Inteviews
"All Paul" - Sunday Times - London, September 18, 1966. (Thanks to Agustina for this interview!!)
"Paul McCartney Interview" - Life Magazine - April, 1971. Cool!!
Sunday
Times,
London,
September 18, 1966
All
Paul
Paul
McCartney was in his new mansion in St. John's Wood. He lives alone. A Mr. and
Mrs. Kelly look after him. Nothing so formal as housekeeper and buttler. Their
job, he says, is to fit in.
The house has
a huge wall and an electrically-operated black door to keep out non-Beatle life.
Inside there is some carefully chosen elderly furniture. Nothing flash,
affective or even expensive-looking. The dining room table was covered with a
white lace tablecloth. Very working-class posh.
Mr. McCartney,
along with Mr. Lennon, is the author of a song called "Eleanor Rigby."
No pop song of the moment has better words or music.
"I was
sitting at the piano when I thought of it. Just like Jimmy Durante. The first
few bars just came to me. And I got this name in my head--Daisy Hawkins, picks
up the rice in the church where a wedding has been. I don't know why.
"I can
hear a whole song in one chord . In fact, I think you can hear a whole song in
one note, if you listen hard enough. But nobody ever listens hard enough.
"OK, so
that's the Joan of Arc bit. I couldn't think of much more, so I put it away for
a day. Then the name Father McCartney came to me--and all the lonely people. But
I thought people would think it was supposed to be my Dad, sitting knitting his
socks. Dad's a happy lad. So I went through the telephone book and I got the
name McKenzie.
"I was in
Bristol when I decided Daisy Hawkins wasn't a good name. I walked round looking
at the shops and I saw the name Rigby. You got that? Quick pan to Bristol. I can
just see this all as a Hollywood musical....
"Then I
took it down to John's house in Weybridge. We sat around, laughing, got stoned
and finished it off. I though of the backing, but it was George Martin who
finished it off. I just go bash, bash on the piano. He knows what I mean.
"All our
songs come out of our imagination. There never was an Eleanor Rigby.
"One of
us might think of a song completely, and the other just add a bit. Or we might
write alternate lines. We never argue. If one of us says he doesn't like a bit,
the other agrees. It just doesn't matter that much. I care about being a song
writer. But I don't care passionately about each song.
"'Eleanor'
is a big development as a composition. But doesn't mean 'Yellow Submarine' is
bad. It was written as a commercial song, a kid's song. People have said,
'Yellow Submarine? What's the significance? What's behind it?' Nothing. Kids get
it straight away. I was playing with my little stepsister the other day, looking
through a book of Salvador Dali. She said, 'Oh look, a soft watch.' She accepted
it. She wasn't frightened or worried. Kids have got it. It's only later they get
messed up.
"I tried
once to write a song under another name, just to see if it was the
Lennon-McCartney bit that sold our songs. I called myself Bernard Webb--I was a
student in Paris and very unavailable for interviews. The song was 'Woman,' for
Peter and Gordon. They made it a big hit. Then it came out it was me. I realized
that when I saw a banner at a concert saying 'Long Live Bernard Webb.'
"We'd
need a properly controlled experiment to find out how much our names really mean
now, but I can't be bothered.
"I can't
really play the piano, or read or write music. I've tried three times in my life
to learn, but never kept it up for more than three weeks. The last bloke I went
to was great. I'm sure he could teach me a lot. I might go back to him. It's
just the notation--the way you write down notes, it doesn't look like music to me.
"John's
now trying acting again, and George has got his passion for the sitar and all
the Indian stuff. He's lucky. Like somebody's luck who's got religion. I'm just
looking for something I enjoy doing. There's no hurry. I have the time and the
money.
"People
think we're not conceited, but we are. If you ask me of I worte good or bad
songs, I'd be thick to say bad, wouldn't I? It's true we're lucky, but we got
where we are because of we did.
