Happy Birthday, Sir Paul!

Four interviews for the price of one!

Eighty one, eh?

Many happy returns, Sir Paul.

Although I have yet to interview the songwriting bassist, I have interviewed four musicians who worked with him. And I present them here to you:

Youth: The Fireman Interview

There was that fated call, that call that novels and films inevitably start with. How did this particular call come about? “It came about after an interview I did with Q magazine,” Youth explains. “I talked about sample culture, the future of pop or something, saying it went back all the way to the Beatles. My manager called me and told me that Paul McCartney wanted to talk to me. Paul called, he’d read the interview, thought it was great and asked if I’d mind remixing in his studio. Of course I didn’t mind!”

Would anyone? Youth duly turned up at McCartney’s studio in the early months of 1993. They drew from a well of Off The Ground samples for inspiration “He wanted me to do a remix, and I asked him, why don’t I sample from all the tracks and he could overdub on them? He liked the idea, he recorded on the double bass he had upstairs, and I took bits and pieces with varying edits. That’s how I worked with The Orb, I’d take various edits and put them together as a track. So, I was going to put two songs with the varying loops and edits when I get a call from Paul’s manager. His manager told me that he wanted to release an album. I told him I was going to put two or three tracks together from the material, he said fine, but Paul really likes it as it is and he’d like to release it as an album, and would I like to be a part of it? I mean, yes!” Dutifully, The Fireman were born.

Superficially, Youth and McCartney may not have been an obvious mix at first glance. The Beatles were the visual beacon of love and harmony, prime pop perfected and pioneered through a series of unsurpassable albums and singles, all produced with that glorious of production sheen. Killing Joke, on the other hand, signalled musical and visual anarchy, a collective of quasi-metal industrial rock makers whose 1980 debut album was based on a series of savage and excitingly violent sounds (of which Youth’s aggressive lead bass playing was a central part of). But a short rundown through a list of shared interests would show just how compatible these two men were. 

“We recorded the first two Fireman albums at Celtic Festivals, such as the Equinox, which Paul was very much in favour of, he’d had stones in Mull, very important to him, and of course he has a strong Irish heritage. I don’t, but I have Welsh and Scottish and I was in Cork recently- amazing heritage of music Cork and the whole island has.I was interested in the Celtic thing as I was studying druidery at the time”. 

  Amongst McCartney’s carefully considered albums constructed for popular audiences, he has also ventured into the musical outré with some spectacular results. Although he was best known as Wings’ frontman for most of the seventies, the ten years between 1970-1980 saw the ex-Beatle record the low fi acoustic indie McCartney (1970), the esoteric synth sampled McCartney II (1980), release the politically charged Give Ireland Back To The Irish (1972), produce the cabalistic and psychedelic McGear (1974) and arrange an instrumental cover version of Ram (1971) under the pseudonym of Percy "Thrills" Thrillington (1977). Still, an ambient techno McCartney project was a departure even by those standards. 

 “It says everything about Paul and his courage that he’s willing to go off the cliff like that,” Youth elaborates. “I mean, The Fireman started off as a fun, artistic process, but I don’t know many artists who are willing to move from their moniker like that. Sgt.Peppers was a bit like that, I think The Beatles got a bit stuck after Rubber Soul and Peppers gave them the chance to play a bit differently to The Beatles. Incredible music, Penny Lane, I am The Walrus!”

Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest (1993) proved to be very much a family affair. “Linda had a photography exhibition in Bristol, just as I was doing the final mixes with the engineer. Paul called and asked if they could hang out, so they flew in by helicopter. The whole family was there and I think Paul and Linda stayed up all night until morning. When I started the work, Paul would joke “I think it’s great, but I don’t know if Linda will like it” as if Linda was the boss. But of course when I met Linda, she was fantastic, a real mother-hippie, very involved, playing percussion, fantastic person.”

Just as Linda brought a lot of joie de vivre to the first Fireman album, her ill health and impending death also brought a potent shadow to the excellent follow-up Rushes (1998). Watercolour Guitars prettily paints ambient sounds of passing boat rides and Palo Verde rides with the sounds of horse gallops, a favourite pastime for the McCartney’s. Youth notes the background. “We recorded the album when Linda was going through the final stages of her cancer. She was very involved with the project again. It was very sad when she died. When I listen to the album now, it sounds like a requiem for her, it’s very beautiful.”

 Listeners would have to wait a decade for the next Fireman project, during which time McCartney maintained a success as a stadium attraction and Youth continued to work as a famed producer, briefly reuniting with McCartney on the Liverpool Sound Collage (though this was credited as a McCartney record). In 2008, the pair released their third Fireman offering Electric Arguments – this time with a twist. 

