Here, There and Everywhere

Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. 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.

Now, this is a song here, There and everywhere Leader letter I've seen described as one of your own favorites.

He yeah, I'm often asked what my favorite song I've ever written is, and I don't ever really want to answer it, But if pushed, I would go to here, there and everyone.

Lessen, I'm Paul will do for a while. Now, I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of the era, and will.

You look at me, I'm going on to I'm actually a performer.

That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of our conversations.

It was like going back to an old snapshot album looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.

This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir, an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music. In this episode, Here There, and Everywhere, lessen.

Learning.

When I asked Paul McCartney, why, out of the hundreds of songs he's written, he considers Here, There and Everywhere his favorite, he kept returning to the structure of the lyrics, where one verse ends, the next begins, only in a new context. It's a move he borrowed from one of the classics, a song by Irving Berlin.

One of my favorite songs because house of its structure is cheek to cheek.

Heaven as song by Fred Stair.

I'm in Heaven.

And my heartbeats so that I can hardly.

Spe and I like it very much because starts off Heaven.

I'm in Heaven literally really really fast forward, and.

Then d's with me.

I want my arm about.

You, a middle late will carry me through, to carry me Heaven.

I'm in heaven. It's like, yes, just the way it just resolves up its own tail. I always found wonderful, and I think somebody said I do it in this I.

Wonder everywhere and if she's beside me, I'm the line.

Knowing Courridge has alignment. And somewhere in the biography, a literary or whatever it's called, where he talks about all narrative being like a snake with its tail in its mouth and in that circularity be relevant here.

Well, I don't know if i'd agree with him about all, but I think attractive stuff often does that, and often kind of comes back to where it began, and there's a little glee arriving there.

Like I said, Heaven, wait a minute, we just started with that, and now we're back there and.

Very clear, really done, and without me suspecting he was going there. So there's just something that's sort of little thrill when you do that. I like the fact that we think we're on a path off on the moors and we're going for a walk, and then suddenly we've arrived where we started, and it's not like as if we've gone around in a circle. It's magically more magical than that, we've come to another beginning of the path. It's not just like we run in a circle and

It's surprising, so something is cheap comes back there.

Well, you're where you were, but you're not.

Because you you can see back where you came from, and you're definitely not there. You're at a new place. But it's stricty and it's got the same scenery again.

Letter.

While the song is grounded in this spiraling structure, one place it never returns is to the very first two lines. They stand on their own, separate from the core melody of the song.

They were to emulate the openings that old songs had. John and I were fascinated by this idea that in the old days they did this complete ramble that didn't appear to be about the song at all.

The only exception, I know, where's the kid when I'm out on a quiet spreeze fighting vainly the old one we.

And I suddenly turn.

And see your fabulous face. I get no kick from Champagne.

An intro. It was an intro, they called it verse.

We call versus the sort of first main body, and of course then the second main body.

They called that word. Yeah, so we like that. We liked you know.

I was walking around Manhattan. I had my scarphone and then I came to the corner of so I new thinking. First I looked at the deceited I didn't notice that. But then suddenly you came over the corner. Heaven, Oh there's the song, you know.

Learning Speak happ Someone is speaking, but she does.

Someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there. I don't know who it is, probably the Telly.

It's like that. It's kind of a romantic idea.

We are just us, not listening to him knowing. MIS remember writing this song whilst waiting for John all day.

Paul McCartney wrote much of Here, There and Everywhere one morning while sitting poolside waiting for John Lennon to wake up.

I would go out to his house in Weybridge for a writing session, and he wasn't always up, so I would often have twenty.

Minutes half an hour. Someone told him I was here, and he would get up.

Each In the song's leisurely tempo, it's almost as if we can hear McCartney's patience.

Everywhere.

And I remember sitting out by his swimming.

Pool in his house in Weybridge, which is a sort of golf suburb of London, and I had a guitar because I was ready for the writing session.

So he sat out and started something.

