Back In the U.S.S.R.

Pushkin. At the height of the Cold War, with the.

Closing of the border, Soviet divisions in East Germany were on the move, with combat forces brought into strategic positions for the contest over the status of Berlin.

At a time when two halves of the world were separated by an iron curtain. On the brink of nuclear war, the Beatles released Well, a strange kind of rock and roll song, Flumy beat Ze. I'm Formuldau. I'm a poet, a lover of not only the lyric poem, but the song lyric view. Over the past several years, I've got to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.

And will you look at me? It's happened. I'm going on to I'm actually a performer.

That's sir Paul McCartney. He and I worked on a book together, looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.

She I'm a songwriter. My God, will that that crypt homie?

This is McCartney a life in lyrics. It's a masterclass, a memoir and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music in this episode back in the USSR.

Mobilization efforts during the last months of nineteen sixty one brought the United States Army to a strength of over a million men, subsequently increasing our troops strength throughout Europe.

It's hard to imagine just how puzzling it would have been in nineteen sixty eight to hear a song about somebody being happy to leave the West and go back to the Soviet Union. Only a few months before, Russian tanks had rolled into Prague to crack down on protests against Soviet control. This nineteen sixty eight report from ABC News highlights the extent of the operation.

Russian tanks and infantry, aided by troops from East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Bulgaria, have occupied Czechoslovakia and have crushed the new and relatively liberal leadership of that small country.

The way this song turns the cultural and political world order on its head is what makes it the joke of an era. As was often the case for McCartney, he drew inspiration from what was happening in the wider world, as well as from the songs that were playing on his radio.

Chuck Berry wrote a song called Back in the US, which we were very familiar with, and so I kind of thought it was it was kind of cool. It was obviously a serviceman returning home, right, going back into the UX, going back into his home civilization.

Chuck Berry had come back from a trip to Australia where he had witnessed the dismal living conditions of the indigenous population, and he wrote this song as a kind of anthem to his glorious USA from glassing over the struggles of the American civil rights movement at the time. Berry's song is a celebration of capitalism and the economic boom of the nineteen fifties, of drive ins and sizzling Hamburgers. Paul McCartney and the Beatles loved Chuck Berry, and they

It was a little bit.

Two pro us because we were in the UK, so I could pokephone on it in my own way, and when I saw that US SR was kind of similar, then I realized I could sit back in the US. I could do a little parody on Chuck's idea of being back, and I would have a Russian guy who'd come from America and was glad to be back in Russia.

And it comes from Miami.

On BOAC British Overseasys Corporation.

BOAC, He's our standing contribution to the second generation of jet airliners.

The speaker of the song, the protagonist flies back to the Soviet Union with the glamour of modern jet travel, like that showcased in this nineteen sixty four ad for BOAC.

In the Economy Cloud.

The standard is so high the passengers can easily this way themselves. But the VIP.

One medium drive vodka, my team mixed.

Like you said, who is this man? It's easy to imagine him as a kind of suave jet setter, fluent in many languages, lots of charm, maybe like a James Bond type. The Prime Ministers talked to Moscow.

They're saying it was an accident during a routine training exercise.

Governments change the lies, except he wouldn't be reporting to MI I six or Dame Judy Dench rather the KGB.

He's flying home from Miami he's just been to sunny Florida, maybe hanging out on the beach, which gets us to the bridge. If the verse is setting up a joke, the punchline is the bridge when our protagonist starts listing the territories of the former Soviet unions bed.

Wesbian.

The harmonies of the Bridge were inspired by the Beach Boys. In fact, when the Beatles went to India in nineteen sixty it to meditate Mike love Off the Beach Boys was there too. He is even claimed in several interviews that he gave McCartney the idea for that part of the song where the Beach Boys fit into this.

Well, there were big influences run about the time. So this as I'm doing a parody of Chuck.

And I'm doing it.

I'm doing it American, but it's it's a Russian guy having all the sentiments. So I'm using stuff from the Beach Boys for the parody. So when I'm going Ukraine, girls really knocked me out, I'm thinking, California, you girls will knock me out. West beyonds make me saying shall I think I was very lucky, as I say, when I hit this little humorous vein. It seemed to just sort of flow. So I hear, I know what I'm

Mind, George Georgia, the.

