Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Paul interview from late 1977

I spotted this interview in the February 1978 issue of "The Write Thing."     It was an interview Paul McCartney did on Capitol Radio in London by Roger Scott on November 12, 1977.   Anthony Luscombe transcribed it for the fanzine.

I am also including the photos that were on the page with the interview, as they were from November 1977 at Abbey Road Studios.     The color one came from a slide. 


Photo by Silvia Purbs


Scott:  The single does say on it "From the album..." is it going to be on an album?

Paul:  No, it's just independent actually.

Denny:   the whole thing has been to try and make a few singles as well as albums.  All we've ever done is make albums and put out singles from them, which is a bit boring.  We'd rather have something separate.

Paul:  This one didn't really fit with the album.  We'd got enough stuff; enough new tracks -- we'd got more than we need, kind of thing.  We just thought it seemed very singley.  When we'd done it all the pipers said, "Ah, yes, got to be a single, that one."  It was up to them, so we had to do it.

Scott:  Wings is now you and Linda and Denny.  Where are you going to go from there?  I imagine that the next time you go out on tour you're not going to try and do it like you did it before.

Paul:  Maybe, but we'll wait and see.  All we've got planned at the moment is to finish this album, and then we haven't bothering thinking about it beyond then.

Scott:  It was so superb, that last tour-- the concerts, everything, was just perfect.

Paul:  Thanks, Rog.  I like him.  I like his show.  He plays good music.  One of the best.

Scott:  Even though it was perfect, I imagine you wouldn't want to go out and do it again, what would be the point?

Paul:  Oh, we wouldn't do the same.  We're interested now in doing more the small clubs.  Plastic bags on our heads -- that sort of thing.

Scott:  What about the repackaging ripoffs?

Paul:  Oh what?

Scott:  All the old stuff.

Paul:  What--Beatles stuff??

Scott:  Yes.

Paul:  If I was still in the Beatles I'd be worried by all of that.  I'd care how they repackaged it and how they did it all, but I'm not in them and the record company has all the tapes and they're allowed to do it.   I'm more into the new stuff   I can't be bothered.  To tell you the truth I haven't even heard "Hollywood Bowl."   Terrible admission.  Geoff keeps telling me to hear it.   He did it.   He says it's good.

Scott:  Did you hear the Hamburg Tapes?

Paul:  No.  I've got a lot of those tapes anyway in my private collection.  Not the repackagings.  I've got the original demos.  I've heard them -- I mean I must have heard them -- I was on it.   I don't knock the old Beatles stuff.  I love to hear it on the radio.

I think the Beatles, actually, we were always aware of having all this unreleased stuff, and I suppose we always thought if anything happened to us, like Buddy Holly, someone would bring out all the old tapes, rehashing them, putting strings on them, so we were always careful never to have anything unreleased.  By the time we finished I think we'd put out everything we'd recorded -- very nearly.

Scott:  How about the "Sgt. Pepper" film?

Paul:  I've just heard that George Burns sings "Fixing a Hole."  Sounds interesting.  Geoff Emerick is working on it.  He's broken off form it to come and do this album for us and he likes it -- says it's going to be great.

Scott:  You're really into collecting catalogues aren't you?

Paul:  Well, when you earn money you've either got to give it to the government or spend it on something.  It's Catch 22.  I don't want to buy a lot of big buildings, so it was the normal thing to do.  Norman Petty just happened to be selling the Buddy Holly stuff.  EMI was interested, Allen Klein was interested and secretly, I think that is what got me interested.  I wanted to have them, not to be greedy, but to look after those songs and do something for them.


Photo by Silvia Purbs 

Scott:  Have you got the Decca stuff?  "Sheik of Araby" "September in the Rain?"

Paul:  Yes, actually I like that stuff.   It really shows that we were a little rock group to start off and we went towards ballads and more complicated psychedelia but all these tracks were just rock.

Scott:  Were you more of a Holly fan than a Presley ran?

Paul:  No, equal, no all of them really the thing about Holly was that if you were a new young songwriter it was easy to pick up on his stuff because there were never many chords.  Elvis something had very many chords, not his early stuff, but when he started doing "Love me Tender."  Buddy's stuff was all in A, D and E or maybe E, A, and B, and we knew these chords, so the first 50 tunes we wrote were all like that.

Scott:  There's a Wings movie that you're fiddling around with at the moment.

Paul:  Yes, we shot some things on tour when we did the "Wings over America" tour and some of its very nice, but the sound isn't that good.   We're working a lot on the soundtrack trying to get it sounding better.

Scott:  This will be for TV?

Paul:  Yes, I think it'll be a special for TV.

Scott:  But a long version, I heard, for the fans?

Paul:  Well, I don't know.  What we thought was first of all put together a kind of documentary-cum-concert for TV and then if the concert stuff really looks good then we'll put all that together for just a concert film.

Scott:  What kind of new music are you listening to at the moment?

Paul:  Not much, actually, we're working on our own stuff and by the time I get home I don't want to listen to much.  I just switch on the telly and switch off my mind.  I haven't bought any new albums for a while, actually.   My daughter's into punk, so I hear a bit of that.

Scott:  Does it make any impression?

Paul:  It's alright.  I quite like it.  I like what they're doing -- the attitude, and I like the look, but for me it's just another style.  It's not my style.



3 comments:

  1. I used to subscribe the The Write Thing and even won one of their trivia contests. They printed in black and white so how did you find the first photo of Paul on the steps of Abbey Road Studios in color?(MarkZapp)

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    Replies
    1. I am magic. LOL

      This site is copied off "The Write Thing." I originally looked at my old issues of the fanzine and saw what she did and tried to make the blog into that. Over the years, I turned this into my own style, but it is still heavily copied off "The Write Thing."

      As for the color photo of Paul. I buy a lot of Beatles photos/negatives/slides from auctions. I bought about 6 slides about 6 months ago and that Paul one was one of them. When I was scanning the photos from The Write Thing, something clicked with me and I realized that I had that one in color from the slide I purchased.

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