And it was here he lived in here, and yeah, I just sort of went quite nice and smoothly, so that by the time I came to write with John, the time he deigned to get up and have his coffee, I would have something to go.

Watchings and helping. I'm always watching rins and helping. I'm always.

The slow, steady pace and the way the verses spill into each other. It's mesmerizing, like water rippling across a pool. Is it possible that Ringo Star hits his snare just a fraction after the beat, as if the song is trying to slow itself done, making.

Changing.

I like the line changing my life for the wave of a hand. You know, I look at those kind of lyrics now and sort of.

Think, where did that come from? What was it?

Do I think of the queen waving out of a royal carriage? Or you know, just my love can just do it by hardly doing anything, waving a hand, and oh my god, she's changing my life. It says a lot in a line.

The picture of a royal hand waving from a carriage the pinnacle of effortlessness. It's a McCartney trademark, this rare ability to assemble lyrics and melodies with the ease of strumming a few chords on his guitar. He seems to fool himself into thinking there's nothing at stake. He trusts that the right lyrics will find their way to them.

Even when you get lyrics like this, the purpose of the lyric is to support the song rather than be a lyric. So it's quite liberating. You can sort of just kind of experiment as you go along, you know, so, so things slip out like.

They would in a.

Session with a psychiatrist and everywhere.

I like it when that happens.

I think, you know, that's the idea of the word dancing idea.

You know, you just.

You play with things like that, I think, you know, I think a lot of this comes naturally from Liverpool for me, Like jokes often have that, you know, just there's a little you think you're going one way and then there's a little surprise and it takes you another way. And I like to be able to do that because I think it keeps it moving it keeps you interested, dancing round words, shuffling them like a deck of cards basically. You know, I always say when I'm writing a song,

Everywhere. And if she's beside me, I a line need book.

Do you ever look ahead and plot on it with the phrase or two versus down the road?

Not versus, but the lines. I will will, I will think of the line that's coming and think of how to get in it. Yeah, like stepping stones kind of thing, you know, just think well, I've got to do that to get there.

Yeah.

I quite enjoy that. It's an interesting process. I like that about writing that it's it's a puzzle. I often liken it to crossword puzzles.

You know. My dad loved crossword puzzles.

And if you put that together with that, you twist that word around, then you get that And my answer is that you form.

Yes, I mean it is it is about filling in gaps.

YEA.

The structural and rhetorical tricks of here, there and everywhere are obscured by the song's apparent spontaneity. It's flowing melody, it's gentle vocals. McCartney's singing on the track is reminiscent of an earlier era, which brings us back to fred Astare.

Oh, I love to go out fishing in the river.

Are a Greek, but I don't enjoy you have as.

Much as that.

I speak.

Fan of Fredista, I still have, And unlike the studio executive thought he could dance a little, has no voice. I always loved his voice. I still do, and I actually use it often as an inspiration. I did an album of standards, and.

That's what of heaven.

That little place for your voice is a lovely place to sing from. It's not there, it's sort of heaven.

And here, there and everywhere. Has inspired many other vocalists and has itself become one of those classics McCartney was trying to emulate. Even John Lennon, rarely wanted to give compliments, was impressed when he heard the song and said it was his favorite track on the album Revolver in nineteen eighty. He even told a reporter from Playboy Magazine that it was one of his favorites from the tire Beatles cattalog. So did John Lennon when he did get up, did he contribute?

I'm well, I'm not sure he did.

Actually I suspect he did, but it does sound like something I might have sort of just done by the pool side, sort of just delivered to him because it doesn't sound like anyone else is working now.

Sounds like one head.

He's to share. Each one really never dies. Watching Rise and Hoping. I'm all Always and everywhere.

And here, there and Everywhere, released on the Beatles album Revolver in nineteen sixty six. In the next episode, have said throughout the Day that they hope to use minimum force, an unusually sharp political song written in response to Bloody Sunday To.

The Yis make them take it away?

In to the Yis, Iisday.

Give Ireland back to the Irish. That's next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia and pl and Pushkin Industries.