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Wednesday, February 4, 2026
McCartney: :Lifting the Veil on the Beatles (1980)
Paul McCartney: Lifting the Veil on the Beatles
By Vic Garbarini
Musician Magazine
August 1980
I'm sitting in a large, sparsely furnished apartment somewhere in North London. Paul McCartney is seated across from me, patiently sipping a cup of tea as he waits for me to set up my tape recorder. Finally, I'm ready to go. I'm just launching into my first question when McCartney suddenly turns towards the door and smiles. I watch in amazement as both John Lennon and George Harrison enter the room. "Ringo couldn't make it," said McCartney, still smiling. I opened my mouth to answer him, but instead of words, only a ringing bell-like noise came out.
Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged a comb across my head... and shit! It's 820 already. I wearily grope for the clock, making a mental note to ask my dad to fix the alarm. As I stagger into the bathroom, I remember about the geometry test. The geometry test! I'd forgotten all about it. Two minutes of pure panic ensue as I feverishly search my memory. Relief -- I sit behind Mraz in geometry, the math freak, the guy I loaned last month's copy of Playboy to. Good old Mzra! Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat, found my way upstairs and had a smoke. Somebody spoke and I went into a dream.
"Sugar?" "Huh?" "Sugar," repeats Paul McCartney, "Do you want sugar in your tea?" "Oh, right, sorry. Drifted out there for a minute."
Be cool. I think. I engaged the critical faculties. He's just another bloke. Wrote a lot of good songs, transformed my generation hasn't done much interesting lately. Sure, he's talented, and his music changed my life, but he's only human. So why do I feel like I'm having a conversation with my own childhood? Hold on now. Let's get some perspective here. Carl Jung actually had conversations with his archetypes, yeah, responds a tiny voice. But did one of them ever put sugar in his tea? Point taken.
When I get older, losing my hair many years from now... natural, unpretentious. Those are the words that best describe James Paul McCartney at 38, ten years after the breakup of the most influential pop group the world has ever known. The boyish good looks are still remarkably intact, no hair loss, (though most of the baby fat is gone,) but what impresses most is his relaxed, open manner.
He seemed totally at ease during our two-hour conversation at his London office. He was charming, frank, and surprisingly willing to talk at great length about the Beatles experience. Willing isn't the right word. He seemed positively eager to discuss it for reasons he explains fully in the interview. Paul claims he wants to be just an ordinary guy, and I believe him. He's anchored himself in normalcy, reasonably secure in the nest he's created with his family and farm.
As a result, his work with Wings has sometimes lacked creative tension, a problem which many critics, myself included, find irksome. Great art often requires friction, something to struggle against, an inner or outer obstacle to overcome in order to get the creative juices flowing and provide energy externally. There's little for McCartney to rub up against these days, and he doesn't seem to harbor the kind of inner demons that can drive John Lennon to tantrums and transcendence. But when he's offered a challenge, as in the case of the nearly disastrous Band on the Run sessions, or in a concert situation, as captured in the excellent Wings Over America live set, McCartney has proven that he can still turn out material that rivals his work with the Beatles.
His creative potential may be somewhat underutilized at times, but his powers seem relatively undiminished. In fact, his new solo album, McCartney II, contains some of the best material since Abbey Road. True, there's relatively little tension here, but in this case, it hardly seems to matter. This is a pure, distilled essence of McCartney, gorgeous dream-like melodies floating through no Eno-esque electronic textures, ranging from the Bach-like elegance and soothing ethereality of "Summer Day Song" to the poignant romanticism of "Waterfalls."
His work may occasionally be disappointing, but I'm heartened that a man who's been through what McCartney has can remain so open, unspoiled, and still capable of creative work of this caliber. They've been going in and out of style, but they're guaranteed to raise a smile. So may I introduce to you the act you known for all these years?
Musician: Let's just skip over the whole Japan thing. I'm sure you're sick of answering questions about it by now. Needless to say, you won't have a Live At Budokan album coming out this year.
McCartney: (deadpan) Good joke.
Musician: Thanks. I've been saving that one for weeks. Moving right along-- why another solo album now?
McCartney: Well, actually, I was trying not to do an album. It was just after Back to the Egg, and I wanted to do something totally different, so I just plugged a single microphone into the back of a Studer 16-track tape machine. Didn't use a recording console at all. The idea was that at the end of it, I would just have a zany little cassette that I'd play in my car and never release.
In the end, I had a few tracks, played them for a couple of people, and they said, "See, that's your next album." And I thought, "Right, it probably is." So then I got a bit serious about it and tried to make it into an album. That was the worst part of it. I was having fun until that.
Musician: It's interesting the way you describe your approach. It reminds me of the way Eno goes about making an album -- creative play. The other person who came to mind when I first heard it was Stevie Wonder.
McCartney: I like Stevie a lot. It's probably because he's the only other person who's done this kind of recording -- doing it all yourself.
Musician: You're also the only two people who've combined avant-garde electronic textures with an unerring sense of melody.
McCartney: Well, I can't help that. I'm glad I can't help that. When I was doing this album, I thought I'd make something that didn't sound anything like me. The first three tracks I made were the two instrumentals on the album and a third one, which I later put lyrics on. I wanted something that sounded nothing like me, but inevitably, you start to creep through even that your sense of tune, or whatever it is.
Musician: Have you ever consciously tried to do a melody that was non-diatonic, not based on a major or minor motif, or something?
