Paul McCartney Chaos and Creation in the Backyard interview Transcript
Recorded in Air Studios, London, with Gary Crowley, in July 2005.
So, Paul, another new album. After all this time, do you still get the buzz, the same excitement on releasing an new CD?
PM Releasing isn’t my favourite bit because you’re letting your baby go. Making it is, that’s great, you know, the whole creative process. Releasing it’s a bit more difficult, you’ve got to sort of think about promoting it and doing this that and the other and it’s not necessarily what you got into it for and also then you’re letting it go and people have all these opinions that you don’t necessarily agree with, you know, someone just said to me the other day, ‘One of these tracks this is about this, so and so, isn’t it?’ I went, ‘No.’ It was like Oh Dear this is going to start happening now but I’ve enjoyed making the album and the idea of releasing it is great because people will get it, mah people will get it, you know, but all the chat that goes on outside it, you know, that’s not my favourite bit.
If each album you make presents a new and different challenge, what was the challenge that this album presented? (NB ‘Nigel’ = Producer Nigel Godrich).
Yeah, you know, it’s the strangest thing even with The Beatles you thought, ‘O.K., we’ve made a big album’, let’s say like Revolver or something, and we thought, ‘Now we know how to make albums. This is going to be easy.’ You go back in to make the next one and you go, ‘How do we do this? And you’ve really got to get up to speed again and so I always used to play the last album just to see where we were up to, you know. It is different every time and it’s, you know, I just realized every time, I don’t know how to do this but I’m glad. I wouldn’t want to know how to do it, you know. And this time the challenge was to do something good. I actually said to myself, ‘I’m going to make a good album.’ Normally you say, ‘I hope I’ll make a good one,’ or ‘I’d like to make a good ‘un.’ I just actually really put my foot in it this time to myself and said, ‘I’m going to make a really good album’ because I knew there was some prospect of me going out on tour and I thought, ‘I’m going to go out with a really good album that I’m very pleased with so I met up with Nigel and he agreed that that was sort of what he wanted to do as well so we set about it.
Are you any clearer, after all these years of writing great popular music, where the songs actually come from? And do you wonder?
Erm, yeah, you always do, you know, and I don’t wanna know. That’s the nice thing about it. I actually don’t wanna know because that’s what makes it always fascinating, to just have nothing, be sitting here, pick up your guitar and then after an hour or two you suddenly have like got a song and, if it works, some people are going to go, ‘I love that one.’ Or whatever and it’s like, ‘Wow, yes’, it’s like baking a great cake or something, you know, so yeah, I’ve no idea where it comes from. It comes from my love of music, I think that’s the starting point. I was talking to Keith Richards not so long ago and he was saying, ‘You know, man,’ he was saying, ‘we started off listening to music. None of this writing it and singing it. What we used to do was listen to it.’ And he was very right, you know, then we started playing it and singing it and then eventually writing it. I think it comes from this love of listening to what you think is great music so it just gets a beautiful sort of feeling going in you. Everyone loves music, feels that feeling and that’s what’s special about it. It’s kind of mystical. Why do these combinations of vibrations, why do they affect us so much? How do they really affect our emotions? I mean, I can’t hear God Only Knows without welling up, you know. It’s just one of those songs for me. It’s just so special, you know, and it’s something to do with the words, something to do with the chord changes, something to do with the record, but it’s mystical, you know, so I love that, I really love that about what I do and when people say, ‘Why do you still do it, man?’ and, you know, ‘Aren’t you jaded ? Aren’t you fed up?’ I go, ‘No.’ Sometimes I wish I was. I could go on holiday. But I love it. I really love it. I’m really looking forward to going on tour, America, because then you get the feedback from your audience as well as all this stuff but, yeah, I don’t know how it happens, I don’t know how it works, and I think a lot of people if you talk to them about how they make their music there’s a kind of mystical element in it which I think is , great. I mean, how lucky to be in a job where there’s that kind of an element, you know, rather than just boring, very mundane and I do feel it’s hugely lucky, you know. .
How if at all have your vocal delivery and range changed over the years?