 “Everyone knew The Fireman was Paul and me by then, there was no point in keeping it a secret,” Youth says. “As for Paul singing [the previous two albums were instrumental], we approached him writing songs as we did the other albums. We recorded the backing tracks as instrumentals, and then when it came to the lyrics, we’d do an approach like Allen Ginsberg, I’d give him twenty minutes to look through some poetry books as I’d finish recording drums. He’d take some lines and we’d record. We would go into the studio with nothing, spend four-six hours working. And it was very gratifying when Rolling Stone called it some of his best song-craft of the last twenty years!”

Youth received the 2016 Music Producers Guild (MPG) Awards for Outstanding Contribution to UK Music. He’s kept busy in recent years, co-producing the Pink Floyd swansong The Endless River (2014) and The Jesus and Mary Chain comeback record Damage and Joy (2017). 

“I’ve been very privileged. The list you’ve just mentioned- Pink Floyd, McCartney, The Mary Chain- it doesn’t get much better than that! I really enjoyed working with The Jesus and Mary Chain, working on the dynamics of the two brothers, who are still trying to find their place after all the friction. As for Floyd, The Endless River is one of the few albums I still listen to. It was a privilege working with Phil Manzera and Andy Jackson, directing David Gilmour over the last recordings and sketches Rick Wright played on, bringing them full circle in the high criteria of Floyd’s music. I’ve taken myself more seriously as a producer since McCartney and Floyd, to think about the artistry of a producer. These guys are the best, and can have the best whenever they want, so you must be inspired to bring something new every-day. You have to bring respect to these artists, but also transparency and direction. I’ve worked with Roger Eno recently, he previously played on David Gilmour’s solo album, and I worked on Nik Turner’s album, sort of Blade Runneresque music, which comes out in July. I’m looking forward to the Nick Mason shows and I would love to do an album with David and Roger Waters, which I don’t think is impossible, but probably unlikely!”

And what about a fourth Fireman album?” I wouldn’t hesitate to work with Paul again, the Fireman albums tend to be every ten years and the last one was in 2008. That said, Paul is a very busy man, doing three hour gigs, every song a classic. Amazing his stamina. We discussed doing Fireman shows in the past and I think the technology has nearly caught up that we nearly could do one, running, looping the guitars and voices. It would be a fantastic show!”

Richard Hewson: The Thrillington Interview

“I did Long and Winding Road and I Me Mine for Let It Be,” Richard Hewson explains. “Phil Spector was a bit of a weirdo, as you probably know, hanging around with gangsters and people like that. It wasn’t Paul McCartney’s idea, it was John Lennon’s, he got Allen Klein to get Phil Spector to clean up the album, shall we say. So, I was asked to do an arrangement, I started small, didn’t have a lot of time, and Spector rings saying “I want harps, I want more strings”. I had to write that middle bit, because originally it was just piano, he didn’t sing it, he sang it the first time round, but the second time Spector asked me to write something in there. So I did, and then there were more orchestras, Ringo was there on drums. And I thought it didn’t sound like a Beatles record, but of course it was a massive hit, Long and Winding Road, in America. Paul hated it and wouldn’t speak to me for ages. He eventually forgave me as we did more work together!”. 

McCartney’s resentment of Let It Be is infamous and documented, as he watched a bare back rock record overladen with other effects he didn’t approve of. It was paramount of the power struggle within The Beatles and another reason which saw McCartney turn his back on the band he helped steer for a decade. McCartney’s dislike of the overladen symphonic arrangement would be rectified with the release of the Anthology and Let It Be … Naked albums of later years (which showed a rawer version of the song as he envisioned), while his eponymous debut pertained to that rough and ready qualities he had perceived for The Beatles, complete with the much worthier Junk and Maybe I’m Amazed than anything heard on The Beatles last release. And when he turned back to Hewson to work on another album, it was a Mea Culpa of the finest order. 

“I got a call from Paul asking if I’d do an orchestral version of his album Ram, which is a very good album,” Hewson says. “I did it just before Ram was released, but of course they didn’t release it for five or six more years after that. I got a letter, I don’t remember much about, but said something like Paul really wants to release the album and he likes it, or something like that. In fairness to Paul, I had a free hand and have always had a free hand when I work with him”. 

Hewson’s work with McCartney goes back to 1968. McCartney, the fresh faced bachelor Beatle had come across an extraordinary Welsh singer, whom he knew he had to produce. Paul McCartney, impressed and enchanted with the ethereal Celtic qualities of one Mary Hopkin, felt she needed something orchestral. Exploring something and someone new, he turned to the advice of his would be brother in law. 

“When I went to Guildhall of Music, I knew Peter Asher. He and I were in a jazz trio, I was a total jazz head, knew nothing of pop music, I always thought Dusty Springfield was a cowboy- shows how much I knew! Anyway, Paul was going out with Jane Asher, Peter’s sister. While rehearsing at Peter’s house, I met Paul for the first time. So, Peter, who was working for Apple at the time, knew he was looking for someone and suggested me from college. I heard Mary Hopkin, must have been her and an acoustic guitar, and Paul gave me a free hand. And that was Those Were The Days”. 