McCartney: Well, I don't understand that. I'm not a technical musician.
Musician: Something discordant, something that isn't normal, tonal melody.
McCartney: Yes, on some of the tracks, I had enough for a double album, and most of the tracks that came off to make a single album were a bit more like that. One was kind of a sequence of wobbly noises, a crazy track, probably not worth releasing. It's just for the cassette in my car. There are people who like it, but it's just experimental. I like it, but zoning in on which ones we were going to release, I asked a lot of people which were their favorites, and the ones that got dropped off are probably the least ones. I've got one 10-minute instrumental that just goes on forever and ever.
Musician: And you left off the ones that were less melodic? Could you ever conceive of putting out the experimental stuff?
McCartney: I wouldn't mind it. The thing is, I go through record companies, and record companies want to have a say in it. If I bring them an album they think is totally uncommercial, and I say, "Look, artistically, I've got to do this." You have to agree with them in the end when they say, "Look, it's very nice, but we would rather have this, please, because we're the company that's going to release it."
I'm not going in an avant-garde direction, particularly. It's just for my own interests, that sort of stuff. But still, I get certain decisions creeping in that wouldn't necessarily be my decision.
Musician: You're forgiven. Were you very disappointed or surprised by the negative critical reaction to Back to the Egg?
McCartney: I'm used to it all now. Nearly everything I've ever done or been involved in has received some negative critical reaction. You'd think the response to something like " She Loves You " with the Beatles would have been pretty positive. It wasn't the very first week that came out. It was supposed to be the worst song The Beatles had ever thought of doing. Then Ram was supposed to be the worst thing I'd ever done. And so the criticism continues.
Musician: But was the harder rocking approach on Back to the Egg a reaction to criticism of your work as too poppish? Were you influenced by the emergence of New Wave?
McCartney: It was just what I was into at the time. The New Wave thing was happening, and I realized that a lot of New Wave was just taking things at a faster tempo than we did. We, being what I like to call the Permanent Wave (a little joke there), so you get something like "Spin It On", out of that.
I'm always getting influenced. Most of the songs I've written can be traced to some kind of influence, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Chuck Berry, to name a few-- even some of the 30s type tunes, like " When I'm 64 or " Honey Pie " that's influenced by Fred Astaire and people like that.
Musician: Can you look at your own work with any degree of objectivity or impartiality? I mean, can you listen to an album you've just made and trust yourself to be able to see what its strong and weak points are?
McCartney: When they first come out, I'm totally confused. It takes a few months for me to warm up to them. Sometimes I'll be at a party, and I'll hear music coming from the next room. Immediately, I'll get jealous and think, "Who's that?" So I go into the other room, and it's us, and I think, "Hey, I like this group. We're all right after all", because everyone's a bit paranoid.
Musician: Band on the Run was probably the most successful Wings album from both a commercial and a critical standpoint. Was it the most satisfying one for you?
McCartney: I like Band on the Run that was going to be a normal Wings album originally, but then our guitarist at the time, Henry McCullough and Denny Sewell, failed to turn up. It was one of those numbers where they said, "We don't want to go to Lagos to record this album. Sorry." I was left in the lurch at the last minute, literally an hour before the flight. So there was just Denny Laine, Linda, and me in Nigeria. I played drums, bass, and a lot of guitar myself. I took a lot of control on that album. It was almost a solo album.
Musician: Why Lagos?
McCartney: I just fancied going to Africa. I'm into African rhythms. When we were there, I saw the best band I'd ever seen live, Fela Ramsomecoutie. I think he's in jail now. He's too political for the local authorities. We saw him one night at his own club, and I was crying. A lot of it was just relief. There was a lot of crazy circumstances and weird things happening. At one point, we got held up at knifepoint. It was a real fight to make that album.
Musician: Do you find in your experiences that friction like that can actually help the creative process?
McCartney: Unfortunately, yes, it does help. It's unfortunate, because who wants to go around having stress all the time just to aid creativity? But when it happens, it does actually seem to help. It's a drag, because the logic then follows is that we should all walk around even more stressed to make better albums. Who needs it? I'd rather not make albums than do that. But it did help on Band on the Run. It gave us something to fight against.
At first, I was worried, but then I thought, "Wait a minute, I love playing drums." So the positive side started to creep in.
Musician: I heard that with the Beatles, you sometimes gave Ringo directions regarding what he should play.
McCartney: We always gave Ringo direction on every single number. It was usually very controlled. Whoever had written the song, John, for instance, would say, "I want this." Obviously, a lot of stuff came out of what Ringo was playing, but we would always control it.
Musician: Did musical disagreements or conflicts have anything to do with the breakup?
McCartney: They were some of the minor reasons, yeah. I remember on "Hey Jude" telling George not to play a guitar. He wanted to echo riffs after the vocal phrases, which I didn't think was appropriate. He didn't see it like that, and it was a bit of a number for me to have to dare tell George Harrison-- who was one of the greats, I think-- not to play. It was like an insult, but that was how we did a lot of our stuff.
Musician: We were talking about creative tension, and how even if it's a pain in the ass, it can be useful. Are there any particular Beatles albums that.....
McCartney: The White Album was the tension album. We were all in the midst of the psychedelic thing or just coming out of it. In any case, it was weird. Never before had we recorded with beds in the studio and people visiting for hours on end, business meetings, and all that. There was a lot of friction during that album.
