An Interview with Paul at McCartney Productions (1971)

 An Interview with Paul at McCartney Productions

From the I.F.A. (Independent Free Apple)

April 1972

Before the year ended, Paul and Linda had their first interview since they started Wings. Interviewed at McCartney Productions in New York, Paul revealed his feelings concerning the Beatles and Apple, his new group, and what he has in mind for the future.

 Denny:  I'm with Wings because the music isn't like anything that you hear today. 

Paul:  I like the idea myself of just having a sort of easy little thing, like a band thing, which is just a band, a simple idea of a band playing together. We're completely at liberty to go and play with someone else who strikes us. For instance, Denny has played with some people in Chicago, you know, knocking around.

Denny: It's a lot of fun playing with them. You know, they're nice kids. They make good music, and we have a lot of fun. People storming the stage and dancing with us.

Paul: We're trying to get a very simple idea going, you know, which is, we're only a band, you know? So we rehearse some numbers, and we ad lib some and, um, we're not trying to get it not too formal, you know, not too definite a pattern, so that we can have a framework, you know, in case you don't feel like having it. (Linda, singing in the background.) You know, there are times when you don't feel like, you know, you just want to play now, that would give you satisfaction. So, for that, you need some kind of framework. So we have that with us, a simple framework. We want to do sort of little concerts here and there, you know, not particularly big sellers and stuff. We'll probably dress in basic black. We're thinking of doing that next year, you know, but it might just be in small countries and things.

Linda: We've been rehearsing in New York.

Paul: But the way we're doing it, you see, I mean, there's no tours lined up. There's nothing lined up. What we're going to do is just see how we go, you know? But we'd like to play anywhere and everywhere. Basically, what we do is the kind of thing where you just take off, arrive at some place, fix up a gig, and play without too much of a big thing, see, because the first thing is, we've got to play "in" a bit. You know, the band --we haven't played that much together yet, so really be tight together. So we've gotta do that.

     Now, I've got the problem of what I'm going to do anyway.  We'll just tour, but you know, we won't know when or where or anything, but little groups of people will hear us around the country. That's our main intention. But we're not particularly involved in playing, like to 200,000 people at once, just cause I don't like that kind of gig. So you get what I mean?  I did do the scene with The Beatles, you know, I did it in a particular way, which was great at the time, you know, and I loved it, but there's no sense now in starting all of it again and doing it the same way, you know. There's no point in it. So the way we're doing it now is very unplanned, very sort of, well, you know, just for our own fun, really. But we make good records. We'll play in various places, but who knows when or where?

 Linda,: Who knows?

 Paul:  That's the future. You know that? I mean, it's like saying to you, 'What are you going to be doing next week?' Now you know, you know, but anything could happen by then, I get uncomfortable, if I know I got a thing for the next week,  that I'm not very keen on doing, but it's there, and I still have to persuade myself that I got to do it. I get very uncomfortable, you know?  I start thinking, 'What am I going to do? Am I sure I want to do this?'

     So I like to be able to just try and give myself the freedom to go where I want, when I want. And, you know, just give or take a few hours, and it's pretty much works. You can do it if you want to do it. We've just been to Jamaica.

 Linda: Yeah.

 Paul: Linda and I have just been to Jamaica. Fun, wonderful, Jamaica, lying in the sun and swimming. 

Linda: Listen to reggae.

 Paul: And the music. You know, I loved it. It's just sort of, it's like early rock and roll, only it isn't. It's a whole new thing. It's got the spirit of early rock. It's very simple, and yet, there's a way to play it. It's kind of difficult. There's a switch on how you normally play a whole new thing. So when we were just messing around with the rhythm. You know, we just loved it. It's just, you know, it's, you're playing upside down. It's a great feeling.

 Linda: I've just written a reggae song.

 Paul:  Linda's just written a reggae song, which is called "Seaside Woman".

 Linda: "I'd like it to be a hit in Jamaica. I really would."

 Paul:  We were rehearsing just a rhythm thing, which is a reggae rhythm, and originally it was just an instrumental. We just went into the studio and just did it, and we were playing it back. We realized "Love is Strange" would fit and we arranged it a little bit here and there, and put an ending on it and stuff. And "Love is Strange" was born second time, third time around. I think it's good. A good album.

     There Wings Wild Life, great harmony, good backing. We wrote them in the summer in Scotland, Linda and myself. This is Linda right here.

 Linda: How do you do? (laughter)

Paul: Fine. Thanks, Linda (Laughter louder from Linda). She and I wrote it in the summer in Scotland. Then the other two came up and just rehearsed for a few days. We just banged out just a few chords and stuff, and had sort of loose arrangements with the stuff. And then we went down to London and recorded  backing tracks, just for the three days, just to bang it all out. It's just one of the three albums I've done so far.

     The first one is just me on my own, virtually, you know, with assistance from Linda. But there weren't any other musicians on it, you know. So that was that kind of album, but the Small Faces grooved to it in Connecticut or something, and was one of their favorite albums. And I was pleased to hear that.

     And Ram is a whole other kind of thing. You know, Ram is a big, sort of a drawn out, a big thing, and big, epic, sort of a whole lot of stuff. And this one is a bit more in the middle. I like it better as an album myself. Ram is one of those kind of things that takes a long time to get into. I think, you know, there's a lot on it. You know, it's not as though it's just a simple thing that just goes and just plays through and you understand it all. There's a lot of things, a lot of stuff on it at one time.

