#paul interview

Paul: It was half-written with Ringo in mind actually. He asked me to write him a tune and there was that one and another one. In the end, I told him I was nicking it and he could have the other one. I just got this idea for a song about someone knocking on the door, someone ringing the bell, and then in the middle, I got into the idea of naming people, just sort of symbolic of a crowd coming in… Sister Suzie, Brother John. Who’s Brother John?

Peacock: I was wondering…

Paul: Whoever you want it to be really, Uncle Ernie? Keith Moon flashing, I suppose, but the trouble with talking about things like that is .. that’s you’ve got to make an excuse for it all after. Someone says, “What did you mean by that?” And really I don’t know. It just comes into your head. Brother Michael — that’s obvious — that’s my brother Michael! Auntie Jin — I’ve got an Auntie Jin, Brother John — that could be whoever you want.

Peacock: Do you get fun out of the thought that people are going to sit down trying to work out the meaning behind lyrics like that?

Paul: It would be great if I wasn’t the ultimate authority on it. It would be just like “Match of the Day” watching them all go around delving into who the Walrus or Brother John is. I mean, to me Brother John is John Lennon, or Linda’s got a brother called John. I suppose it’s anyone’s brother John, but to me, it’s John Lennon. But not in any weird way. It just came out like that. So rather than hide it or change it, I left it. But now, they’re going to ask me. That’s the only problem, that’s the reason it’s not so much fun as it could be because there’s always someone coming up saying “What did you mean by…” or “Linda is Venus, you’re Mars — right?” Wrong, they’re planets, remember?

Peacock: Do you ever take things out because they might be misinterpreted?

Paul: No, I don’t think I ever do that, because normally when it’s writ itself then it’s writ. I don’t really much around with it too much. It’s like most things — you do a painting and think it’s not quite right so you do it again and it’s worse. Like a record — you can go on beyond the right take, but it’s never better. No, I don’t take things out for that reason, in fact, I’d leave things in because people were going to talk about them.

A political Paul: The Beatle talks about schooldays, the 1960s, 9/11, FR Leavis and the responsibilities of wealth and celebrity with his old schoolmate Jonathan Power

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/apoliticalpaul

On the way back downstairs, he pauses to show me a photograph on the wall, a portrait of George, Ringo and himself, standing under a tree. It was shot for a magazine cover in the grounds of this very studio while they were working on 'Free As a Bird' in 1995, the song, written and sung by Lennon as a demo tape in 1977, that subsequently became the first Beatles single in 25 years. There's something ineffably sad about the photograph, the fact that it is just the three of them, and that since, another one of them has gone. Then McCartney points to a white peacock that seems to have sneaked into the picture, stage left, and is peering directly at the camera. 'That's John,' he says, smiling. The bird, which had strayed from a neighbouring farm, walked into shot just as the photographer pressed the shutter. 'Spooky, eh?' says McCartney. 'It was like John was hanging around. We felt that all through the recording. We even put one of those spoof backwards recordings on the end of the single for a laugh, to give all those Beatles nuts something to do. I think it was a line of a George Formby song. Then we're listening to the finished single in the studio one night, and it gets to the end, and it goes "zzzwrk nggggwaaahh joooohn lennnnnon qwwwwk". I swear to God. We were like, "It's John. He likes it!"'

Spending even a little time with McCartney is a salutary lesson in the art of survival. We tend to forget that, though. We forget that he, too – Fab Macca, forever grinning, thumbs aloft – is a fully qualified survivor. We forget that he survived the whirlwind of the Beatles, and the long years of living in their shadow, and the terrible fallouts and the recriminations. We forget that he has had to deal not just with the loss of John and George, but that he somehow has made it though the capsizing grief of losing his wife, and long-term soul mate, Linda. And, still, the tabloids scoff at his so-called cheeriness, and his choice of new partner. And still, we, the public, want more. We want ‘Yesterday’ and ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘Hey Jude’, as if those songs, and all the others like them, were not more than enough already. We want yesterday.

There’s a sense on Chaos and Creation in the Back Yard, though, that Paul McCartney is finally at ease with his legacy, with the weight of myth and history that he has had to carry, and has tried to shrug off, for so long. There’s a strange little song on the album called ‘How Kind of You’, on which he sings: ‘How kind of you to stick by me during the final bout / And listen to the referee when I was counted out’. It seems both poignant and pointed, sincere and yet sarcastic. It doesn’t seem half-hearted, half-baked, or half-finished.

‘Well, it’s about all the tragedies,’ he elaborates, ‘the Beatles’ break-up, things going wrong, and people writing me off . There’s this sort of therapy aspect in songwriting sometimes, and that’s one of the reasons I love it. If I’m feeling really low, I’ll take my guitar into the darkest corner I can find in the house, and go there and sit with it, and talk to the guitar, explain it all to the guitar. And it works,’ he says, as if he can barely believe it himself. ‘You come out of there, and it’s magical.’ With that, he starts singing another line from the same song: ‘I thought my time was up…’ And you can tell he really means it, even though, just by singing it, he seems to banish the very thought.

randomly caught this headline and surprise surprise, it’s a copy and paste job from an old interview. but now i’m curious.

has anyone run into the original 1994 Reverb interview?

According to Reverb, during a 1994 interview with guitar writer Tony Bacon, Paul shared which Elvis song made him burst into tears as an adult.

Reflecting back on The King’s 1950s Sun Studio records, Macca said: “Yeah. I heard them this summer – haven’t heard them for years – and I was blown away. I suddenly realised the last time I listened to this thoroughly was before The Beatles, before all that happened to me, and it just stripped it all away. It was like I was a kid playing snooker again and listening. It actually got me crying, pow. Really did it to me.”

The Elvis song that reduced Paul to tears was I Want You, I Need You, I Love You. The Beatles star said he could remember all the words, singing the lyrics: “Hold me close, hold me tight…”

The now 80-year-old shared: “And my kids were like, Dad, you know all the words to this stuff? You better believe it. And I thought, ‘Well, I once was a kid like this, before all The Beatles thing, and now you live with the whole legacy of The Beatles, and it’s great. You could do a lot worse.’ But you know what I mean? i Just the idea of that was fantastic—I was 17 again. Not a bad feeling when you’re 52. Anyway, what do you want to talk about? I’m nattering on here.”