Musician: That was the one that sounded the most fragmented to me, whereas Abbey Road sounded the smoothest. Yet, I imagine there was a lot of tension at that point, too.
McCartney: No, not really. There was no --- come to think of it, there was actually --- yes, there were one or two tense moments, but it didn't feel like a tense album to me. I was busy getting into a lot of new musical ideas, like the medley on the second side. I think the White Album was the weirdest experience, because we were about to break up, and that was just tense in itself.
Musician: I wanted to ask you about your bass playing. To me, you've always played bass like a frustrated guitar player; those melodic lines that start to show up on Sgt. Pepper, there was no precedent for that in rock music. How did that style of playing come about?
McCartney: I always liked those little lines that worked as support and yet had their own identity, instead of just staying in the background. Also, bass was beginning to come to the front in mixes at that point. If you listen to early Beatles mixes, the bass and bassdrum aren't there. We were starting to take over mixing ourselves and to bring those things out. So I had to do something with it. I was listening to a lot of Motown and Stax at the time, Marvin Gaye, and people like that.
Musician: How did Sgt. Pepper come about?
McCartney: I think the big influence was Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. That album just flipped me. Still is one of my favorite albums. The musical invention on that is just amazing. I play it for our kids now, and they love it. When I heard it, I thought, "Oh, dear, this is the album of all time. What the hell are we going to do?" My idea took off from that standard.
Musician: Wasn't the initial concept some kind of fantasy thing?
McCartney: Yeah, I had this idea that it was going to be an album of another band that wasn't us. We'd just imagine all the time that it wasn't us playing. It was just a nice little device to give us some distance from the album.
Musician: I remember listening to it and thinking it was the perfect fantasy album. You could put yourself into a whole other world. That's really the way you went about creating it, then?
McCartney: Right, that was the whole idea. The cover was going to be us dressed as the other band in crazy gear, but it was all stuff that we'd always wanted to wear. And we were going to have photos on the wall of all our heroes, Marlon Brando in his leather jacket, Einstein -- it could be anybody who we'd ever thought was good--- cult heroes, and we kind of put this other identity on them to do it. It changed a lot in the process, but that was a basic idea behind it.
Musician: Thinking back on that period, which album would you say caught the feeling of expansion and creativity that was going on at its height?
McCartney: Pepper, probably.
Musician: What about Rubber Soul? That was a real departure.
McCartney: All I can remember is that it was kind of a straightforward album.
Musician: It was so acoustic, though, compared to the previous stuff.
McCartney: Those were the sounds we were into at the time. "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away", was basically John doing Dylan. Dylan had just come out, and we were big fans of his. Rubber Soul was just a catchy title. That's the bit I remember most about it. A lot of people like that as an album.
Musician: Among connoisseurs, considered one of the early high points, Revolver, too.
McCartney: Just to show you how wrong one can be, I was in Germany on tour just before Revolver came out. I started listening to the album, and I got really down because I thought the whole thing was out of tune. Everyone had to reassure me that it was okay.
Musician: Robert Fripp wrote a piece for us recently, in which he talked about an artist's image and how it can have a life of its own, in the sense that you're Paul McCartney, a human being with taste, talents, faults and all that, and yet you also have a public image, as Johnny Lydon would say, that has a life of its own that's almost independent of you. Sometimes people relate that image instead of to you as a person. How did you deal with this when you first encountered it with the Beatles? Did it bother you? Was it enjoyable? How did it feel from the inside?
McCartney: At first, you're just an ordinary Joe rocking around trying to make a living. Then you get famous. You get your first hit, and you love it. There's nothing you'd like to do more than sign autographs. "You got them? I'll do them!" That wears off after three or four years, you start to think, "Wait a minute, what am I bloody signing for you?" At this point, I've come to another phase where I think it's okay again. So I've been in and out of all that.
Musician: Have you ever wished you could just chuck it all in, fade into obscurity?
McCartney: I remember thinking at one point that I've come to a point of no return, that even if I say now that I don't want to be famous anymore, I'd be like Bridget Bardot or Charlie Chaplin, a recluse, but still very famous, and that's no use. They'll be after me even more.
Musician: Do you think that was John's reaction?
McCartney: I really don't like to speak for John, but seeing how you've asked me -- my theory is that he's done all the things he wants to do, except one-- being himself. Now he's just turned on to actually living his own life, sod everyone else. But it's not an aggressive thing, from what I can see.
Musician: Basically, you're the most active of the former Beatles. You maintain a band and still tour pretty consistently, which the others don't. I don't want to get into a comparison trip, but after being with The Beatles, where do you go?
McCartney: It's rather difficult to top Yeah.
Musician: All of you must have felt some trepidation at the thought of going out on your own, but you didn't seem to worry.
McCartney: I didn't seem to, but that's one of my features. I may seem to not do a lot of things when, in fact, I can be just as bad as the next guy. The first gigs we did with Wings were frightening. It was so scary coming out with a new band, knowing the Beatles was what was expected.
That was just a question of knowing I had to run that gauntlet, go through that thing, and that once I came out of it, I'd feel better and be glad I'd gone through it.
Musician: Did you ever experience that kind of fear with The Beatles?
McCartney: Sure. I remember many times just sitting outside concert halls waiting for the police to escort us inside, thinking, "Jesus Christ. I really don't want to go through with this. We've done enough. Let's take the money and run. Let's go down to Brighton or something."