"The
girls waiting outside. I don't despise them. I don't think fans are humilliating
themselves. I queued up at the Liverpool Empire for Wee Willie Harris's
autograph. I wanted to do it. I don't think I was being stupid.
"I can go
out and around more than people think, withouht being recognised. People never
really believe it's you. They don't really expect to see you in the street, so
you can get away with it.
"I think we can go on as the Beatles for as long as we want to, writing songs, making records. We're still developing. I've no ambitions, just enjoy to myself. We've had all the ego bit, all about wanting to be remembered. We couldn't do any better than we've done already, could we?"
***
Interviewed
in Los Angeles during a recording session for his upcoming album entitled 'Ram,'
Paul McCartney speaks about the Beatle breakup, and his new life.
PAUL: "The whole Beatle thing-- it's like it was all years ago--
like going back a distance more than anything. And that's the whole point. The
Beatles are really finished, over with, and it's just each of us alone now,
living our lives the way we choose. I think while the Beatles were on-- I can't
really use any other word-- while they were just on, there was no question of
any of these normal hangups interfering with it because we just had an
understanding. It's like a married couple. When we started off we were all
aiming for pretty much the same thing. I think the troubles really began when we
weren't aiming anymore for the same thing, which began, I think, when we stopped
touring in 1966. During the making of the White Album, Ringo left the group
saying he wasn't 'getting through' to the rest of us. But he came back in two
days. By the time we made Abbey Road, John and I were openly critical of each
other's music and I felt John wasn't much interested in performing anything he
hadn't written himself. When we made the 'Let It Be' album, George walked out
over a row about the performance of some songs-- and said he was leaving the
group. A few days later there was a meeting at Ringo's house, and he agreed to
come back at least until the recording was finished."
"So
I felt the split coming. And John kept saying we were musically standing still.
One night-- this was the autumn of '69-- Linda and I were lying there, talking
about it, and I thought, 'That's what I miss, and what they miss too-- Playing.'
Because we hadn't actually played for anyone for a long time. And being an
actual good musician requires this contact with people all the time. The human
thing. So I came into the idea of going to village halls which hold a couple of
hundred people. Have someone book the hall and put up posters saying, maybe,
'Ricky and Redstreaks, Saturday Night.' And we'd just turn up there in a van and
people would arrive and we'd be there. I thought that was great. John said,
'You're daft.'"
"At
this time John's thing was playing for 200,000 people because he'd been at a big
festival or something. So he wanted to do that. And I can see now what he
thought. I can see which way John sees progress. I see it sometimes another
way."
"We
were talking in the Apple offices. Ringo was there-- he agreed-- and maybe
George wasn't there. So then John says, 'Anyway, I'm leaving the group.' He
said, 'I want a divorce.' He literally said, 'I want a divorce.' And for the
first time ever, he meant it. So that just hit everyone. All of us realized that
this great thing that we'd been part of was no longer to be. This was the chop.
That hits anyone, no matter what it is. It's like leaving school, and you love
it then it hits like a chop. Or whatever your thing is. Our thing was the
Beatles."
"The
Beatle way of life was like a young kid entering the big world, entering it with
friends and conquering it totally. And that was fantastic. An incredible
experience. So when that idea really came that we should break up, I don't think
any of us wanted to accept it. It was the end of the legend, even in our own
minds. Marilyn Monroe gets to believe eventually that she's Marilyn Monroe. Now
I feel that's how the Beatles got to be-- I'm just speaking for me. You were
very much a Beatle in your own eyes, and to an extent we all still are. Thinking
back, I think it was great what John said. And he told us, 'Look everything sort
of comes together right.' And now I agree. We'd just made this album and it was
to be called 'Get Back' and on the cover was a photograph showing us in exactly
the same position as in the first album we'd made-- the whole lettering and the
background was exactly reproduced. So John said, 'It's a perfect circle, you
know.' I think what John did was tremendous from the point of view of 'Okay, so
we are actually going to go our own ways.' You just can't be as tied together as
we were for so long a period of time, unless you all live in the same house.
