McCartney: Esquire Interview

Before other websites take a sentence here or there and that's all that gets focused on, here's the interview: http://www.esquire.co.uk/culture/music/8511/paul-mccartney-interview/

LOTS of Beatles chat, regarding credit switching and John vs Paul comparisons, fate and luck, whether happiness is the enemy of art, staying working class, singing autobiographical songs onstage, the drive to succeed, how to handle (and enjoy) attention, and what lyric of his means the most... Some - not completely - random selections of interviewer observations rather than the interview itself are what I've posted below, just because those are sometimes easily skipped over but can be interesting nevertheless, even just to see how he's viewed.



The (mostly) fond caricature of McCartney as pop culture’s slightly embarrassing uncle – Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft, as Smash Hits famously had it – seems pretty comprehensively wide of the mark. Yes, in public when the mood takes him he makes silly faces and strikes ironic poses and gives the double thumbs-up. But in private, it seems to me, there is a seriousness of purpose to him. Nobody suffers fools gladly – that’s a ridiculous idea – but most of us do suffer them, out of necessity if for no other reason. McCartney, one guesses from his brisk, no-nonsense manner, is unwilling to suffer fools at all. He certainly has the effect on me of making me want to raise my game, so as not to irritate him, or bore him.

That said, once one is past the initial bedazzlement – Jesus Christ, it’s Paul ****ing McCartney! – he’s extremely good at putting people at ease, loose and chatty and good humoured. He asks questions, makes small talk, cracks jokes, so that it’s almost, almost possible to forget that you’re looking into the eyes of one of the most recognisable people on the planet.

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Each generation struggles to escape the shadow of the one before it. McCartney, I think, rather than an embarrassing uncle, is a sort of dad figure to pop culture, someone whose influence we can’t help but acknowledge, someone we admire – love, even, without always wanting to admit it – but also someone to criticise; someone whose minor faults are exaggerated and whose abundant qualities are diminished or overlooked. Dads can be mortifying, and our relationships with them can be fraught. Paul McCartney, unlike Keith Richards or Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page or, for that matter, John Lennon, grew up to be a respectable family man, happily married, nicely turned out with lovely manners and clean fingernails. He is not a rock renegade. He was never a drug addict, or a womaniser, or a trasher of hotel rooms. He’s a great cultural ambassador for Britain – which is admirable, but not very rock’n’roll.

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McCartney is a talker. He is a storyteller. His anecdotes are big productions. He does the funny voices (Scouse, especially, but also, in my presence, Japanese, American, posh English), he goes into character, he leaps to his feet to act out scenes. During a story about his father, he briefly leaves the room we’re in, then reappears, poking his head around the door and drumming a beat on it with his knuckles, in imitation of his dad when the old man suspected there was something “groovy” going on at home.

McCartney’s conversation is a free flowing river, gentle but unstoppable. You can put your waders on and stand in the middle of it, which is a pleasant thing to do, but it’s very hard to divert its course. Unless you interrupt, quite purposefully, he will talk and talk and talk, without pause. So, as an interviewer with the clock ticking, it is necessary to butt in, quite rudely, to get one’s next question in.

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I left with the impression of a powerful man of energy and intelligence, by turns warm and generous but also sensitive, prickly. He cares deeply what the world thinks of him, he basks in the approbation and he finds the criticism – particularly the Lennon business – maddening and unfair.
(Meanwhile, I googled images of the Queen aged 21 and I can confirm that whatever a “****ing heave” is, she likely had one.)

But if the Q&A makes him sound a bit of a ranter, my brief exchanges with him outside the interviews showed a more playful side. Twice I found myself passing the time with McCartney, backstage in Osaka and between set-ups on the Esquire shoot. Both times he told me a brief anecdote. Both – joyfully – involved dancing.

In Osaka, he regaled me and a few others with details of an end-of-tour bacchanal in Brazil, late last year, at which he threw some shapes on the dancefloor. When I pressed him for details he demonstrated his – quite impressive – 'Gangnam Style' dance. “Oh, I can bust a move, man,” he said. “Don’t you worry about that.”

Then, in London, when I asked if he’d been able to get out and about much in Tokyo, he told me that one afternoon he and Nancy found themselves in a park, standing outside some sort of municipal hall. Inside was a man with a load of 78 records and an old-fashioned gramophone to play them on. He beckoned them over and put on a record for them. 'The Sunny Side of the Street.' Paul and Nancy danced, just the two of them. It was one of those special moments, unexpected and all the more precious for that. It felt magical.

Seventy-two years young, skinny as a teenager, eyes – I imagine – ablaze, Paul sang as they moved. He knew all the words:

“Grab your coat and get your hat,
Leave your worries on the doorstep,
Life can be so sweet,
On the sunny side of the street…”

Nancy (surprised): “You know this song?”

Paul: “Oh, yeah.”

 

Fantastic! And thanks for posting this without the tabloid thread title.

 

ESQ: But it’s something you chafed against for some time. Did it frustrate you, the constant comparisons between you two?

