Face to Face with Paul McCartney
BY LINE ABRAHAMIAN
from November, 2005 Canadian Reader's Digest
http://www.readersdigest.ca/mag/2005/10/paul_mccartney.php
RD: Your new album has been billed as being "more you." What does that mean?
McCartney: When the producer, Nigel Godrich, and I first met, I was talking about directions that it might be fun to go in, new experimental things I might want to try. He said, "I think I want to make a record that's you." He said that's what people want to hear. So I think what it meant in this case was that there are no frills; what you see is what you get. There isn't a lot of elaborate production. I wrote the songs, I sang, I played a lot of the instruments, and I think that makes it more me as well. I think he had that in mind while he was producing the album. As I was doing it, Nigel would say, "I'd like to hear you play the guitar on this." So I'd go and play some guitar. And he'd say, "Oh, I really like that-it's a nice feel. Would you please play some drums on it now?" And gradually this started to be the basis of the album. I've done albums like this before, where I have actually played every instrument-like the first album I did after leaving The Beatles. He really pulled me in that direction.
RD: In terms of the content-the lyrics and messages of your songs-is that still very much you?
McCartney: I think I may be at a point in my life where what I'm going to write about, I want it to be meaningful to me. Sometimes I feel more escapist and I think, Right, let's write a song like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and write about Molly and Desmond, fictional characters, and just escape into a fantasy world. This record doesn't have so much of that; it's not autobiographical, but it's probably more personal.
RD: What song do you think reveals the most, or too much, about you?
McCartney: [Laughs.] I don't think any of them reveal too much or they wouldn't be on the album. Maybe the song "Riding to Vanity Fair." Normally, if I'm hurt, I just swallow it and get on with my life. That's the kind of person I am: I just repress it. But what I've found myself doing more on this album is to put those feelings into the song. So that particular song is about all the times when I've offered friendship to someone and it's been rejected, which happens to everyone, all the time. [Sings] "I was open to friendship, But you didn't seem to have any to spare, While you were riding to Vanity Fair". It's just a way of getting out that hurt. And normally I think that's something for me to deal with privately, but a lot of artists use that kind of stuff. I haven't done too much of that because I find it a bit difficult to do. I'm probably more at home writing a song about something I love.
RD: Back in the '60s and '70s, there was the Vietnam War and the IRA's campaign against the British, and you had songs like "All You Need Is Love" and "Give Peace A Chance." Do these songs still hold true in a world being torn apart by bombings? It seems nothing has changed from the '60s to today-is there any hope in the world?
McCartney: Yeah, I think so. I'm pretty optimistic. Unfortunately history is filled with war and peace. "All You Need Is Love" was a song of its time. When 9/11 happened, I was in New York-at JFK airport-and spent quite a bit of time watching the whole thing unfold on TV. I found myself responding to that, and I wrote "Freedom," which resonated in America.
Read our EXCLUSIVE Canadian interview with Sir Paul McCartney in the November issue of Reader's Digest, where you'll learn what Sir Paul has to say about songwriting, his privacy, John Lennon, and being a guy from Liverpool.
