Live and Let Die

Pushkin. He is McCartney. Paul McCartney, a commander, a hero, a man of action, everything you've ever.

Loved in a Bond film.

Em calls in from the secret Intelligence Service with a mission. A commission to write a song before it's too late. More thrilled, more exciteable, more chill. Agent McCartney receives his technical materials, a title, a novel for inspiration and more. At his piano in London, he embarks on his perilous journey.

Live and Let Die.

I'm Paul muldoon and I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of our 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.

Oh actually I'm a songwriter. My god, Well that 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 pop popular music. In this episode, Live and Let.

Die when you are in your Heart was an open.

Book used to say little lately.

Live and Let Die, released in nineteen seventy three, is the eighth film in the James Bond franchise, the first of the Roger Moore era. It had all the components of the classic spy thriller, dry Martini's clever gadgets, car chases.

Roger Moore as James Bond.

Double O seven can Live and Let Die.

Paan McCartney may not have been an international secret agent, but he did have a fair amount in common with Double Oh seven.

Did you still the Aston Martin in nineteen seventy three or I moved through a couple of cars? It was the very first Bond film. Dr no whether he had and asked, and you'll be using this Aston Martin dB five with modifications now pay attention please. It was only later and really I put it together.

It was so obvious.

You know why I got on Aston anyway. I've had a few nice cars, sports cars. I once had a Lamborghini just for the sort of thrill of having a sports car. George was the real car person. George ended up with a McLaren, which you couldn't use on Britain with his speed limits. You know, George was a very sports car orientated. In fact, he was horrified to hear that. I still sometimes used the boss public transport. You will you go on the buses because he so left that behind.

On top of owning an Aston, Martin McCartney always harbored a secret desire to write a Bond song.

It was always a sneaky ambition to write a Bond song because in some ways I like to see myself one portion of myself as a jobbing writer. You know, you require a harm for the Queen's wedding. I'm your man, Dear Elizabeth, Oh greatness, run it off the land.

They know they fill in, will take your hand. So putting that aside.

The equivalent of that for a lot of people was and still is actually the Bond song. It's it's you know you you've written the Bond song. It's a bit of an accolade.

Since the early days, part of the allure of the Double seven franchise had been the Bond song, a catchy hit from the hottest pop star of the.

Time, Binger.

Everyone from Shirley Bassie to Billie Eilish has made their contributions.

Okay, So in this case, a record guy who was handling the Beatles Apple records.

He knew somebody connected.

With the Bond franchise, and so one day we were just chatting and he said, you don't have any interest in doing a Bond film? Yeah, I'm probably interested, you know, not trying to look too enthusiastic.

Yeah, I said, yeah, sure.

But did they even changing world in which were living?

Makes you.

Say living Linda.

When the producers approached McCartney, the script for the film had not yet been finished. So McCartney got a hold of a copy of Ian Fleming's nineteen fifty four novel Live and Let Die.

And it's a real page turner. So I just spent the afternoon just sitting down and making myself know what the book is about. So then I knew when I sat down to write the song, I knew what the idea would be. Now you used to say living live. Now you say living a die, And I didn't want it to be. So you've got a gun and now you go killing people, So living and Die, I just wanted it to be. Let it go, don't worry about it when you've got problems and everything, just live and

Live. You know you did, you know you did it.

But if this ever changing world in which we live in makes you give it a cry, stay living in a die, you know, to help with it very much, thinking how is this going to land? Well, we know in the Bond film he's going to come out and sort of shoot, he's gone at the screen and it's all going to go red and drippy, and there's going to be a beautiful girl in.

A very scant costume.

And so I see where I am.

This is the world I'm in.

Sitting at the piano in his London house, McCartney had a draft finished in a single afternoon. He brought it to his longtime collaborator George Martin, who was producing the soundtrack for the film, and together they finested into a bold, Bond worthy hit.

And he said, yeah, we'll come over, and I said, okay, so go over, And then i'd go when you were young and you're open.

And show him the chords.

And then I'd say, and then I've got this da dam this is like the sort of central rift to it.

And then we just we talked.