PM: Yeah. I always looked at life from a point of view of the public. I think I’ve got a good sense of that. The Beatles split up and we were sort of all equal. George did his record, John did his, I did mine, Ringo did his. It was as we were during the Beatles’ times. We were equal. When John got shot, aside from the pure horror of it, the lingering thing was, OK, well now John’s a martyr. A JFK. So what happened was, I started to get frustrated because people started to say, “Well, he was The Beatles.” And me, George and Ringo would go, “Er, hang on. It’s only a year ago we were all equal-ish.” Yeah, John was the witty one, sure. John did a lot of great work, yeah. And post-Beatles he did more great work, but he also did a lot of not-great work. Now the fact that he’s now martyred has elevated him to a James Dean, and beyond. So whilst I didn’t mind that – I agreed with it – I understood that now there was going to be revisionism. It was going to be: John was the one. That was basically the thing. And when I would talk to mates they’d say, “Don’t worry. People know [the truth]. It’s OK, they know what you did.” But then strange things would happen. Like Yoko would appear in the press, and I’d read it, and it said [comedy Yoko accent], “Paul did nothing! All he did was book the studio...” Like, “**** you, darling! Hang on! All I did was book the ****ing studio?” Well, OK, now people know that’s not true. But that was just part of it. There was a lot of revisionism: John did this, John did that. I mean, if you just pull out all his great stuff and then stack it up against my not-so-great stuff, it’s an easy case to make.


This is a fantastic read!

 

Nice interview, thanks for sharing.

One bit confuses me, when talking about his sound check - "pulling out a ukulele for Wings’ 'Big Barn Bed' " - I'm presuming that's an error and that they meant to say 'Ram On'?

 

I've heard a version of Big Barn Bed from a soundcheck. The quality was pretty awful, I don't know if I could discern it was a uke or not. Maybe someone here can verify.

 

No, it's "Big Barn Bed":

 

Guess Nancy hasn't heard the bootleg version of "A Day in the Life."

 

OK thanks! I'd like to think he's been reminded of the song whilst reviewing RRS for an upcoming Archive release, but I'm probably getting several years ahead of myself!

 

Is this Esquire issue just for the UK or is it available here in the US version of Esquire? I'd like to pick it up if it is available here in the US.

Haven't read what was posted...but I get tired of Macca interviews that ask the SAME QUESTIONS over and over again...and then you get the same response from Macca over and over again. It's like...yeah, Beatles questions with the same answers. I haven't seen one interview that asks about Wings or his solo stuff. Tired of the same Beatles questions for about 80% of the interview and then him promoting the tour or the latest LP for the other 20%. If that what this interview is like then I will pass. If it's not I will definitely pick it up.

 

One thing is almost certain, you've never heard him say what he says about our Queen. If she reads it she'll either strip him of his knighthood or she'll make him a Lord!

 

Well, from what I've read so far it's the same old same old.

He's told the stories about not wanting to play Beatles songs in the early Wings days; appealing to an audience who want to hear the hits etc for years.

 

I don't think I've ever actually heard Paul say that he wanted to switch the songwriting credits around if their names were going to be listed in full, rather than as "Lennon-McCartney."

 

Yoko used to do what Paul describes here a fair bit, downgrading Paul in an attempt to highlight John's leadership and artistic vision as the main drivers of the Beatles. I don't think she ever said quite what Paul is saying here, she never went quite that far, but something like it went on in the 1980s, and shows up in Philip Norman's Shout (where Yoko was the main interview from inside the circle.)

I read Paul here as talking about the way things were then, rather than now. Yoko still promotes her late husband, but I think the hatchet is well and buried between her and Paul. She might even get a kick out of the "comedy Yoko accent" he employed, she's been known to laugh at herself and how she is perceived by others.

 

So Lennon passing was a disaster for Paul, but not in the way you'd think, no...

 

What? I read this article a couple of hours ago and sure didn't go away with whatever impression you are inferring here.

What is it that you are saying, anyway?

 

Never really thought about it before, but Googling some images of her between 55-65, yeah... I can see how a teenage boy would have been willing to do for Queen and Country.

 

I like the way McCartney acknowledges that some take the few not so great songs that he's done and then compare them to the great songs Lennon has done.

Not fair at all, and some did do this to make their case!

 

It's true that Lennon was canonized following his death, but McCartney clearly hasn't gotten over that; 35 years later.

 

Are we talking Country Matters?

 

I do believe he protests too much.

 

At the very end of Ram On he does the opening verse of BBB, on the LP. I'm guessing he probably only had a couple of lines written before he turned it into a whole song. Paul wrote more than a few songs that way.

 

I don't think McCartney has anything to worry about. I think time will show him in the correct light, he needn't worry anymore about Lennon's name coming first. I think that's why he is so visible these last few years, he's going to make sure everyone alive knows who he is and what he does. I don't believe it's because "it's what I do, it's my job".

 

Actually that is a conclusion you chose to leap to. He makes quite clear in the interview that he IS over it and that there's nothing he can do about it. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have lingering pain over the experience of having his work and contributions demeaned. IMO, all he does here is explain what his thinking was on these issues. What I read was a man discussing how HE was affected professionally by the canonization of St. Lennon and the John-was-the-Beatles Myth that prevailed until the mid-to-late 1990s when things started to balance out more (thanks to research by people like Mark Lewisohn and books like Revolution in the Head).

Good grief. I knew some people would pour over this interview (as they always do) looking for evidence of insult. But it just ain't there. Paul is mostly talking -- quite honestly -- about himself and his own views on these same issues that continue to get debated endlessly by fans in this very forum.

 

If he was over it he would of course not go on about it. I'm not sure what you mean by "insult".

 

Some might pore over it, but I doubt if many will be pouring over it.
[But I guess it's a mute point. If that jives with you.]