Linda and I felt like that when she was having our last baby. We were driving to the hospital, and there was this terrible urge to say, "Let's go to Brighton instead." If we could have gotten away with it, we would have.
Musician: Those early tours with Wings are pretty innovative for the time, showing up unannounced at colleges in a van and charging only $1 admission, exactly the kind of impromptu "Small is Beautiful" philosophy that a lot of the New Wavers are beginning to exponge. Only you were doing it eight years ago. What led you to take that approach?
McCartney: Instead of doing what was expected, I asked myself, "What do I really want to do? What have I missed being with the Beatles? What is it time to do?" It was silly, little things like with the Beatles, you used to get paid massively, but you never saw it, because it always went straight into the company. You had to draw on it. So for me, one of the buzzes on that first tour was actually getting a bag of coins at the end of the gig. It wasn't just a materialistic thing. It was the feeling of getting physically paid again. It was like going back to square one. I wanted to take it back to where the Beatles started, which was in the halls; we charged 50 pence to get in. Obviously, we could have charged more and gave the Student Union a bit for having us there.
We played poker with the money afterwards, and I'd actually pay the band physically, you know, 50 pence for you and 50 pence for you. About the thrill of actually working for a living.
Musician: Can you empathize with this New Wave thing? Did you feel the same explosive force with the early Beatles in Hamburg and elsewhere?
McCartney: Yes, I think it's the same thing and will always be the same. It's just a question of age. When we were 18, we were doing it and getting exactly the same reaction, only 20 years earlier. It's the energy. I don't care where they got it from. If it sounds like a great piece of music, the Sex Pistols, Pretty Vacant, for instance, then I'm all for it.
Musician: Some of the early Beatles material was obviously coming out of Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly, but most of it seems strikingly original. How did that Merseybeat sound come about?
McCartney: When we started the Beatles, John and I sat down and wrote about 50 songs, out of which I think "Love Me Do" is the only one that got published. Those songs weren't very good because we were trying to find the next beat, the next new sound. New Musical Express, which was a much gentler paper at the time, was talking about Calypso and how Latin rock was going to be the next big thing. Minutes later, we stopped trying to find the new beat. The newspaper started saying it was us, and we found it, we discovered the new sound without even trying.
That's what made me suspicious of categories like heavy metal or pop. My musical taste range from Fred Astaire to the Sex Pistols and everything in between. Pink Floyd ,Stevie Wonder, the Stones...
Musician: A great deal of the criticism you come in for seems to be because you use pop as a medium. What is it about pop you're attracted to?
McCartney: I just like it. I, like a lot of people, when I get in my car and turn on the radio, I want to hear some good sounds. So whatever I write, I write for that. What are the alternatives? Writing a serious piece of music or modern classical music? No thanks. I'd bore myself stiff after a couple of hours.
Musician: The first major cultural experience of my generation was in February 1964 when we saw you on The Ed Sullivan Show. It was like something just swept over the whole country, a new, open energy.
McCartney: It was strange, wasn't it?
Musician: What the hell was it all about?
McCartney: I don't know. I personally think that in America, there was a standard way of doing things. The only freaky people were Hollywood writers, jazz musicians, and pop stars. But even they were tied to a framework. Meanwhile, we had cooked up this whole new British thing. We had a long time to work it out and make our mistakes in Hamburg, and almost no one was watching.
We were very different, having taken all the American influences and stewed them up in a British way; a lot of things had been happening with our own chemistry, because John and I were strong writers. George was like a third writer, Ringo, had a good head on his shoulders and was by no means thick.
We put in a lot of work in Hamburg. We would work eight hours a day, which most bands never worked that hard. We literally worked eight hours a day. It was a full factory day. So we had developed our act by the time we came to America. We had worked all that out, all the success we had in Britain. The British newspapers were saying, "Well, what's left to do? You've conquered everything". And we'd say "America!"
We got the number one, did Ed Sullivan. By then, we distilled our stuff down to an essence. So we weren't just coming on as any old band. We had our own total new identities.
Musician: Did you feel that among yourselves?
McCartney: Yes, we knew it. People were saying, "What's this with the haircut?" If I go back on the haircut thing, I know it was actually because we saw some guy in Hamburg whose hair we liked. John and I were hitchhiking in Paris, and we asked him to cut our hair like he did his. He didn't do it quite the same, and it fell down in a Beatles cut. He was a very sort of artsy guy. This guy, great guy called Jergen. He cut our hair. We came back to England and all the people in England thought we were German, because the newspaper said, "Direct from Hamburg." All the kids were surprised when they saw us. We had leather jackets and blue jeans. We thought "We won't have corny suits. "We'll have new things guitars and jackets.
So by the time we got to the States, for instance, the hair, which was really a bit of an accident, it was really what a lot of artsy people were doing anyway, we were the first with it in the States. So it looked like we invented it. Actually, the story was a lot more ordinary, like life is. By the time we got to be presented on The Ed Sullivan Show, the biggest show in the States, and there we were with these funny haircuts. It was us. Everyone said, "You started the Beatle haircut." So it was like distilling the essence of what we were going through and laying it all out on America in one big move. That's why it was such a big shock and had such a big effect on them.
Musician: Was it apparent to you that something was going on that was more than just another very big group, that this was a cultural phenomenon?