Ray Charles Homestead of Georgia is suddenly transformed into the Soviet satellite nation of Georgia. And now the joke is complete, leaving behind the sun and fun of Miami and old sweet Georgia. We break through the wall, eager to get back into the USSR on board r B Oac Jet. I don't think I ever understood at the time that Boac was in the first line.

I'm not sure if I ever I understood what it was. Yeah, that horrifying you. No, not at all.

I mean, I'm still finding things in these lyrics, but I do sometimes think, I mean, particularly about this one, how amazingly ancient all the ideas are. Now there isn't a USSR anymore.

There isn't a.

BOAC, and I often wonder, like you didn't get it. I don't think the kids get it. I'm not sure they know what USSR was. It's just it's a rock and song. But I mean, obviously the joke is that Identic split.

It up back in the US. Back in the US, back in the USSR had well beyond.

While the song has an upbeat, rock and roll energy, the subtext of the lyrics is certainly more bittersweet. The Soviet Union at the time was a totalitarian state with strong censorship in place.

You know, it was always gray. So I mean, when I'm writing this song, it's very much tongue in cheek. I'm not really thinking there's anything for this guy to go back to. I mean, I remember when we first went to Berlin and to look over the.

Wall, aware of their special responsibilities on this trouble spot between the free and communist worlds. American soldiers of the Berlin garrison are combat ready and alert.

To me, I just knew there was like a vast gray expense that was beyond this wall, and that we were all in.

Technical people in Eastern Germany continue to risk their lives to escape to the free world.

Everyone in Russia who goes back to the Beatles period remembers having to smuggle records or it was all very you know, little rooms where you could play and you didn't want people to know. You didn't want the authorities to know that you were listening to this forbidden group, which really we loved the idea of that that we were getting smuggled along with Levi Jeans. This was like true cultural arrival.

A little over a decade after the fall of the Soviet Union, McCartney really did arrive when he was invited to give a concert on Red Square in Moscow, and when he played back in the usas r he felt the whole crowd rise and join in the song. During his time in Russia, this was two thousand and three, McCartney got to meet a young Vladimir Puttin, then serving

You were growing up, did you listen to the Beatles? No, he's missing.

Yes, it was extremely popular it was like a velp of freedom. Your music was like an open window to the world.

It was it was bound by the authority.

Sure it was considered that this time a propaganda of some alien ideology.

It would have seemed unimaginable then that twenty years later the same man would order Russian troops to invade Ukraine, an act of war unparalleled in Europe since the end of the Second World War, cracking down on any protest, arresting journalists, assassinating political enemies, jailing young women for singing in churches, once again closing the window to the outside world.

Art is dangerous to some people.

We always thought that we were on the right side, that if we were dangerous, we were dangerous to the Russian authorities.

And to us that said, they're not that good.

It's sort of that was how we felt, and I think it was true to a large extent that they were trying to suppress this Western influence.

And it goes on.

You know, I know there was a perioden you thought, oh, it's all clear enough, but it's actually suppression is back big time.

You know. It's sort of many countries now and.

It's sort of been given a free pass, and everyone's kind of stimied and sort of saying, no, please, don't do that. But I mean, God knows what the politics and the realities are behind it for any rate. So for me, it's kind of nice to just escape into a song like this.

Bluey by Miami beat us.

To bed last night.

On a way of Paper, Beatles on my kneed man, I had a tapley.

I'm gonna.

Don't you.

Back in the.

Uss A.

Been away on Holy neon.

Of Gee, it's good to be back home.

He even do Moto doing back by.

Case back in the US s R from the nineteen sixty eight record titled The Beatles, also known as the White Album. In the next episode, Paul McCartney tells us about how his late mother visited him in a dream and gave him some words of wisdom.

Seeing beautiful kind face was very confident. I immediately felt at ease and.

Loved one of the Beatles' last hits, Let It Be is an answer to the band's inner turmoil and to Hamlet's age old question to be or not to be? McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries