Jenny Wren / Blackbird

Pushkin.

Look, there's a beautiful bird.

I loved bird watching when I was a kid.

How can you tell one bird from another?

So I like to be able to get out of the normal stream of life. We were about a mile away from quite deep countryside, so I used to just go on my own, just being away from the normal stuff, school, family life. Appearance is one way to identify birds.

How does it look?

I had a little bird book, the Observers Book of Birds. In yards or in pipes, wherever people are, you are likely to find another small bird with a beautiful song. The wren was a great favorite because you wouldn't see that often, just suddenly see it flit from one little push to another.

This small brownish bird is a wren.

And singing as it goes.

We can learn to know ren's by their sounds.

So I loved birds.

Because of that, I started being able to recognize the birds.

I'm Paul Monteaux and 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 too.

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.

Songwriter, my God, well, that crypt homie.

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

Girls, Jenny Wren to King, she could See.

And'sche Way.

Paul McCartney has been a nature lover and birdwatcher since childhood. His song catalog is teeming with feathered friends. There's single Pigeon from nineteen seventy three.

Single Pigeon through the railent did she throw you out?

There's Bluebird from the same year.

Night Window, WILLI p DoD blind.

Your don't?

And you know what love this?

I'm a blue bed.

And there are a couple from the Beatles era.

I am a rabbit ornithologist. I like my birds say.

When Paul McCartney went off bird watching as a kid, he was trying to escape the daily grind of school, errands, work and other people. Even though when he's looking for a location to buckle down and write songs, here's the same impulse.

When you're writing something as embarrassing, as potentially embarrassing as a love song, it's best to hide away in the furthest corner cupboard you can find so that no one can hear you.

Do this process.

So I will often literally try and get away so that nobody can hear me do this, because this is like very private.

It's got to just be me and this guitar.

Then I can touch this sort of inner place where I am the troubado wandering around in the forest thinking of love, thinking of the beauty of it, the mystery of it, and the strength of it. You know.

But I say it's potentially embarrassing because you know, someone.

Could walk in and go, oh god, you know, and that would be the worst thing.

So I'm gonna be very hidden away.

So but once I get on that trail, I really like it.

Your impulse to get into that coboard. Yeah, to get into that little place to work. Yeah, it's a kind of nesting impulse.

I think.

Is it partly.

Yeah, maybe I think it's mainly privacy. I think it's mainly to not be overheard.

For privacy, one can head either to the tiniest cupboard or to the great outdoors, as McCartney did when he wrote Jenny Wren.

I was in Los Angeles and there's a canyon that I particularly like to go walking in, and you have to drive there, so I'd gone on my own. I just found a little quiet parking space along the side of the road, and it was very rural area. I'd taken my guitar unusually, so I meant to go and write a song, but again, this was my outdoors cupboard.

Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing bird.

Talker so away, Like so many.

Girls, Jenny Wren good sing bud.

Talker, song away.

I remember just sitting there thinking, yeah, just said. The idea of the story was she could sing. Well, something had happened, we don't know what.

The protagonist of the song, Jenny Wren, is halfway between bird and human, singing and taking wing like the other.

Girls, lightly the girls, Jenny Wren tooking.

She could see the world.

AND's nge way.

In fact, McCartney may have derived the name from a character in Charles Dickens's eighteen sixty five novel Our Mutual Friend. Here. Jenny Wren is a dressmaker for dolls she's a teenage girl who was born with a crooked spine and underdeveloped legs.

Something sparkled down among the fair hair, resting on the dark hair, and if it were not a star, which it couldn't be, it was an eye.

Despite her struggles, Jenny Wren has a sunny outlook and keen powers of observation.

And if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye, bright and watchful as the birds. Whose name she it taken.

I mean, it's the name is has currency beyond that. Jenny Wren was a term we used, perhaps you used when you were not in the fields, outside the estate, just about the regular the little wren.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is often think it's probably my favorite bird.

Mm hmmm.

So it's very little, very private, very sweet little thing.

So in other words, because she doesn't sing, but she can see the world in its foolish ways, how we spend our days. Cassin love society. You can see the reality of the situation.

Spay, you can see all these sad things happening.

Side of life.

Dab No, that broken world is not unreminiscent of the broken wings of that other singer.

Yeah, that's right. Blackbirds singing in the dead.

Nd take these broken wings and learn to fly. All your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive.

Which I think again.

Songs being in conversation with songs from the tradition, but also within your own work.

They're talking to each other. Yeah, and that's a good thing.

Yeah. I think.

You know, when you're sitting down with an acoustic guitar, there's a few ways you can go. And with black Bet it's a little part. It's a guitar part that you sing against rather than strumming chords, and so I think this has the same kind of thing. This is a little part rather than just chords. So I mean, I think I was probably intentionally writing another blackbird.

Black bird lie, black bird line.

Into the line of a dark black line.

If the guitar part of Jenny Wren echoes McCartney's Blackbird, then it carries within it another echo, one from the classical genre. Bach's Burret in e minor.

A little guitar part which is so much a part of it was something that George and I it was a party piece of us when we were kids, and it's it's box, it's do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do.

Do do do do.

And we knew the tune, liked the tune, and but particularly liked the counterpart, because well do do.

Do do do do do do do.

Do do do there's a bassline h.

Mm hmmm.

So with this bark piece, George and I learned.

Do do do do do do do you do do do do as the melody, and then do you do do do do do do do do do do do, And then we kind of ran out. We didn't know how it went, so we made up the rest of the door. So so we have our own little version of this backgo which become a party piece. And I know that I've been fascinated with it and its structure.

Do you do do do do do do.

Do do do do that little bit, do do do do that little thing. I just switched it around a bit, made it my own, but I knew where I was coming from.

Handy with that became the blackbird singing in the dad of night.

Black bird singing in the dead n.

Take these broken wings and learn to fly.

All your life.

So I had that, and then I just I don't know really, I think it was in Scotland the time or the break I got this idea of a blackbird singing the dead and eyes and so it's just an image of a silhouette of a blackbird silhouetted in the dead of night in a sort of forest somewhere as being this lonely sort of image blackbird line.

Into the light of a dull black light.

The loneliness of the blackbird is reflected in the simple instrumentation of that famous song no orchestration, justin McCartney and his guitar and the terps of the bird. He's singing about.

Blackbird singing in the Dendam take the broken Wings and learned fly.

On your line.

And I there's such an all encompassing record company of the old variety that they had a sound like. So if I wanted the sound of blackbirds singing, I could just sort of look it up on a large most birds blackbird and you would get you know, you can look it up and get someone will go up and get the lack.

You were only waiting for this moment do a rise. You were only waiting for this moment to ride.

You were only waiting for.

This moment, do a ride.

The song may have started out as a simple image of nature, the silhouette of a lonely bird crying out into the dark, but when McCartney wrote the song in the spring of nineteen sixty eight, he was also speaking to the turbulence of the American civil rights movement, including the enforced desegregation of schools.

Then it started to be about arising. Yeah, you know, black said to take these broken wings.

So in others I was writing about the civil rights disturbances in the Little Rock, particularly that we've been hearing about segregation and stuff that shocked us so.

Much, the right of color children to attend, that all white schools have been upheld by the United States, have been caught city and state police had cordened off the school, and many table makers were taken it a custody.

You know, your broken wings, sunken eyes, seeing broken wings flying, you know, this is your moment to arise and be free.

And yeah, then I realized I was sending.

It in that direction. Who now wasn't just ornithological piece. It was now to do with sort of politics and to do with freedom.

Really, she saw pity breaking up Home Wooded Warriors Took a Song Away.

The Blackbird, McCartney writes about is singing and protest and Jenny Wren. However, the bird's protest comes in the form of silence. Instead of selecting a chirping bird to accompany this song, McCartney included a du duc An Armenian woodwind instrument with a haunting sound.

The minute I'm talking about Jenny Wren, I'm seeing the bird, and then I'm seeing a person. And then in this story, for no apparent reason, she just doesn't sing anymore. But she could sing. She's a great singer, and she doesn't sing anymore. And it turns out that it's because of all our foolish ways, like a protest, and so then it just becomes a bit reflective about our society, how we screw things up and everything, and so now we

Other girls Jenny Wren took Queen.

She could see.

And it's ways.

What did Jenny Wren see?

You saw who we are?

Yeah? What did she see? Who are we?

She saw our foolish ways and the way we cast love aside the way we lose sight of life. So we are we have poverty, breaks.

Up homes regular and we wounded warriors.

Took a song away.

She saw, sure the screw up that society is. And you know, like everyone, we're just looking for that better way.

So it's kind of nice that someone spotted the change needs to happen. I think, you know, it's it's a good old.

World, really, and I do think we screw it up.

You know, that's it's it's highly obvious with the ocean filled with plastic, it didn't get there by itself, and so you could say we screwed that up.

In typical McCartney fashion, he ends the song on a note of hope rather than despair. By taking the protests of Jenny Wren as a warning sign, he builds a world in which she may sing again, but.

The day will come. There you go, it's going to be a great day. Jenny Wren will sing, but.

It will come.

Jenny will sing when the spoken word, when's it's foolish.

Ways we spend.

Ca uh couser, Jenny?

Where can you hear a little bird singing? At the moment?

Yes, that's a rain? Is it really yes it is.

It's a house rain. Wow.

The Indian name for it, I happen to know is a little bird with a big voice and that's it.

Wow. Well that is pretty cool. Oh I love that little Journy Wren. J Yeah, it's so beautiful. Now now why is that so beautiful?

But also, you know what that gives one faith that everything comes together is connected?

I think so.

Too, Jenny Wren from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, released in two thousand and five.

In the next episode, an argument through song.

Now again.

It was at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs. I don't know what he hoped again, other than punching me in the face. And this kind of annoyed me. Obviously, I suddenly decided I did to turn my missiles on him.

McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, n p L and Pushkin Industries