McCartney: You don't get into that. I don't think that when Muhammad Ali was shouting, he was the greatest; he actually knew he was. It was a bluff --- showbiz. He suspected he was. We suspected we were, but a lot of what you did was just bluff, because if you wanted to be number one, you tell everyone you're number one.
Musician: But when did you realize, my God, it worked? This is more than just a musical event. This is a whole generation?
McCartney: Very early on. When we started off in Hamburg, we had no audience, so we had to work our asses off to get people in. People would appear at the door of the club while we were on stage, and there would be nobody at the tables. We used to try to get them to sell beer. The minute we saw someone, we would kick into "Dancing in the Streets," which was one of our big numbers at the time, and just rock out pretending we hadn't seen them, and we'd find we've got three or four of them in. We were like fairground barkers, see four people, have to get them in.
We eventually sold the club out, which is when we realized it was going to get really big. Then we went back to England and played the Cavern. The same thing happened there. First, nobody came; then they started coming in. Finally, they came in droves. There was this incredible excitement. So we knew something we were doing must have been right.
By the time we started playing tours, it really didn't surprise us anymore, though we were still thrilled by it when we were. On the Chris Montez tour, he was at the top of the bill. Halfway through, they switched it and put us on top. Was embarrassing as hell for him. I mean, what could you say to him? "Sorry, Chris." He took it well and stuff, but we expected it by then. Everywhere we'd gone, it seemed to work.
Musician: At that point, no European group had ever really conquered America, no pop group. How did you determine when you were ready to take the plunge and come to the US?
McCartney: The thing we did, which I always think new groups should take as a bit of advice, was that we were cheeky enough to say that we wouldn't go to the States until we had a number one record there. We were offered tours, but we knew we'd be second to someone, and we didn't want that. There was a lot of careful thought behind it. There were a lot of artists from here who'd go over and vanish, Cliff Richard, still trying to make it in the States. We've always looked at it logically and thought, ' Well, that's the mistake. You've got to go in as number one.' So there was a lot of careful thought there.
We were cooking up this act, the Beatles. It was very European, very British, as opposed to the standard American way of doing things. Ed, a couple of jugglers, Sinatra, Sinatra Jr, even Elvis from the waist up, the American Dream.
Musician: Can you remember what it was like when you find when it finally happened?
McCartney: When we heard that our first record went number one in the States? Yeah. We were playing Paris at the time the telegram came, and we all jumped on each other's backs and ran around everywhere. Big Mal, the roadie, gave everyone piggyback rides. We were just so excited.
So we went to America, and it was all like we planned might happen, but we were lucky. It went much further than we ever imagined.
Musician: What was it that made the group able to weather the incredible pressure of all that? And stayed together as long as it did?
McCartney: It didn't feel like pressure. It wasn't pressure for a long time. At American press conferences, they used to ask us, "What will you do when the bubble bursts?" There used to be a guy like yourself who we would take around with us, because he was so funny. We used to ask him to ask that question every time; it was the only question he ever asked on the whole tour. He got to be like the court jester.
Musician: So how did you answer him?
McCartney: I don't know. We'll blow up, or we'll fall out of the sky or whatever, but it was never a serious question to us.
Musician: When and why did the bubble burst?
McCartney: I don't know, really. Just about a year before the Beatles broke up, you could say the seed was sown from very early on. I don't know. It just did. Friction came in business, things, relationships between us. We were all looking for people in our lives. John had found Yoko. It made things very difficult. He wanted a very intense, intimate life with her. At the same time, we'd always reserve that kind of intimacy for the group.
You could understand that he had to have time with her, but does he have to have that much time with her? That was some of the feelings in the group. So these things just started to create immovable objects and pressures that were just too big.
After that, after the breakup, then the idea of, when will the bubble burst came home. So I thought, "Oh, that was what that guy was talking about at every bloody press conference." We weren't aware of that much pressure while the Beatles were happening, because we were a very organized group, a well-rehearsed unit. But eventually I started to realize what they were talking about. You start to grow up, you realize, "Wait a minute, I really am holding down a job here, and if my paid gig goes down..."
Musician: I'm impressed by how easily you can go back to that period and pull out all these amazing things. I was afraid you might not be willing to talk about the Beatles. It seemed like a forbidden topic for so long.
McCartney: Well, I recently did this video clip in which I play all the instruments like I do on the album. We had to think of someone to make the bass player like, so I told the director, I could do Beatle Paul, you said, "Yeah, you got to do it!" I almost chickened out at the end, but I did it, put on my old uniform, and got out the old Hofner violin bass, which still has a Beatles song list taped to it. And I didn't realize until a few days later that I'd gone and broken the whole voodoo of talking about the Beatles because I'd been him again. And it didn't feel bad. I mean, if someone else is going to impersonate me, I might as well do it myself. And it was such a ball among the studio technicians, they really got off on it.
Musician: Did it feel like you were stepping back into that old image for a minute?
McCartney: Yes, I felt great. It felt like I was on a TV show 20 years ago, exactly the same. The bass was the same weight. The whole thing about the Hoffner bass is that it's like balsa wood. It's so comfortable after a Fender or a Rickenbacker. I now play a Rickenbacker or a Yamaha, which are quite heavy.
Musician: Why did you switch?
