Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)

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, pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus.

The Castle's last words, Yes.

Was a dare.

Justin Hoffmann said to me, can you write a song about anything? I said, Wow, I don't know. Maybe you know, He said, just a minute, and he ran upstairs. He came back down with the newspaper article about the depth of Picastle, and he said, see what Pocasta's last words were. His last words to his friends were, drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink anymore.

You drink to me.

Dream do my health.

You know I can't dream any move.

I'm Paul Wildon 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 it. 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, and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures in popular music. In this episode Picasso's last words drink to Me. McCartney met Dustin Hoffman on a nineteen seventy three trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, where Hoffman and Steve McQueen were filming the historical prison drama Papillon. Hoffman had invited Paul and his wife Linda to his home for a dinner party, and after dinner, the actor issued

Right up to the end, picquetulst no Time. The day before he died, I had been a day like many others at Notre Dame de vill his Hiltop villa at Mouja on the French Revivia. Late in the afternoon, the artist had taken a walk in the little part that surrounds his sprawling stonehouse, overlooking the reddish foothills of the Maritime Apps.

It was Adare. Hoffman wanted to know if the legendary musician really could make music from anything.

So he could write a song about that.

I did happen to have my guitar with me, so I accord and started singing a melody to those words. And he was FLABBERGASTU his then wife, He's not with her anymore any I think it was.

Annie, Annie, come here? Can we listen to this? Listen, listen, look at this.

I just came.

Listen.

Listen.

He's got the song Brandoater bad less night.

He's painting.

Later that evening, Piso and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends for dinner. Pikasu was in high spirit.

He bad us well, said night to us.

Drinking, drinking my health, he urged, drinking, drink, you know I can't drink anymore, drink more. At eleven thirty, he rose from the table and announced, and now I'm let's go back to work.

You know what dream any.

In an interview, Hoffman recounted what it was like to see McCartney write the song before his eyes.

I swear by all that's holy that he began singing this song of the story that I had just told him about Picasso. It just came out of him. Drink to me, drink too, my health. You know I can't drink anymore three o'clock in the morning. It's right under childbirth in terms of great events of my life. I mean, I was at the birth of something. The fact is that he didn't come back the next day. He didn't

It was a sort of you know, can you write this? It was almost he set me a little task.

And I like the words.

So then I thought, well, I've got to kind of set it up. The grand old painter tired last night. His paintings on the wall four wenty bad us well and say good night to us all.

So then that's his this quote.

May I just say something about that we're talking about drama earlier on. You know, the fact that the speaker of the song yeah is in the scene is very important. R Yeah, because he bad us, well, it's not he bad them well, he bad us well. And when it's us well. The beauty of that is I suppose that not only is the speaker involved, but they bring in the listener, so we're all there immediately.

Yeah.

I hadn't thought of it like that, but that's true. Yeah.

In recent weeks he had been working especially hard preparing for a big show of his latest paintings at the Book's Palace in May. On this night, before he went to bed, he painted until three am.

Three coup in mine.

I'm getting very bad.

I suppose that one could set one could musicalize quote unquote any sentence any English language. Maybe not any, but many. I mean, the language has its own intrinsic musicality. I suppose how often quote yes, how often does the rhythm of the words themselves influence how the let's call it the melody might turn out all the time, all.

The time, all the time. You want to get something that rolls along naturally and that's interesting at the same time, but that fits with the music you're hearing with it. So sometimes you have to alter a word because it just doesn't quite work with them either. So you look for something that says the same thing, but just it's an alternate word. Maybe it's now it's a two syllable word instead of the one syllable word. That didn't work

When it isn't, it can sticks out of the sort of thumb. I know how.

Paul McCartney took inspiration from everywhere. Talking to him that day, I remembered a poem by the seventeenth century poet Ben Johnson. It had been covered by Johnny Cash, Drink to.

Me only with thine eyes and I will play with my.

Would you have been conscious of Ben Johnson's or some version of Ben Johnson's song Drink to me only with thine eyes or whatever it is? Yes, ancient, yes, ancient, drink to me.

I will drink too.

Yeah, yeah, I've heard it.

I mean, yeah, I didn't think of that, because the whole thought here was just the challenge of doing it for Dustan, you know. So I was just concentrated on the words he stuck in front of me, And I think what was nice was that he obviously seeing it, stroke heard it as melodic.

So he recognized that probably had possibility.

Yeah, he recognized the I think, don't you if you think about it. You know he's an actor anyway.

Well, that's right, he's a singer, really. I mean, he's a vocalist, vocal rhythm of words.

And I think when he read the quote, most people would probably think, wow, so that's what he said. But I think Dustin, I'm guessing here, but I would guess that he would think, oh no, this flows beautifully.

Drink to me, drink to my health. You know, I can't drink any more. Pump pa pump pump pumpo.

You know there's like a nice little mathematical equation. Well so, yeah, so it was a pleasure. It was a great pleasure to do it, just to shut.

Off dem any more.

Dustin Hoffman remembered reading the article about because those last words and talking with Paul McCartney about the famous pinter.

And I was so struck by that sentence that I thought, well, he must mean that he can't drink anymore because he doesn't want to get too high, because he has to go back and work. And in some strange way, you know, I can't drink anymore, also means it's the last time I'm going to be doing this with my friends, because I'm going to dine in a few hours many more.

I like that that it was probably just something ordinary that was said earnestly, you know, farewell to his friends. Well, it becomes his last words. Then it becomes a quote in an article. Then Dustin reads it and makes it more than a quote, and it suggests it's a poem, it's a lyric, and he shows it to me, and I agree with his suggestion, and I for music to it. So it's a nice little way for things to happen.

Because the song starts with the story of Picasso's last words, but after a minute or two it splinters into a montage. Among other things, there's a clip from an advertisement for a French tourism service offering French language programs and farm houses available for visitors to rent. Picasso lived much of his life in France, but it's not immediately obvious what the connection is in the song. Why does the song move into such abstraction. One might wager that it was

When I started painting for years before, I'd had this idea that it must be meaningful, the painting. It just had to have some significance, some significant meaning, and it stopped me completely.

I could never paint.

I'm going, what significant idea am I coming up with?

I'm looking at the garden that's lovely, but it's not really significant.

So it stopped me, stopped me stopping.

Then I met to Cooning and I asked him about what one of his paintings was and he said, I don't know. It looks like a cut hut. And I just thought Jesus, and it blew my mind open. In this context and in the song context, this idea of it not having to mean something is quite liberating.

HM.

We can hear this liberation in the second half of Picasso's Last Words. The song departs from its initial subject, veering into samples from other songs on the album Band on the Run. The first is from wings hit single.

Jet When did you know or did you ever know?

That Jet?

Was going to be an it when it came to Jet or Ban on the Road, I had those of tricks that I could use that.

One of the tricks with Jet is shouting.

That works.

It's always a good opener for any song. Choose a word, you know, run, I'm going, You've got to you better get out of here.

Run. It works. It's the shouting.

It's funny you should say that now, because I was reading a review yesterday, I think of a new translation of BeO Wolf and the first word of BeO Wolf is something like what what? And they think, you know, there are various ideas that's what that means.

But yet it's yet.

No, seriously that it was meant to represent. I think at some level the first strum on the lyre from the poet kicking off, but it's not a similar idea.

Jet was actually the name of a pony we had, yes, a little little Shetland pony we had for the kids, Jim.

Jim.

The other sample is in the outro, which borrows from Missus Vanderbilt, that upbeat track from Band on the Run about McCartney's rejection of an aristocratic lifestyle.

We used to get asked when we're first in the Beatles. Are you worried that you've joined the established? But we didn't know. We thought it was a club, which it was in London. I mean we didn't really know what they meant. And we knew what they meant were you've gone a bit society.

Yeah you weren't a desperate at or yeah you know that's right.

And it was like, na, we're not, we're not. We know a few posh people yet. But to me that missus Vanderbilt embodied richness and she was a famous like Rockefeller. If you needed to refer, you know, quiz programs and give me five rich people's names, it would have been Nabelt, Rockefeller, Getty. You know, there's certain ones you just know because they're in the newspapers. So that was what she was.

And my idea is it's again, it's the same throwing over.

Of the rules. I don't want that.

I know it's money, it's rich andary, but what comes with it is bothersome.

H The connection between Picasso's Dying Words, a French tourism manual, a character based on a Shetland pony, and an American aristocrat is not particularly clear beyond the context of the music, the meaning is slippery, so.

They're bits from other songs. Has the notion of all songs being one song all songs? Yeah, Well, I'm prompted partly because in the literary sphere is strictly literary sphere. One of Stevens thinks of his poems as being one poem, the whole of harmonium. He calls it. It's all one thing. It's he spent his whole life writing one big phone.

But you know, as a bit of a stretch for me, because my stuff quite varied, and I think that kind of suggests it isn't one song.

Right, It's a lot, right, a lot of them.

They don't neatly fit together, you know. If you've got something like High Eye High next to Alan, it's quite a difference.

Like many songs in McCartney's catalog, Picasso's Last Words doesn't strive for cohesion. It brings together fragments to juxtapose them. The edges between the samples are sharp. It's a form of musical cubism, the very style that Picasso pioneered.

Hell Hell, Hell.

Picasso's last words drink to Me from Wings album Band on the Run, released in nineteen seventy three. In the next episode, Love.

I was being accused of just writing silly love songs and was in danger of starting to buy into this idea that you should just be a bit tougher and a bit more worldly. But then ask me realized that's exactly what love is.

It's worldly, a polemical love song to the skeptics. That's next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.