Paul McCartney made a stop with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe while promoting his new album McCartney III. The new release was recorded by Sir Paul on his own and primarily while he was locked down, or “rocked down” as he calls it. During the interview, the former Beatle opened up and gave his thoughts on John Lennon, forming Wings with his late wife Linda, words to live by, and the most ubiquitous Beatles song.
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One of the interesting tidbits he revealed during the hour-long interview was his reason for picking up the guitar. As a youngster he had been learning the trumpet, but the instrument wasn’t the best choice for someone who also wanted to primarily sing.
“The first instrument I ever had was my dad gave me a trumpet, and he’d been a trumpet player when he was younger. He played a little bit of the trumpet, and it actually was kind of in fashion. There was a film called the Man With the Golden Arm, and it was like Harry James… So it was kind of glamorous at that point. But I realized I couldn’t sing with this thing in my mouth, so I swapped it in for a guitar and that started my love of guitars.”
He elaborated further on his love affair with the guitar and how the instrument soothes the soul and answers many questions for inquisitive teenagers.
“They’re really a great help when you’re growing up because you’ve got so many questions and things flooding in that if you can get off in a quiet space with a guitar and you can tell your troubles to the guitar, and often in doing that, you come out of the other end, oh, it’s a song. We used to think it was like the greatest therapy. And the same, we had a piano in our house that my dad again played piano for the family parties, so there was always a piano there available. I started tinkering around and that became my second instrument that I loved. Even now if I’m in a hotel or in one of these places where there’s a piano in the lobby, I can’t resist. I have to just go by it.”
McCartney III, released last week, was a result of another project finishing and the quarantine hitting simultaneously.
“It was written all over the place, really. What happened was with lockdown, I had to stay in one place, obviously, because you’re locked down or “rocked down” as we call it. The thing is I was with my family, with my daughter, Mary and her kids, so that was very nice. But I had to do a little bit of film music, so I was able to come here, which is 20 minutes away from where I live to do that bit of music. It was for an animated piece and they had to have it soon. So, I had to do that bit of work and the government had said, ‘go to work only if you can’t work from home.’ I couldn’t do this music at home. So anyway, I ended up in the studio and liked it so much that I made it a daily practice and started finishing off songs that I’d meant to finish last year, but never had time for, and then I wrote one, and then I came in and did it. So it’s a collection of ways of doing it, but it was all recorded downstairs here at the studio.”
“It was really good to be able to play music, and make up music, and put your thoughts and your fears, and your hopes and your love into the music. It kind of saved me, I must say, for about three or four months it took to make it.”
Being in the world’s biggest band doesn’t absolve its band members of the all-too-common band fights. He elaborated on how those scenarios played into their breakup and the formation of Wings with Linda.
“We’d always had arguments because any family, any group, you argue. I mean, not crazy ones, but just like, ‘That guitar’s too loud.’ ‘Oh, no it isn’t.’ ‘I think it is. I think you shouldn’t play there.’ ‘Well, I want to play there.’ ‘I don’t think it fits with the song.’ ‘Well, I do.’ You have those kind of little things. So there was a bit of that, maybe a little more than usual, but nothing major.”
“But then I think we had the idea it was sort of coming full circle somehow, but very gently. There was no big bust up and we just happened to have a little meeting, a group meeting one day, when John walked in and he said, “I’m leaving the group.” So it was that sudden. You didn’t want to say, “What do you mean?” Because you knew exactly what he meant. And looking back on it, I think, well, he’d just hooked up with Yoko and he was in a completely new track for his life. He had a strong woman. He loved strong women. He had a strong woman he could admire. He loved experimentation and here was Yoko saying, ‘Let’s take all our clothes off for the album cover.’ That’s the kind of thing appealed to John. He’s like, ‘Yeah, whoa.’ Just this radical behavior.”
“So looking back on it, you can see that he had to just clear the decks and say, ‘Okay guys, we’ve done our bit. It was terrific. It was wonderful. But I’m off.’ Having said that, that’s looking back on it. Actually, at the time it was like, ‘Whoa, is this final?’ And we puttered around for a couple of weeks thinking, ‘Does he mean it?’ And we’d ring each other? He said, ‘Well, I don’t know, are we really finished?’”
“It was a difficult period. Here was this band that I’ve been in a lot of my life, and these guys who were my best buddies ever, and suddenly we’d split off and we weren’t working together. And so we’re each in our separate homes, and I was in mine, as I say, having just met Linda and there was a romantic element to it, and there was a new discovery of thinking about a family. So all of that was very nice.”
“And as I say, with Linda, and with the family growing, that was like, ‘Okay, well this is my direction. This is my direction now….’ I said to Linda, “Do you want to be keyboard?” She said, ‘yeah.’ So I said, ‘great you’re in.’ And it was like that. We just formed it from the ground up and it took a few years, but then we gradually had Wings and we became a successful band.
He wrapped with his thoughts on writing songs with John Lennon..
“I’d say a sentence and he’d suggest the next one. And then I’d suggest the next one. We’d ping pong off each other. And often we’ve got good results because John was such a different personality. When I was sitting down with John, it would be like, I’d go, (singing), and he’d go, (singing). So you get that great A and B thing. You go, yeah, great. It moves you on. It’s just a voyage of discovery. You know what I mean? It sounds corny, but it is and that’s what I love about it. You never know what you’re going to come out with. No idea whether this is going to be a warm song, a sad song, a story song. You can never tell.”
His favorite Beatles songs? “I always say, “You Know My Name, Look Up The Number.” Which is a zany, zany little B side that nobody knows, but we had such fun making it. It’s like a little comedy record. And I just remember the joy of making it. But there’s a lot of songs that I love of the Beatles. I think “Strawberry Fields” is a great song, I think, “Hey Jude” worked out great. I’ve got a lot of favorite songs. “Blackbird” I love. “Eleanor Rigby” I love.
If he had to pick one, though, it’s one of his later, most beloved singalongs. “I would say probably “Let It Be” as a song. It’s the most ubiquitous. It sort of got everywhere. Ubiquitous from the Latin, ubi quo, meaning everywhere.”
As many people take McCartney’s lyrics to hear, what is the written advice he tries to follow in his own life?
“To me, the thing that resonated with me when I was at school, it’s just a phrase from Shakespeare, it’s, ‘To thine own self be true.’ I’ve always thought that’s very sensible, very strong and I’ve lived by that. And I continue to. You’re trying to be true to yourself. You try to not have too much BS in your life. To me, that would be something that helps me cut through the rubbish and the craziness around to sort of center and just say, ‘okay, to my own self I should be true.’ To thine own self be true.”
Watch the interview in full on Apple Music at apple.co/mccartney3-interview.
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