McCartney: It was given to me back in the mid-60s. Mr. Rickenbacker gave me a special left-handed bass. It was the first left-handed bass I ever had, because the Hofner was a converted right-handed. It was a freebie, and I loved it. I started getting into it on Sgt. Pepper, and now I'm playing a Yamaha.
Musician: How come?
McCartney: Because they gave me one. I'm anybody's for a free guitar! Sometimes I think I should research what instrument I like to play best, but generally, I seem to play stuff that's been given to me. Naturally. I only played the stuff that I like. I've been given stuff that I don't care for, but I like it. Things that I don't like are too thought-out and logical.
If someone asked me what strings I use, I honestly couldn't tell you. They come out in a little bag. To me, these things are just vehicles. They're beautiful, and I love them, but I don't want to find out too much about them. It's just the way my mind is. I prefer to be non-technical.
Musician: Back to your composing and writing. Do you have to have a set way of going about putting together a song, or is it all pretty free-flowing?
McCartney: I'm suspicious of formulas. The minute I've got a formula, I try and change it. People used to ask us, "What comes first, the music or the words, or Lennon and McCartney, who does what?" We all did a bit of everything. Sometimes I wrote the words, and sometimes John did. Sometimes I write a tune, and sometimes he would
Musician: ...were you the walrus?
McCartney: Yeah, I'm still the walrus. That was a nothing thing, really; it didn't mean anything. What happened was that during Magical Mystery Tour, we did a scene where we all put on masks. It just happens to be me in the walrus mask. We just picked up a head each, no thought behind it. Then there was all that stuff about me being dead!
Musician: I think it's amazing that your bass playing continues to improve after you died. Very impressive.
McCartney: Yes. Then there was that whole thing about me wearing a black carnation. I had a black carnation because they'd run out of red ones. So there was this hugely significant thing in me wearing a black carnation or turning my back on the Sgt. Pepper cover. It was actually just a goof. When we were doing the photos, I turned my back, and it was just like a joke or whatever.
Musician: Are your good feelings about New Wave because you recognize the same kind of creative elements you cultivated with The Beatles?
McCartney: I think the nice thing about New Wave is that it's gotten back to real music rather than pop. I don't like a lot of it, but a lot of it I do like. I can see where it all comes from. A great deal of it. You could trace it back to the Doors, Lou Reed, Bowie, and Brian Ferry, but that's great.
I was influenced by Elvis. I still do an Elvis impersonation at a party --"Love me Tender." I recognize that we're all very frail no matter who puts on the great show out front. Basically, we are all imitators. We used to nick songs, titles John and I have you, been inspired by things in the press. "Helter Skelter" came about because I read in Melody Maker that the Who had made some track or other that was the loudest, most raucious, just rock and roll, the dirtiest thing they've ever done. I didn't know what track they were talking about, but it made me think, "Right, got to do it."
And I totally got off on that one little sentence in the paper, and I said, "We've got to do the loudest, most raucous." And that ended up as "Helter Skelter", but that's great. We were the greatest criminals going.
Musician: Getting back to your own writing, I've noticed that with Wings, your writing often centers on themes having to do with the home, domesticity, and the family. Is that a reaction to the craziness of the Beatles or in the 60s in general?
McCartney: It came out of getting married. Everything changes in the way you look at things. I started realizing that I liked the warmth of the family, the no-hassle thing of having a family you can relate to intimately without really trying.
When you're 18, you sneer at all that kind of stuff. But when you're 30, you start to reconsider, "What do I really think about all that?" When my dad used to hit me as a kid, he'd say, "When you've got kids of your own, you'll understand," and I thought, "You're a lunatic, you're hitting me, and I'll never understand that." Then you get a few kids, and your lot realizes what he was talking about. Only time can do that.
The word "home" changed its meaning after I gotten married. I never really had a home for a long time, I started to realize that it's important to investigate your feelings instead of hiding them.
Musician: Looking back over your career, do you feel satisfied? Do you feel content when you consider your musical legacy?
McCartney: I'd say I've done some songs that I think are really good, some that I think didn't quite come off, some I hate, but I've done enough to satisfy myself that I'm okay. That's basically I'm looking for-- like most people.
Musician: As long as you stay in touch with your own creativity, as you said, and keep going through this reviving, refreshing process.
McCartney: Yes, as long as there's still some good music coming out, there'll be a wave of bad music out there, and then something will come along and kick it. They may be swearing and picking their noses and cutting themselves, but if they bring out good, if the energy is there, regardless of the form, if it's Merseybeat or Potatobeat, it makes no difference to me. As long as there's something there.
There's a great trick about records. It has to leap off the plastic, and if it does, it's magic. How is it that some leap off the plastic and some don't? I don't care who does it or how. It can be Segovia or Johnny Rotten, as long as they're communicating.
Musician: To me, the deepest song you've done since the Beatles is "One of These Days" on the new album. What's going to happen one of these days?
McCartney: But doesn't everyone have this kind of thing in them since they're a kid? That one of these days I'll get around to it? I've always wanted to be a friendly person. Well, one of these days, I'm going to be a friendly person. But in the meantime, life gets in the way. You don't always find yourself being friendly. It's just groping in the dark, really. But a lot of what I do is like that. I don't see any alternative to it, but I think of that as a positive thing.