From then onward it was to be a question of living your own life, which was the
first real turn-on for me in a long time-- and this coincided with my meeting
Linda. So early in 1970 I phoned John and told him I was leaving the Beatles
too. He said, 'Good! That makes two of us who have accepted it mentally.'"
"I
do think if it were just up to the four of us, if we were totally unencumbered,
we would have had a dissolution-- I hate these heavy terms-- the day after John
said he was leaving. We would have picked up our bags-- these are my shoes,
that's my ball, that's your ball-- and gone. And I still maintain that's the
only way, to actually go and do that, no matter what things are involved on a
business level. But of course we aren't four fellows. We are part of a big
business machine. Even though the Beatles have really stopped, the Beatle thing
goes on-- repackaging the albums, putting tracks together in different forms,
and the video coming in. So that's why I've had to sue in the courts to dissolve
the Beatles, to do on a business level what we should have done on a
four-fellows level. I feel it just has to come. We used to get asked at press
conferences, 'What are you going to do when the bubble bursts?' When I talked to
John just the other day, he said something about, 'Well, the bubble's going to
burst.' And I said, 'It has burst. That's the point. That's why I've had to do
this, why l had to apply to the court. You don't think I really enjoy doing that
kind of stuff. I had to do it because the bubble has burst-- everywhere but on
paper.' That's the only place we're tied now."
"You
see, there was a partnership contract put together years ago to hold us together
as a group for 10 years. Anything anybody wanted to do-- put out a record,
anything-- he had to get the others' permission. Because of what we were then,
none of us ever looked at it when we signed it. We signed it in '67 and
discovered it last year. We discovered this contract that bound us for 10 years.
So it's 'Oh gosh, Oh golly, Oh heck,' you know. 'Now, boys, can we tear it up,
please?' But the trouble is, the other three have been advised not to tear it
up. They've been advised that if they tear it up, there will be serious, bad
consequences for them. The point, though, to me was that it began to look like a
three-to-one vote, which is what in fact happened at a couple of business
meetings. It was three to one. That's how Allen Klein got to be the manager of
Apple, which I didn't want. But they didn't need my approval."
"Listen,
it's not the boys. It's not the other three. The four of us, I think, still
quite like each other. I don't think there is bad blood, not from my side
anyway. I spoke to the others quite recently and there didn't sound like any
from theirs. So it's a business thing. It's Allen Klein. Early in '69 John took
him on as business manager and wanted the rest of us to do it too. That was just
the irreconcilable difference between us."
"Klein
is incredible. He's New York. He'll say 'Waddaya want? I'll buy it for you.' I
guess there's alot I really don't want to say about this, but it will come out
because we had to sort of document the stuff for this case. We had to go and
fight-- which I didn't want, really. All summer long in Scotland I was fighting
with myself as to whether I should do anything like that. It was murderous. I
had a knot in my stomach all summer. I tried to think of a way to take Allen
Klein to court, or to take a businessman to court. But the action had to be
brought against the other three."
"I
first said, 'No, we can't do that. We'll live with it.' But all those little
things kept happening, such trivia compared to what has happened, but the kind
of things that... well, for example, my record McCartney came out. Linda and I
did it totally-- the record, the cover the ads-- everything presented to the
record company. Then there started to appear these little advertisements. On the
bottom was 'On Apple Records,' which was okay. But somebody had also come along
and slapped on 'An Abkco-managed company.' Now that is Klein's company and has
nothing to do with my record. It's like Klein taking part of the credit for my
record."
"Maybe
that sounds petty, but I can go into other examples of this kind of thing. The
build-up is the thing-- All these things continuously happening making me feel
like I'm a junior with the record company, like Klein is the boss and I'm
nothing. Well, I'm a senior. I figure my opinion is as good as anyone's,
especially when it's my thing. And it's emotional. You feel like you don't have
any freedom. I figured I'd have to stand up for myself eventually or get pushed
under. The income from the McCartney album is still being held by Apple, and
Linda and I are the only ones on the record. John has a new record out with a
song called 'Power to the People.' There's a line in it-- sort of shouting to
the government-- 'Give us what we own.' And to me Apple's the government thing.
Give me what I own."
"So
then we began to talk again about the suit, over and over. I just saw that I was
not going to get out of it. From my last phone conversation with John, I think
he sees it like that. He said, 'Well, how do you get out?'"
"My
lawyer, John Eastman, he's a nice guy and he saw the position we were in, and he
sympathized. We'd have these meetings on top of hills in Scotland, we'd go for
long walks. I remember when we actually decided we had to go and file suit. We
were standing on this big hill which overlooked a loch-- it was quite a nice
day, a bit chilly-- and we'd been searching our souls. Was there any other way?
And we eventually said, 'Oh, we've got to do it.' The only alternative was seven
years with the partnership-- going through those same channels for seven
years."
"And
I've changed. The funny thing about it is that I think alot of my change has
been helped by John Lennon. I sort of picked up on his lead. John had said,
'Look, I don't want to be that anymore. I'm going to be this.' And I thought,
'That's great.' I liked the fact he'd done it, and so I'll do it with my thing.
He's given the okay. In England, if a partnership isn't rolling along and
working-- like a marriage that isn't working-- then you have reasonable grounds
to break it off. It's great! Good old British justice! But before I went into
this, I had to check out in my mind, is there such a thing as justice? Like I
throw myself into the courts I could easily get caught-- tell the story, put it
all in there, and then justice turns around and... I mean, these days people
don't believe in justice. I really think the truth does win, but it's not a
popular thought. But then all my life I've been in love with goodies, as against
the baddies."
"You
can read the other boys' side to find out I'm the stinker. I think I'm right.
But don't we all! You couldn't believe it! It's a movie! Because I've had to
take this action against the others, it looks like we can't stand each other. I
can really only speak for myself, but I still like the other three. And maybe
it's deeper than 'like.' But at the moment, I'm not stuck on them. I'm not
pleased. We are not amused at the moment! I am not loving them. But I know when
it's over I will really like them."
"People
said, 'It's a pity that such a nice thing had to come to such a sticky end.' I
think that too. It is a pity. I like fairy tales. I'd love it to have had the
Beatles go up in a little cloud of smoke and the four of us just find ourselves
in magic robes, each holding an envelope with our stuff in it. But you realize
that you're in real life, and you don't split up a beautiful thing with a
beautiful thing. I ignored John's interview in Rolling Stone (1971). I looked at
it and dug him for saying what he thought. But to me, short of getting it off
his chest, I think he blows it with that kind of thing. I think it makes people
wonder why John needs to do that."
"I
did think there were an awful lot of inconsistencies, because on one page you
find John talking about how Dylan changed his name from Zimmerman and how that's
hypocritical. But John changed his name to John Ono Lennon. And people looking
at that just begin to think, 'Come on, what is this?'"
"But
the interview didn't bug me. It was so far out that I enjoyed it, actually. I
know there are elements of truth in what he said. And this open hostility, that
didn't hurt me. That's cool. That's John."
"I
can't really describe what direction I'm going in musically, because it's
ever-changing-- and that's what it's all about. I have my personal influences,
and they come from everywhere, from age nothing to today. Sounds I heard on the
radio. Sounds I heard my father play on the piano. Sounds I found myself in rock
and roll. Sounds that the group made. My music is all that-- very personal--
especially now that it's one person putting it down instead of four. I do what I
feel. Make myself comfortable. It's a good job to have."
