Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to this episode, I wanted to let you know that you can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber. Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics show page in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm slash plus. 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, beating I'm formal dou I'm a poet, a lover of not only the lyric poem, but the song lyric. 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 too. 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'm a songwriter. My god, well that that crypto.
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 Radioway.
Tub Berry wrote a song called Back in the US, which we were very familiar with, and so I kind of thought it was its kind of cool. It was obviously a serviceman returning home, going back into the ux going back into his own 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 the California to the Delaware.
Being 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 loved this upbeat, celebratory anthem. But not a decade at best. The Vietnam War was a total failure and the world's love affair with American culture had started to wear off.
There was a little bit two pro us because we were in the UK, so I could pokephone at 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 come from Miami. On BOAC British Overseas Ways Corporation.
BOAC is outstanding 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 clouds.
The standard is so high that passengers can easily persuade themselves.
But they're VIPs traveling.
But one medium drive vot com 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 Minister's talked to Moscow.
They're saying it was an accident during a routine training exercise.
Governments change the last except he wouldn't be reporting to MI I six or Damn 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 Union Wesban. The harmonies
of the Bridge were inspired by the Beach Boys. In fact, when the Beatles went to India in nineteen sixty eight to meditate, Mike love Off, the Beach Boys was there too. He is even clear 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 influencers round 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 a 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 of California. Your girls will knock me out. Wesbian. I think I was very lucky, as I say, when I hit this little humorous veins, it seemed to just sort
of flow. So I hear, I know what I'm doing. Now it's in the middle. So now I'm going to go into detail about the countries and the territories. So we got Ukraine, and we've got Moscow, and we've got Georgia. Well, if I say Georgia, I think of the old American song Georgia on my Mind, which I would be thinking of the Ray Charles Georgia on my Mind. Georgia, Georgia, the.
Ray Charms homestead of Georgia is suddenly transformed into the Soviet South Light 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 BOAC. Yet I don't think I ever understood at the time that BOAC was in the first line. I'm not sure if I ever quite understood what it was.
Yeah, now does that to horrify 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 uss R 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 song. But I mean, obviously the joke is that I then split it up back in the US, back in the US, back in the USSR.
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. Who I remember we first went to Berlin and to looked 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 Itenes. 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 Putin, then serving his first term as president. There's actually a news clip of the occasion and you see Putin and McCartney sitting
across from each other like two statesmen. And then Paul McCartney pops the question.
You were growing up, did you listen to the Beatles?
No, dismissing, yes, it was extremely popular. It was like a gulp of freedom. Your music was like an open window to the world.
It was it was bound by the authorititure.
It was considered at 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 the window to the outside world.
My conversation with Paul McCartney took place before the current war in Ukraine, but during our time together we often spoke about the subversive nature of art and how throughout history music has served as a beacon of freedom.
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 appearing when you thought, oh, it's all clear enough, but it's actually the suppression and 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 gonna 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 B to b U a CD last night on a way to paper Papers on the knee, I had.
A bad ball back.
On you.
Been a ways a hardly a face. Gee, it's good to be bad.
Home back in the USSR 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 her 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 Heartmedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.