It has changed, yeah. I listen to old records and my voice is different but the funny thing is, you know, when I come to do some of those old songs live I still do them in the same key. When I did Live8 someone said, ‘Is Helter Skelter still in the same key?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ I have a very innocent way of thinking about singing because a lot of people don’t and will talk about ways to sing and from your diaphragm and I kind of do that naturally, I think, the diaphragm bit so I think that is true but I have a very simple view of singing. It’s like, ‘Just do it. Don’t think about it too much and just sort of…’ so I just get on with it and it’s always been like that. I remember doing, recording er, I think it was Kansas City with The Beatles and I was, (Clears throat) I’m gonnaand it was like, you’ve gotta kind of get out of this person who’s talking quite sensibly and you’ve gotta go, (Shouts) ‘Well I Well!’ and you’ve gotta like go somewhere and I always used to say, ‘It comes out of the top of your head and talking to John about it and (sings) I don’t know, it just comes out of the top of my head. I remember I was having trouble with it (sings) ‘Kansas City’ and I couldn’t let go, you know and he came down in Abbey Road and said, ‘It comes out of the top of your head, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ (sings) ‘Well I’ and that’s all I know, sort of it’s stupid stuff like that comes out of the top of your head which I’m sure isn’t true but that’s enough for me and I went up to my old school which is now a performing arts centre in Liverpool, LIPA, a school I have a lot to do with and I was helping some of the kids there, some of the songwriting kids, and we were in the vocal room and they had a big chart up there showing what goes on here, like the larynx and all the names for it, and I said, ‘I think you’d better get that down, because if I knew all of that went on in there, there’s so much to go wrong. I mean, I just think of it like a tube and it goes out the top of your head.’ So what was the original question? Has my voice changed? Yeah, I think so just with maturity, I think it must change but the stuff’s still in the same key and I still think the same way about doing it, that you just get up and you just do it. And, you know, it’s stood me in good stead, many a year.
Where was Chaos and Creation in the Backyard recorded?
We started off, basically we recorded the album in Nigel’s favourite studios really because I’m not a sound guy. I’m just the other side of the mike so it’s important for him to be listening in conditions he’s either used to or happy with, so I said, ‘Well, where do you want to work?’ kind of thing and he said, ‘Well, Rak in London, the old Mickey Most studio.’ I said, ‘That’s great. I’ve worked there. I like that’ and then Ocean Way in Los Angeles which is a big favourite studio of his that I hadn’t worked in but he said, ‘Oh, it’s a great room. I really love the sound in that room. Something magic happens in that room.’ So I said, ‘Fair enough.’ Great excuse to go to L.A. So, and then here, Air Lyndhurst, Air Studios. Again, I have worked here but it really was, the reason was ‘cos they’re studios that Nigel likes and as he’s the sound man, I bow to that.
Was the album recorded in one go, or over a period of time?
It was stop and start. At Rak I just wanted to do a couple of weeks to see if we got on, me and Nigel, because, you know, we might not have got on and after a couple of weeks it was like, Pull the plug, I don’t want to do this,’ but in fact it went the other way. I really enjoyed working with him and we put together a couple of nice little tracks that are still on the album but then we had some time off while we each considered when we might do the next bit and then I think we did a month and then had some more time off, then another month, had some more time off so I think it was over the period of a couple of years but I’m not sure. Probably all in all it, it was four or five months the whole process but over a long period of time.
Whose music were you listening to in the run up to making the album?
I had been listening to various things. A friend of mine, Nitin Sawnhey, who I like and stuff and I’d been to a few concerts and I listened to a bit of his stuff and I sent that to Nigel and said, ‘Maybe this is the sort of little direction I’d like to play around in,’ and he promptly said, ‘No. I don’t think so.’ ‘Oh, all right.’ He said, ‘No, I want it to be you. You can forget everyone else. I want it to be you.’ He said, ‘That’s what I think people want to hear. Let’s just concentrate on what you do and get it right. I’d been listening to a couple of other people and there were pointers but it wasn’t their music. I mean for instance, somebody like Nat King Cole where his voice is just so there; so a couple of things like that we might have talked about and just have the voice really there, you know, if you’re going to buy someone’s record I like to be able to hear them, you know, really hear every little syllable and luckily that’s the way Nigel wanted to go, but yeah, Nitin, I sent him Nitin but he said, ‘No, that’s Nitin, it’s great, lovely stuff, but we don’t want to go there, you know, it’s gotta be you.’
Do you listen to other people’s music while actually involved in the recording process?
I listen to stuff all the time, you know, but it’s not necessarily with a view to informing what I’m going to do. Some of it does. You just can’t help it, you know. If I was listening to people like Neil Young and stuff then I might be thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, I’d like to do an acoustic track,’ but that’s as far as it goes really. I don’t think I want it to be Canadian and Neil-ish. It’ll just be a vague ball park or something, but I listen to a lot of stuff and it’s all so varied that you couldn’t make an album with that as your influence.
Nigel Godrich (Radiohead etc) is the producer. Is it correct that Sir George Martin (Beatles’ producer) recommended that you should work with him?
Yeah. I didn’t know who would produce the album but I knew I wanted the very best and I wasn’t sure who that was so I thought, ‘Well, I’d like George Martin really,’ but he doesn’t produce any more, his son Giles does and George kind of oversees projects but he doesn’t produce, so I rang him and I said, ‘I’m thinking of doing a new album. I’ve got some songs together. Who would you recommend? Who do you think’s the best person around?’ And he got back to me a week or so later and he said, ‘Well, you know, I’ve had a talk with Giles and a few people and the name that seems to be coming up is Nigel Godrich. And I knew Radiohead stuff and I liked particularly the sounds on it and I think it’s a great sound he gets and that’s particularly important for me and Travis, I knew he’d done that album, The ‘Invisible Band’ album, and so I liked what he did and I say particularly the sound so we met up just to see if we had the same kind of thing in mind and he did. I think maybe he went a bit further than I did in as much as he said, ‘I want it to be a great album as well but we’ve got to focus on you, you know, so I’ve been thinking about it, I’ve been talking to people. What would you want in a Paul McCartney album? Would you want it to sound like him and a good one sort of of that?’ tSo yeah, it all came through George.
How did Nigel Godrich’s approach to making a record differ from yours?
Basically it was quite similar really except the key thing, I think, was when I started to do the album that two weeks in Rak. I came in and I said to him, ‘You know, I’d like to work with my live band, because they’re my guys and the last tour we’d been doing we’d been talking about, ‘You know, I can’t wait to go into the next batch of songs, new album.’ Nigel said, ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking about that. I’d like to take you out of your safety zone,’ he said. ‘That’s your safety zone. You know these guys and you know what you’re doing with them,’ he said. ‘ I’d like to kind of get you out of that zone.’ And so it turned out that that basically meant that he’d like me to have a go at drumming for instance whereas Abe, my drummer is a much better drummer than I am but Nigel wanted this sort of English feel, which I’ve got and I’m not a great drummer but I’ve got a feel, so I hear, you know. I enjoy drumming but it’s the feel that I’ve got. So he said, ‘I want to try that, you know,’ he said. ‘Try it,’ so we just tried it on one of the tracks that we’d made with the band and he said, ‘This is what I meant, yeah, you know, this is what I’m looking for’ so gradually I had to really, you know, very embarrassing, I had to say to the guys, ‘Look, he wants to go in this other direction and he’s the producer so I can’t really say, No, you’ve got to work with my band.’ I said, ‘How do you feel about it?’ and they were really cool. They just said, ‘Look whatever it takes to make a good record. We’re coming out on tour. We’ll be playing it but whatever it takes to make it, you go and make it,’ so that’s what we did and that I think was the big difference that Nigel brought to it, to how I might have done it with the band, I think, but it did make quite a bit of difference, you know, it’s changed the feel of the album and did mean I was out of my safety zone a bit. It was like, ‘Oh God, I’ve got to play drums. Oh God, I’ve got to do this. Got to think it all up,’ instead of just, ‘Well, you do that bit,’ so it did make it, it was a lot more work for me but, I think he was right to do that.