I don't know what I was before I was born. I was the sperm that won out of those 300 million. I can't remember that far back, but there was something working for me, some incredible thing that did it. So for me, the wonder of that, of knowing that something got on with it before my conscious memory existed, leads me to believe that when you die, maybe something gets on with it too, which gives me this vague faith that I can't pinpoint. I don't say it's so and so doing it, but it just is, and whatever it is, I have an optimistic view about it based on the record that it got me this far. It can't be that bad, right?
Epilogue
McCartney is at his best when he excuses security, and 1. takes a risk, as on Wildlife recorded in a few days, a la Dylan. 2. is challenged-- the stressful Band on the Run. 3. is caught off guard. McCartney II -- an informal home studio project not originally intended for distribution.
Just how much he values a secure environment can be gleaned from the following example. McCartney had planned to use Abbey Road (where the album of the same name, and the other Beatles albums were recorded) last year, to record Back to the Egg with Wings, but found it to be already booked during the dates he needed.
Since Abbey Road was his favorite studio, he decided to take drastic measures in the basement of his offices in London, Soho Square, and he actually built an exact replica of his favorite room at Abbey Road Studios. It was precise in every detail. There's even a large security door against a wall that leads nowhere, simply to duplicate one in the original studio. A massively enlarged photograph depicting a larger room full of recording equipment, musical instruments, and other electronic gear covers one entire wall. This is precisely the view you'd have in the real Abbey Road Studio.
Inspecting it, I noticed a large clock on the studio wall in the photograph. The clock in the photo shows the time to be 1:35pm, which was an interesting coincidence, as my own watch read 1:35 also. We completed our tour of the building, and we're passing through the same room again when I happened to glance at the clock in the photo, the hands had moved! The time now read 10 minutes to two, the correct time. A representative of Paul McCartney's office explained, "After finishing the replica studio, we invited Paul down for a look. He was delighted by everything, but stared a long time at the photo. He turned and said, 'The clock doesn't work'. We laughed, but he said, 'No, I'm serious. I want the clock in the photo to work.' So we had them hollow out the wall, install real hands on the photo clock and watchworks behind the wall. It tells excellent time, actually." I bet. Talk about controlling your environment.
Out to see Little Malcolm
February 4, 1966 -
Newlyweds Pattie and George along with Brian Epstein go to see Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs, which is a movie George will produce later in his life.
Tuesday, February 3, 2026
Ringo Starr Rock "Eldest Stateman" (1991)
Ringo Starr Rock "Eldest Stateman"
Associated Press
February 3, 1991
Tell Ringo Starr, he's one of the elder statesmen of rock and roll. And he interrupts, "I'm probably the eldest statesman," he corrects, but he says it in that Ringo voice, instantly familiar and unchanged, although its owner is 50 years old and light years past his Beatle days.
"Rock and roll keeps you young, if it doesn't kill you, of course," he explains.
Starr has just released Ringo Starr and his All-Star band, a compact disc recorded in concert during his 1989 tour with eight veteran rockers, and he's already thinking about the lineup for another all-star troop.
It's a different Ringo than the one who was better known over much of the past decade for drinking than drumming. And the enthusiasm has as much to do with last year's tour as his 1988 stint in an alcoholic recovery program.
"It was great proof to me that I could actually get up there and play," he said. "And it was great proof that all these musicians that I've known all over the years, you know, still thought they'd like to play with me."
The All Starrs of 1989 were guitarists Nils Lofgren and Joe Walsh, keyboard players Dr. John and Billy Preston, sax man Clarence Clemens, drummers Jim Keltner and Levon Helm, and bass player Rick Danko. Starr admits to wondering whether he could get on stage with musicians of that caliber again, and whether they would want to get up there with him.
"Most of the 80s, I was incommunicado with the planet. And, you know, I wouldn't blame them, you know, because why would they want to get up with this crazy, drunken fool? And I didn't want to get up anyway. I was too busy getting stupid."
Starr and his wife, actress Barbara Bach, spent five weeks in an alcohol treatment program in 1988, and after that, he had to ask himself what he was going to do with his life. The All-Starr band was the answer. "I'm a musician. And we went out there, and we put it together, and it was just a great mind blower that it certainly worked, and we all had fun," he said.
The Rykodisc CD has a dozen songs, but only five featuring Starr: "It Don't Come Easy," "The No, , "No Song," "Honey Don't," "You're 16", and "Photograph." The others were "Iko Iko" by Dr John, "The Wait" with Helm on vocals, "Shine Silently," sung by Lofgren, " Quarter to Three", featuring Clemens, " Reigning in My Heart" with Danko at the microphone, "Will It Go Round in Circles " by Preston, and " Life in the Fast Lane", featuring Walsh.
Starr is intent on getting beyond his Beatles past. "Someone already said, Well, you don't have 'With a Little Help from My Friends,' or 'Yellow Submarine'. Well, you know, that's not the point here. The point is the band that was on tour; this is what we felt would make the best CD."
Starr doesn't know yet who will be in the next All Starr band, because some of last year's members will most certainly have another commitment, but Starr is certain to have an audience, regardless of the compliment. The 1989 tour drew fans ranging from children on up to adults as old as 70.
"Children under seven were let in free with their parents to make the problem of finding babysitters no impediment," he said.
A lot of the kids were more familiar with Starr as the tiny Mr. Conductor on the PBS television show Shining Time Station. The children's show includes a storybook segment from Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, an English show Starr, narrated.
Stevie and Paul -Friends for 60 years
February 3, 1966
Sort of wild that we have photographs of when Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder first met. They have been friends for a very long time.