And he said it'd be good to go off into Bondian arrangements, and so I left that completely to him.

All the sort of.

After the riff was played, there's a central middle instrumental bit which was pure George, and.

I was very happy with that. So it was a good experience.

They recorded it in George Martin's studio above Oxford Circus, and then George jetted off to the Caribbean with a demo stashed in his briefcase.

In those days, you'd have an ascetate a little pressing of the record, and George went out to the Bahamas or somewhere where they were filming it, and they were on the beach somewhere, so he organized to bring a little record player and this disc and he played it to Kobe Broccoli, who said, he said, that's nice, George, that's a nice demo. When are you going to make the finished record? George said, that is it.

Apparently the producers had imagined that McCartney would write the song for someone else to perform. In fact, there's a scene in the film where the song is covered by the soul singer bj Ar not.

Changing.

Instead, McCartney's rock vocals were a breath of fresh air to the franchise's songwriting tradition.

Now you know, there might be some who would have questions about the idea of writing a song to order, as a song to fulfill a particular task. That's obviously not a no.

I like that.

Well, I like it because I do the other way as well. I wouldn't like to just write toward it, but I like saying, as I say, I'm a troubadour and I've got my little guitar and I'm in a field and I'm writing about the stream and daffodils and the sunshine, whatever's occurring to me. I like that very much, and I think that's mainly what I do. But then occasionally something will come along, Well, some would you like to write for thinking a film on film, for instance,

Oh, could I do that?

I'll go And I nearly always agree to these things before I've really thought them out, because.

Our enthusiast is. Yeah. I enjoy the process.

We're trying to come up with something that will fit the brief.

Some people, you say, don't like to do that. It can be a very big challenge.

I mean it's really just an extension of some notion of the songwriter as having a place.

In our in our culture, you know, in which there is a job to be done and it's a job of work, and that's perfectly reasonable way for a song to come into existence.

I like to think a bit like that sometimes.

Then you got a job to do, you got to do it well, you got to give.

You know.

Whilst I didn't rate it too much alongside like from Russia with Love Goldfinger, Yeah, which were very Bondie, I wasn't sure where the mine was, but a lot of people put it on their lists and put it top of the lists.

Actually a Bond song, so.

It was the first rock and roll Bond that's right.

Yeah, Living Let Die is likely the only Bond song to be covered by Guns N' Roses, who released their own version in nineteen ninety one.

I thought it was pretty good, actually, I was more amazed that they would do it.

It's a young.

American group and the interesting thing was that my kids went to school and they would say, my dad wrote that this is no they didn't it's gone sinn Roses, so nobody would ever believe them. But yeah, for a while it was just gone sin Roses. But I was very happy that they'd done it. I always like people doing my songs. I don't know about you, but if someone decides to recite one of your poems, it's.

A great compliment.

You know, of course it is. In my case, it pays. How do you know it doesn't play in my kids don't?

No, I don't know.

Paul mccartny, his own version of the song had been an instant hit. It went to number nine on the British charts, number one on the American Until then, the highest numbers reached by a Bond theme.

Well, it's a big show for us.

It's extremely exciting. We have pyrotechnics, extremely dangerous. It can get a little hot up there, yeah, I must say. But our pyrotechnics guy, who in whom we trust, is called shaky.

There's a clue.

And the thing I think I like most about it is that, as we know the explosions about to happen, the big first explosion. So we often look at the people, particularly in the front row, who are like blithely going along and live and and you just it's great to just watch them. They look at each other and oh my god, they're shocked.

No, this is emty d world in withs we live in makes it.

R so living the little we did it in early days and there.

Was the explosion, and I suddenly noticed as we started it it was like a ninety year old woman, very old in the front row. I suddenly got both ship we're going to kill her. There's no book stopping. I can't stop the song saying cover your ears love. So it comes to itis and I kind of like, I kind of look away living and boom, and I look back to her thinking court and she is loving it. So yeah, when you got a job, well.

You've got to give me.

Live and let Die from the single released by Wings in nineteen seventy three. In the next episode, mystery tours were cheap one day bus trips out of the city for working class families. Some of them were magical McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries.