Okay, I tallied up all our votes and came across a list of the Top 10 Beatles songs by Paul. I even have enough spare time before work to copy/paste descriptions of each song from another website... just cuz I felt like it! And also to give you an understand on how each song came about if you don't know yet .
I'd like to get the Lennon songs moving too, so please vote there as well.
Anyway, here are the top 10 Paul Beatles songs:
10th Best Paul Song (tie):
I'm Looking Through You: Paul was annoyed about his missus moving to Bristol, and he said: "I knew it was selfish. It caused a few rows. Jane went off and I said, 'Okay then. Leave. I'll find someone else. but it was shattering to be without her." He described the time in Many Years From Now: "As is one's wont in relationships, you will from time to time argue and not see eye to eye on things, and a couple of the songs around this period were that kind of thing. This one I particularly remember as me being disillusioned over her commitment."
Penny Lane: 'Penny Lane' was the name of a road near Liverpool city centre where Paul used to live when he was a kid. None of the places mentioned in the song are in the actual street -- they're all scattered around a junction near Smithdown Road. Apparently it was just a doll, little shopping center but it must have tugged on their heart-strings, because John's original draft for 'In My Life' mentioned it as well. Paul has since admitted that the lyric is part-fact, and part-fiction. The barbershop existed, and was run by an Italian guy called Mr. Bioletti, and there's a couple of banks and a fire-station down the road. But the shelter in the middle of the roundabout has been torn down now, and replaced with Sgt. Pepper's Bistro.
9th Best Paul Song:
Helter Skelter: Paul based this on a review of The Who's new single 'I Can See For Miles' which went: "This marathon epic of swearing cymbals and cursing guitars marks the return of The Who as a major freak-out force." But if you've ever heard the song then you'll know that it's nothing like that. Paul said: "I read in the Melody Maker that The Who had made some track or other that was the loudest, most raucous rock 'n' roll 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.' So I sat down and wrote 'Helter Skelter' to be the most raucous vocal, the loudest drums, et cetera et cetera. I was using the symbol of a helter skelter as a ride from top to bottom -- the rise and fall of the Roman Empire -- and this was the fall, the demise, the going down."
Hello Goodbye: Paul said that this "almost wrote itself." Alistair Taylor remembered doing it: "Shortly after he split from Jane, I was over at his house and there was just the two of us. He'd call me up for a chat and we'd hit the scotch and Coke together. Not too hard, you understand, just hard enough to make us relax a little. I was idly marvelling at his gift for song-writing and he said, 'Have you ever thought about writing a song? There is really nothing to it. It's dead easy, anyone can do it. Look, let's write a song together.' So he marched me into the dining room where he had a wonderful old hand-carved wooden harmonium. It was a little organ and you had to pump air into it with big pedals. He lifted the lid and said, 'Right, you get on that end and I'll be on this end.' We both had to pedal like mad to get it going. 'Just hit any note you like ont he keyboard and I'll do the same," he said. "And whenever I shout a word, you shout the opposite.' So we got this rhythm going, just banging away on the keys. 'Black,' he started. 'White,' I replied. 'Yes,' he said. 'No.' 'Good.' 'Bad.' 'Hello.' 'Goodbye.' And a day or so later, Paul arrived in the office with a demo. One interesting thing to note is that Paul always sings the postive thing, and the "you is the downer (singing 'no', 'go' and goodbye' etc).
7th Best Paul Song:
Blackbird: Paul was inspired to write this in India, after a bird woke him up at six in the morning. Charles Manson didn't like it much either, and set his followers killing women after taking it as a metaphor for black/white race relations. Paul said as much in 2002: "It was written when there were a lot of troubles in the southern states, over civil rights. I don't know if any of you know, but in England we sometimes call girls 'birds'... and I kind of wrote this song with that in mind." But on a light note... Paul played it to the fans camped outside his house the first night Linda Eastman slept over.
6th Best Paul Song:
For No One: Paul wrote this on holiday with Jane Asher in Switzerland. He was originally going to call it 'Why Did It Die?'. Alan Civil was paid fifty-two quid for his horn solo part.
5th Best Paul Song:
Oh! Darling: Paul sang this in the bath for a week before committing it to tape, because "I wanted it to sound like I'd been doing it on stage all week."
Eleanor Rigby: They wrote this in John's house, sitting round the telly with a few mates. The name started out as 'Ola Na Tungee' ("ola Na Tungee/Blowing his mind in the dark/With a pipe full of clay/No-one can say") and 'Miss Daisy Hawkins' ("A bit like Annabel Lee, but not so sexy," said Paul). And the priest was 'Father McCartney' -- until Pete Shotton pointed out that everyone would think that they were talking about Paul's dad. So they changed it to 'MacKenzie' instead (which they chose at random from a telephone book). "He was just as I imagined him," said Paul, "...lonely, darning his socks. We weren't sure if the song was going to go on. In the next verse we thought of having a bin man, an old fella going through the dustbins, but it got too involved -- embarrassing. John and I wondered whether to have Eleanor Rigby and him having a thing going, but we couldn't really see how. But that was the point anyway. She didn't make it: she never made it with anyone."
3rd Best Paul Song:
Let It Be: Let It Be was one of the few on the LP to be over-dubbed (because the original idea was to record every song live) but George cocked up the solo, and had to do a new one in April. When Glyn Johns was told to remake the album eight months later he ordered George in for another attempt, but decided to stick with his April effort. And it was in this form that the song was released as a single in March 1970. That wasn't quite the end of it, however, because when Johns' second attempt at the LP was also dumped, Phil Spector was saddled with the unenviable task of rescuing the album. And for some bizarre reason, he decided to re-mix a song that was already riding high in the charts! He decided to mix in George's brand-new solo and lengthen the whole thing by repeating part of the final chorus. And it's this version that appears on the LP. Paul was famously scathing about it, and even John admitted that Spector got "a little fruity with Let It Be." When Paul talks about his "mother Mary" he's actually talking about hisreal mother, not the Virgin Mary. He said: "I used to lie in bed and wonder what was going on and felt quite paranoid. One night during this tense time I had a dream that I saw my mum, who'd been dead ten years or so. It was so wonderful for me and she was very reassuring. In the dream she said, 'It'll be all right.' I'm not sure if she used the words 'Let it be' but that was the gist of her advice, it was 'Don't worry too much, it will turn out okay.' It was such a sweet dream and that got me writing the song 'Let IT Be'." Nevertheless, John hated the song for it's 'perceived' Christian overtones, and book-ended it between a song about a Liverpool whore ('Maggie Mae') and a kid taking the piss ("And now we'd like to do Hark The Angels Come. This snippet was actually taken from a session on the 24th, and the next song they played wasn't 'Let It Be' at all... it was 'Get Back'!
Yesterday: This supposedly came to Paul in a dream one night. But he couldn't believe that it came out perfect, almost in one go, so he presumed that he'd 'subconsciously' remembered it from somewhere else. "So for about a month I went round to people in the music business and asked them whether they had ever heard it before," he said. "It became like handing something in to the police. I thought if no-one claimed it after a few weeks then I could have it." He started out calling it 'Scarambled Eggs' and had the lines "Scrambled eggs/Oh my baby how I love your legs" and was singing it while they were filming Help!. He eventually managed to piss everyone off and it got to the point where Dick Lester said: "If you play that bloody song any longer I'll have the piano taken off stage. Either finish it or give up!" and it wasn't until he was on holiday in Bruce Welch's flat that he came up with the final lyrics.
Paul wrote this for John's little kid, Julian, because they were going through a painful divorce at the time. He said: "I originally thought of it whilst driving my car out to visit Cynthia and Julian after John's divorce from them. We'd been very good friend for millions of years and I thought it was a bit much for them to suddenly be personae non gratae and out of my life, so I decided to pay them a visit and say, 'How are you doing? What's happening?'... I always feel sorry for kids in divorce. The adults may be fine but the kids... I had the idea by the time I got there. I knew it was not going to be easy for him. I started with the idea 'Hey Jules', which was Julian, don't make it bad, take a sad song and make it better. Hey, try and deal with this terrible thing, you know." Cynthia remembered: "I was truly surprised when, one afternoon, Paul arrived on his own. I was touched by his obvious concern for our welfare and even more moved when he presented me with a single red rose accompanied by a jokey remark about our future: 'How about it, Cyn. How about you and me getting married?' We both laughed at the thought of the world's reaction to an announcement like that being let loose. On his journey down he composed 'Hey Jude' in the car. I will never forget Paul's gesture of care and concern in coming to see us. It made me feel important and loved, as opposed to feeling discarded and obsolete." He was originally going to call it 'Hey Jules', but changed it to 'Hey Jude' because it was easier to sing. (And Saint Jude happens to be the patron saint of lost causes as well -- which was handy!) John thought it was a song about himL "If you think about it... Yoko's just come into the picture, and Paul's saying, 'Hey Jude -- hey, John.' I know I'm sounding like one of those fans who reads things into it, but you can hear it as a song to me. The words 'go out and get her' -- subconsciously he was saying, 'Go ahead, leave me.' On a conscious level he didn't want me to go ahead. The angel in him was saying, 'Bless you.' The devil in him didn't like it at all, but he didn't want to lose his partner." When they performed this on The Frost Programme, they had such a fabulous time that they thought about doing another gig -- which is where the idea for Get Back originated.
Well, that's it! Your votes made this happen. Thanks to all who participated.
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