    I heard Ram the other night, I think it's great, like I say, it's one of those albums that takes a bit of time, and I can imagine a place of a lonely reviewer,  somewhere sitting in an office and the heat has just been turned off, and he's got this record, and he's got to say wondrous things about it. He's also got to keep his reputation going as a bit of a lad, you know. There's a whole lot of things coming to his mind, and he puts it on. And I think if it isn't an immediate thing, you tend to get not so hot reviews, you know. But I tell you, about five months after it was released, Ram was still selling. It took five months to start to sell. It just seemed like it was just doing two weeks and out of the charts. 

Linda: We haven't read reviews on Ram much.

Paul: Wild Life, you know, you just have to think about that. The first song we've done, which is, you know, says something, as you say, is "Wildlife", and that just says that, well, you know, nature's all right that the wild state is a good state, so why are we getting rid of it? And animals are in zoos instead of just actually sort of running like they're supposed to. We tend, as animals, human animals, to be in a bit of a zoo too. We sit here nine floors up.

     Once I was at a game park in Africa, just doing the tours through it, taking a drive through, and there was a big sign at the entrance that just says, Remember, you know, all you people in motor cars, the animals have the right of way. And I liked that. I liked the thought that somewhere they have the right of way over you.

 Linda: They're saying there's too many deer. I mean, it's crazy what they're saying.

Paul: But you know, they're not necessarily right to me. There certainly aren't too many deer, you know? Because, because I've lived where there are deer, and I love them to be near and I like them to be alive. You know, we're farmers. For instance, we farm, we crop, and we do this kind of thing, and we have deer near, and they don't disturb us, like I always heard.

 Linda: They don't get into the crops. 

Paul: I don't go for these people who go into farming as a real heavy, serious business, where they see some deer there, and they say, 'Hey, man, you know they're eating all the crops. ' You know from this it grows, and all deer are bad, and we must shoot all the deer. ' 

    The rabbits are being introduced to macimatoses!. It's a disease which rabbits get, and it's in Britain because there's too many rabbits. So we walk along and see the rabbits lying there, and slowly, the disease eats them up, and all their eyes are wonky.

 Linda: It's the fleas. 

Paul: It's really sort of disgusting. It's really awful. And these rabbits are just wasting away. You know, you think whatever happened to them? 

    There's a strip in a newspaper. And every year they have an annual, you know, a yearly book for the kids, and it's called Rupert. He's a white teddy bear who likes to wear a sort of straight clothes and stuff. And he's just fabulous. He's from the 1940s and stuff.

 Linda: He's from the 1920s.

 Paul: 1920s or something, you know, it's from way back. He's fabulous. And I'll make the music, you know, like a Walt Disney thing.

 Linda: Better quality than the most recent one,.

Paul: It's just something I've done some music for. But I actually film's not started yet. That's the next film thing I want to do. It's a big animated cartoon.

 Linda: It's beautiful. It's very British. 

Paul: It's very British. It's very optimistic. He's a great lad. You know, all his ideas can be done if he's presented a problem. He's just Rupert. He's so smart, you know, you know, he gets it together, conquers a problem. It's tremendous. You know, he's a great character.

 Linda: A great adventure.

 Pau:  And he's got one of these friends, a wise goat who lives up on the hills, you know, with the big robe on and stuff. And he's got a big, long white beard and goat horns and stuff. You know, it's all animals talking and stuff. It's one of them.

 Linda: Animals are like people, apparently a real fantasy.

 Paul: You know, the idea? I like Walt Disney movies. I still do, you know, I like all that kind of thing. I like to see that. So, you know, I like to make one of them. The main thing is so that I can make the music.

 Linda: The Grammys was fun, just because it was real spontaneous, you know, we just sort of went in and then out.

 Paul: We drove around the block a couple of times, you know, before we really decided we really wanted to go in and collect the Grammys or not, because it was just the two of us. There were no bodyguards, nothing. No one saying, 'Come on, you guys, get in there'. You know, none of that. So now just the two of us, but we eventually sort of drove in, got in the door, just sort of leaped in there and sat down in our seat at the back of the hall

. Linda: And watched it. 

Paul: We watched the show. You know, when they announced us, we just leaped there, up there in our sneakers. 

    Well, it hasn't ended yet. I mean, you know, I'm waiting to be released from the situation. I'm waiting to be released. The group's finished. Everything's finished. But somehow, apparently, Klein can't find a way to release me. They say that, we say that, you know, all that silly stuff. But the main point of the matter is that I'm still waiting to be released from my Beatle contract, and I'm in a new group,( Linda and the other guys are singing in the background.)

 Linda: Wings!

Paul: And it's good, man. And I think it is Alan Klein who's holding me back, because he's informing me to advise the others that there are tax reasons, great tax reasons why they can't let me go. But I have an idea that it wouldn't be that difficult to sort out, to just let me slip out of the partnership and just carry on everything as it was going, just let me out and leave me with any sort of tax problems or whatever, you know?

     But I think the easiest way for it to be solved would be for the other three, the other Beatles, and--- not the other three Beatles for Christ's sake, John, George and Ringo and Alan Klein, to just let me out of all my involvement with them and sort of give me what's mine. I just think it's as simple as that. I'm being told there's a reason, this reason, that reason. But when I go to my publisher and I asked for more royalties, he has many reasons why not to give me more. That's the point, you know. So in this Beatles thing, I know I should get out; nobody really hangs out with each other anymore. We haven't recorded or played or done anything together now for about two years. I'm being told it's difficult, it's too difficult for me to be let out of the Beatles contract, but that must be nonsense. It's just gotta be crazy, because I'm out of the Beatles. I can't go on seven more years. That contract runs seven more years. You know it means everything I will have to go through and be governed by the Beatles contract, and that just ain't on, as you say in America.