"Linda
and I have been writing songs together-- and my publishers are suing because
they don't believe she wrote them with me. You know, suddenly she marries him
and suddenly she's writing songs. 'Oh, sure-- wink, wink-- Oh, sure, she's
writing songs.' But actually one day I just said to her, 'I'm going to teach you
how to write if I have to just strap you to the piano bench. I'm going to teach
you the way I write music' --because I never write music anyway. I just write by
ear. And I like to collaborate on songs. If I have to just go out in another
room and write-- it is too much like work-- like doing your homework. If I can
have Linda working with me, then it becomes like a game. It's fun. So we wrote
about 10 songs and then we discovered that it was becoming too much like work.
We were getting serious about writing. And I've never been serious."
"When
we decided to do the new album, we wanted to make it fun, because it isn't worth
doing anything if you can't have fun doing it. The album will be out early in
May, and then I'm thinking about getting a band together-- another band--
because I don't like to just sit around. I really like to play music."
"My
musical direction-- I'm trying for music that isn't too romantic, yet contains a
romantic thing. I personally don't like things to be too cute-- except babies.
My music comes off best, I think, when there's hard and soft together."
"The
best things are often the free bits, and that gets very tricky. I go out into
the studio and I know I'm going to ad-lib. If I announce I'm going to ad-lib, I
can't ad-lib because I'm no longer ad-libbing. So I've just got to go out there
and improvise, and someone's got to be in there in the control room very
cleverly thinking, 'He's going to ad-lib now, I'd better tape it.' It's very
hard because good things get missed. Last night I was doing a real ad-lib and I
was in a great mood and I was exploring what there was to be done-- and they
missed it. The next time around when they tried the tape, I wasn't exploring any
longer. I was trying to repeat past glories, and that doesn't work. But there
are compensations. Sometimes you don't want to share those moments. Okay, the
record-buying public didn't hear it, but you and I did. That's beautiful. That's
real. The moment was temporary like everything is. Nothing in life really stays.
And it's beautiful that they go. They have to go in order for the next thing to
come. You can almost add beauty to a thing by accepting that it's
temporary."
"I
suppose musically I'm competing with the other three, whether I like it or not.
It's only human to compete. But I think it's good for us. I think George has
shown recently that he was no dummy. I think we're really good, each one of us,
individually. You know, there's like three periods in my life. There's the time
when I was at school and just after leaving it. That was when I used to read
alot-- Dylan Thomas, paperbacks, alot of plays, Tennessee Williams, things my
literature master had turned me onto. I used to sit on the top level of buses,
reading and smoking a pipe. Then there was the whole sort of Beatle thing. And
just now again I feel I can do what I want. So it's like there was me, then the
Beatles phase, and now I'm me again."
"It's
rather serious-- life. And you can't live as if you have nine lives. I find
myself doing that often. I think everybody does, saying in his mind, 'I'll get
it tomorrow.' But I can't do that anymore. Take One with the Beatles should have
been like I said, with a puff of smoke and magic robes and envelopes. But we
missed Take One, so now we do Take Two. And in the disappointment of Take Two--
I feel I can always find something good in the bad-- the good thing is that it
really has made me come to terms more with my life. As a married couple, Linda
and I've really become closer because of all those problems, all the decisions.
It's been very real what I've been through-- a breath of air, in a way-- because
of having been through very inhuman things."
"The
Beatle thing was fantastic. I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful. But it
was a very sheltered life. Why, somebody would even ring me up in the morning
and say, 'You've got to be at Apple in an hour.' It got very nursemaidy. If you
are a real human, you've got to wake yourself up. You've got to take on these
tedious little things because out of the tedium comes the joy of life. I got fed
up by Apple this year over Christmas trees. 'Did we want one, because the office
was buying Christmas trees for everyone?' I hated that. Actually we pinched one
from a field in Scotland."
"I
love my life now because I'm doing much more ordinary things, and to me that
brings great joy. We're more ordinary than ordinary people sometimes."
