepper, and I thought, yeah, you know, that's a kind of good way to go is to just not make the same old record, just try and think

outside the box and think, you know, what can we do now? That's crazy and at the same time it comes out just like a song. You know, it's still in the end, isn't isn't some crazy mess. It's actually Penny Lane, you know, your day in the life. It's it's a proper song. But the approach was very experimental. So we've been doing a bit of that with Greg.

But once I saw that program about it, we then started to pick apart some of the stuff we've done, made pianos consisting of a few things instead of just the piano. Were there any particular tracks that you remember that you began to to rewire this way. I think the track that's the opening track, the opening song, I

don't know. Yeah, I think we cooked the piano a bit there, and also we kind of de tuned it because what was a nice was I played it in a certain key and song along with it, but I was finding the vocals a little bit too high and I was just going to struggle with it. But Greg, a good producer, says, why don't we just take it down a bit? You know, it would be easier to sing. And what was cool about it was the piano I had already played now got a little bit darker. And

it actually is a bit one of his sounds. I think I heard it on the Adele Hello. I listened to that piano. I thought this is one of greg tricks, you know, But it happened anyway to us, and I liked the sound of the piano we were experimenting. And the thing is, you know, it keeps it really interesting. So you go in each day and instead of thinking, oh, I gotta do this song, I'll but do it good. There'd be a bit of that, but mainly it'll be whatever,

don't do it good. We'll mess around, you know, we'll get something that excites us. We'll put a crazy sound on it. And I got, yeah, I can see it to that. And it's often that when we did a lot of that in the beatings. I mean, John was particularly fond of putting an echo when he was doing the vocal so he would do what we called the bog echo. In Liverpool, Bog means the toilet. You know, I'm going to bog and the toilet traditionally has got a good acoustic, so we would call this little delay

on the vocal sound the bog echo. It just gives you a little bit different feeling than when you're just hearing your own voice plane and straightforward. It's like your eldest somebody with a crazy sound on his voice, Jean Vincente, you know whatever. The sounds like your old rock idols.

So it inspires you a little bit. You know. It's interesting you you mentioned the darker sound that Greg brought to that to the piano, and then you talk about John's experimentation, because John was sometimes the one bringing in the darker energy that the slight darkness of you know, like it's getting better all the time. It couldn't couldn't get much worse like that. That's the famous example of a little addition that that just adds a different shadow. Yeah,

that's true. I mean we all brought that. You know. This is the thing what happens, you know, over time, things become legendary, so you'll get John was the dark one, Paul was the cute one, and that's not true because we each had a bit of that or the other. So George could be very much the one who would bring that in. But you know what I'm talking about it. I always used that example of the song getting better. I always getting better all the time, and John goes

couldn't get much worse. So you know, that's a good example of how he would do that. But often it could be George who do it just as much as John would. And I think you know, I would sometimes take John's songs and darken them. I mean, Come Together was a very jolly little song when John brought it in, and it was like, no, we're not going to do that, seventeen year old, you seventeen year old, Yeah, we would have swamped it out, man. So that's the point in

case swear John's thing was, and then I would. We had those kind of influences on each other. But the story sticks that John was the dark one, I was the light one. George was the mystic one, you know, and to some degree that's true, but we each had aspects of all those kind of forces. And Ringo too, you know, he would come in sort of put some drumming on it. That would be like whoa. I mean, I had the song get Back and I'm just going to get back, get Back and he comes up with

and that drum makes that record, you know. So it's yeah, we're all four corners of a square. The Beatles, it was a very democratic group, so we all brought ideas in. Maybe John and I wrote most of the songs, but George wrote some of the best songs, you know, like something you know, some of those songs he wrote. So sticking with this idea of it comes the legends that stick and what we might be missing. Will soon hear the fiftieth anniversary box set of the White album. Yeah,

what surprises are in store for us. So the legend, of course is that this is where things get difficult. There's a lot of tension during these sessions that have spread over I think five months or so, and sometimes the group is recording as individuals rather than as a group. Is the legend they're true? Or do you remember those sessions differently? You know. The thing is, because it was towards the end of the Beatles, all the forces that were later going to break the Beatles up, which is

mainly business. To tell you the truth, there was a lot of arguing about business and we didn't like that. We'd always traditionally just left that to someone else, but it got a bit dangerous to do that, and that someone else, it was a different someone else, actually was about to nicke it all. So that got This is a period after Brian Epstein's death and the start of Applecord referring to is called Alan Klein. You know, it

got dangerous. It was an idea that he was maybe going to take over and take over all the money and all the stuff that we'd ever done, and that made it a difficult period. But you know, the great thing was when we got in the studio, it all changed because we were just these four guys again and it wasn't to do with business. It was now to do with music, and so sometimes we did record separately.

I would do Blackbird, but only because it's a solo song I did yesterday and I said to him me, okay, guys, what are you going to do on this? And they also, well, we can't. It's a solo song. You know. It wasn't because we were arguing. Some of the great songs like she's so heavy John's I mean, we all got right in there. There's no we were at peace. When we were playing music in the studio. It was always a thrill from the word go when the Beatles were formed

to the word stop. You know, we always got in the studio and even if we were arguing, that kind of got superseded by the music. And you know, we argued like families argue. I mean, in the early days it was always John and George arguing about who would have his amp loudest. They agree, okay, look, you know we've gotta yeah, let's put it at seven. Okay, and they put it at seven, and then you will be playing and you just see George kind of back towards

his up and go nine. And then Johnathan noticed, so he quietly sneak towards his ten, you know, and then that would go, hey, well what are you doing? You know that might cause a bit of an argument, but other than that, you know that when we played music, it came good. But we're not going to keep you any longer. It is almost time to I'm in a mispronounsis, but they're going mak chow buckshaw. Yeah, all that's what they used to say in Germany. I remember the guy's name, Billy.

He was the chefts for to like, the manager of the little club. We first played him and he used to come okay, chow. We tried to it weren't very good at MAC and show. Make show in German. Come on, make a show in German. But sometimes there's people in the audience hold that sign up, so it's stuck. You know. There we all and that is it. I do have to go. Thank you so much, we have to go on show. Thanks very much for chatting. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of

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