Harry Nilsson's Rememberance (1981)
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| Photo taken by Bob Gruen |
Harry Nilsson's Rememberance
By Harry Nilsson
Songwriter magazine
January/February 1981
Singer/ Songwriter Harry Nilsson was closely associated with John Lennon during the past decade. The two of them shared a deep friendship, particularly while John was separated from Yoko Ono in the mid-70s; their late-night carousels in Los Angeles made for gossip column copy at the time. But beyond the excess, there was a professional relationship that led to Lennon's producing Nilsson's Pussycats in 1974, one of John's few outside musical projects. Nilsson shared his memories and outrage with contributing editor Barry Alfonso.
I met John after the Beatles' publicist Derek Taylor played my first album for him. This was about 1968. Derek called me and asked if I wanted to come over to England and go to a session. I was met at the airport by Ringo's car, and went to Apple, said hello to Derek, and was chauffeured to where John lived, which is now, I think, Ringo's house.
I spent the weekend with John at his house. It was the weekend that Cynthia moved out and Yoko moved in. We spent the night talking about divorce and all that stuff -- 12 hours nonstop. He was like that, always hyper. John wasn't a very relaxed guy. He was always manic. "Let's go. Let's do it." An all-or-nothing person, as far as I knew him.
We were roommates later for a time, sort of like the Odd Couple. This was in 7'5 or so. For a month and a half, a whole bunch of us lived in this beach house in Malibu. John, Ringo, Keith Moon, Mal Evans, and I were there.
After that, John and I went to New York, and he lived in a hotel --at the Pierre for another month and a half. I considered myself his closest friend during that period when he was away from Yoko; when he needed a friend, I was there. I took a lot of the blame for him getting drunk and all that, but I didn't force foul-tasting liquids down his throat. That was his own doing.
I can tell you this: when we were doing the Pussycats album, we were all getting nutso. It was the height of something, the peak of rock and roll madness. We could do anything we wanted to do, but people didn't exactly know what to do with that kind of freedom.
During that period, Keith and John and Ringo and myself were all out there getting crazy. It was a destructive period that everyone went through. And because everyone was doing it, everyone thought it was a thing to do.
When John and I decided to do that album, we started off on the same foot,"Let's make an album and get loaded along the way." At one session, I remember counting just the drums. And between Ringo and Jim Keltner and Keith Moon playing on, I think "Rock Around the Clock", there were 24 drums. We would finish the session, go back to Malibu, and get out of our minds on Amarillo, nitrate, acid, coke, grass, liquor --the works.
And then at one point, when it got too crazy, I lost my chops, and people were sleeping on pool tables. John went, "click." Like that --turned off and became the leader of the band. The producer. He straightened up, and he was great. He did his job. We were working very well. Then it became a race to get the album finished in a month or two. But we did it, and he did a good job. He became the responsible person and was a tremendously creative producer. In fact, he was the only other guy other than myself who tried to get things out of the engineer. He worked with the engineer rather than telling him what to do or letting him do it by himself. He encouraged the guy. I loved that. So in other words, he was a creative producer. Was productive and got a lot of work done in a short time.
He'd wake up in the morning five minutes before you would, and he'd be shining your shoes. I'm serious, literally shining your shoes. Real manic. If he was getting drunk, he was really getting drunk, and if he was getting sober, he was really getting sober.
I know we learned things from each other. We did agree on songs. We shared the opinion that it took a little bit of this and that, a little salt and pepper, a word here and there to make you laugh, to make a song. That's the attitude I still take when writing, and that was the attitude he showed me by his own songwriting.
I remember working on a song we did together, "Old Dirt Road". He had this bit of a song and an idea. We were in the studio, and I went to the piano and finished it. I came over to him with a page of lyrics, and asked him what he thought of them, and he said, "You're flying. Go with it."
That was his attitude. The most important thing I learned from him was to follow through. To finish what you start. You say you're going to send someone a postcard --send a postcard. He always followed through.
I was talking to my wife the other day about his work. She asked me, "What was it that he did?" I said that I really didn't know. If you look at the words of his songs, occasionally, there's a clever line, but they don't look very good on paper. His melodies were probably more important than his words. Yet he was known for his words. A lot of his melodies were like child melodies. I do think he was a great singer, though I don't know that he had a great range. When you put the words and the melodies together, there was the thing that happened-- that synergy. I really couldn't explain it to my wife any more than I can explain it to you, but there it was.
Basically, I'd say what made him great was brains and a sense of humor with heart thrown in. Everyone's going to miss John. You keep saying,"No more wit from John, no more anticipation of what he's going to do next." Christ, he's gone. That makes me angry more than sad.
I only hope that out of this, maybe some good can happen, and that has to do with gun control. We all know what John did, and we all know about his killer, unfortunately. Now, do we all know what we're going to do about it? I want to know what we're going to do about handguns. The answer isn't registration. The answer is to stop the manufacture and distribution of them. The only way to do it is through power, which comes out of signatures and money. I want to take out an ad in the TV Guide about it, put John Lennon's name on it, and say, "If you care, send in this coupon." I've had offers of help. Publisher Lester Sills of Screen Gems has offered to let me use his office. There are people in record companies who have offered to put up money-- artists who are willing to do concerts to help pay for ads. Reminiscing isn't important, but this is.
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