"In
New York, we go to Harlem on the subway-- a great evening at the Apollo. We walk
through Central Park after hours. You may find us murdered one day. Last time we
went it was snowy like moonlight in Vermont-- just fantastic. And I figure
anyone who scares me, I scare him."
"We
try never to organize our lives very much. We do things on the spur of the
moment. We were in Scotland and we decided to take a trip to the Shetland
Islands. So we piled in the Land Rover with the two kids, our English sheep dog,
Martha, and a whole pile of stuff in the back with Mary's potty on the top. On
the second day we get up to a little port called Scrabster at the top of
Scotland. When we tried to get on the big car ferry, we got in queue but were
two cars too late-- missed it. So, don't despair. Okay, make the best of it. We
really didn't want to go on that big liner, a mass-produced thing. So we
thought, let's beat the liner. But we gave that up-- it became a bit difficult
with airplanes and such. Let's try to get a ride in one of the little fishing
boats, and how much should we offer."
"So
the romantic idea was that they'd rather have a salmon or a bottle of Scotch
than the 30 pounds. I went to a bunch of boats but they weren't going to the
Orkney Islands. So I went on this one and I went to this trapdoor sort of thing,
and they were sleeping down below-- the smell of sleep is coming up through the
door. At first the skipper said no, and then I said there was 30 quid in it for
him, and they say they'll take us. It was a fantastic little boat called the
Enterprise and the captain named George, he's wearing a beautiful Shetland
sweater. We brought all our stuff aboard and it was low tide, so we had to lower
Martha in a big fishing net and a little crowd gathers and we wave our
farewells. As we steam out, the skipper gives us some beer, and Linda, trying to
be one of the boys takes a swig and passes it to me. Well, you shouldn't drink
before a rough crossing to the Orkneys. The little one, Mary, throws up all over
the wife, as usual. That was it. I was already feeling sick. I sort of gallantly
walked to the front of the boat, hanging onto the mast. The skipper comes up and
we're having light talk, light chit-chat. And I don't want it. So he gets the
idea and points to the fishing baskets and says, 'Do it in there!' So we were
all sick, but we ended up in the Orkney Islands, and we took a plane to
Shetland. It was great."
"We
do things like that-- do it sort of eccentricordinary because we have got the
money to do it eccentric. I always wondered what happened to those maharajahs
who used to do things. But there never are really any of those people. So we try
and do a bit of it in our own lives."
"People
do recognize us sometimes, but they respect our privacy. It's a beautiful thing.
If you come on as a star, you get star treatment and all the disadvantages. But
often, when we dress in dungarees and sneakers-- Last night we got turned out of
two restaurants. The guy in an evening suit turns us out. But I quite like it
when they chuck us out."
"I
love to find that, even in this day of concrete, there are still alive horses
and places where grass grows in unlimited quantities and sky has got clear air
in it. Scotland has that. It's just there without anyone touching it. It just
grows. I'm relieved to find that it isn't all pollution. It isn't all the
Hudson. It's not all the drug problem. When we are in Scotland we plant stuff--
vegetables-- and we'll leave them there, and of their own volition they will
push up. And not only will they push up and grow into something, but then they
will be good to eat. To me that's an all-time thing. That's fantastic. How
clever! Just that things push their own way up and they feed you. We don't eat
meat because we've got lambs on the farm, and we just ate a piece of lamb one
day and suddenly realized we were eating a bit of one of those things that was
playing outside the window, gamboling peacefully. But we're not strict. I don't
want to put a big sign on me, 'Thou Shalt Be Vegetarian.' I like to allow
myself. I like to give myself a lucky break. Give yourself a lucky break,
son."
"So I think you've got to live your own life. That sounds like one of those statements, but it is, in fact, just very necessary to realize that. And particularly necessary for me. Or else someone else is going to be living part of your life for you. But now I would like to stop talking and get up and get to work. I haven't done any today, and it's beginning to frustrate me. I've got that album to finish. We've got to get back to plant the seeds. Nature doesn't wait."