McCartney and Hewson worked well together on their various projects. The list of musicians who have grumbled about working with McCartney and the lack of free reign includes Henry McCullough (who likened playing in Wings to playing in a showband), Eric Stewart (who called Press To Play a low point) and, most famously, the other three members of The Beatles. Hewson has had a different experience. “I don’t know what it is, but Paul always trusted me, maybe he liked my stuff, but he always said, do your own thing. He asked me to do My Love with Wings, and again, didn’t make any comments. If you listen to My Love, I brought some jazz, there’s that saxophone bit at the beginning, a very long note, the “doo”, which the engineer nearly lost, playing Paul’s piano part at the beginning and we had to frantically get more tape. I was recently sent a photo from MPL of the session, with me looking at the ground, because I didn’t have a stand, they must have had hundreds, but I’m looking at the ground at the sheet of music, I must have had very good eyesight then. Denny Laine’s in the foreground, Paul’s not in it, Linda took the photo”. 

 Their best work was on Thrillington, a loose, elastic and fun orchestral remake of Ram. Highlights of the album include a seismic and stirring stringed rendition of Monkberry Moon Delight, a piccolo performed patterned Uncle Albert, a ramshackle and brassy Eat At Home and a cheerfully choral led blossomed cover of Heart of The Country, all lovingly played with swing and rhythmic playing. “As I said, I’m a jazz head,” Hewson laughs. “I always get jazz people in. If it’s jazzy, that’s why. I haven’t heard the album in a long time, but I do remember the “doo be doo bees” on Heart Of The Country. The liner notes mixed those up. It said it was the Swingle Singers, it was some of the Swingle Singers with Mike Sammes, who was one of the busiest London choral guys of the time. So, it’s some of the Swingle Singers with some of the Mike Sammes singers performing. And Herbie Flowers is a jazz player, he lives outside Brighton, I see him playing with his band. He famously did the Walk On The Wild Side bass stuff”. 

 Released in 1977, McCartney concocted a persona to release the album under, the socialite Percy Thrillington. He took out various ads in music papers to announce the album under this name and even hired a model in Ireland to pose as the ebullient Thrillington (this was scrapped). Hewson wasn’t so sold on the idea. “It’s a mystery that I’ve never quite figured out why he did it. I wasn’t totally for it. Maybe he felt it was a better way to show his crazy ideas, but if he’d released it as Paul McCartney Orchestral or something, it might have sold much better, because it didn’t sell very well, a lot of people didn’t know about it that I’ve spoken to. Some people knew, some people didn’t. They never tell me anything anyway, I know they’re reissuing it on Vinyl from reading about it on Facebook!” McCartney would not admit to the album publicly until 1989, therefore the worthy orchestral companion to his excellent RAM was largely ignored. 

 Nevertheless, Hewson still speaks praises of his workmanship with McCartney, especially on this record which has gathered a small but dedicated following over the years. “I didn’t know it was so popular to be honest. I know Matt Hurwitz wrote a brilliant piece about it for GoodDay Sunshine, I don’t know if that’s still around. But besides that, I don’t think it was a very popular album, even though I agree with you that Ram is one of Paul’s best. But maybe now if they publicise it as Paul IS Thrillington, it might be more popular and it might sell better”. 

Carl Davis: The Liverpool Oratorio Interview

“It was all quite fortuitous really; my wife Jean is an actress,” Carl Davis begins. “She was in a sitcom in the eighties called Bread, which was written by Carla Lane, and it was about a Liverpool family surviving off benefits, the DHSS. Through that, we got to meet Linda McCartney, who was good friends with Jean, both vegetarian and concerned about animal cruelty. Linda and Paul got involved in the show”. 

In what proved a wonderfully irreverent appearance, the McCartney’s visited the Boswell family in Liverpool, mirroring the series theme about riches and differences. It was a brief appearance, but it did prove two facts about Paul McCartney. Firstly, despite all the fame, success and wealth he had acquired from The Beatles, Liverpool was never far from his heart. Secondly, it showed that McCartney was eager to have interests outside of pop music. And when Carl Davis, a composer whose works ranged from scoring the startling stage productions Lipizzaner and Meryl Streep starring The French Lieutenant’s Daughter was asked to commemorate the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestras 150^th anniversary, he knew who he wanted to work with. 

 “We were thinking about Liverpool composers and we said ‘Paul’s a Liverpool composer, he’s pretty famous,’” Davis chuckles. “The Philharmonic Orchestra was founded in 1841, I think, and they were looking for something about Liverpool. So, when we went with that idea, we thought, how do we get Paul, do we just ring him up? Then we were invited to the McCartney’s country house where we discussed the project and came up with the ideas in his kitchen. We were talking, and he mentioned that he was born in the middle of an air raid. His mother was a midwife, and he was born in an air raid. This really struck home with me, having grown up across the seas, and Jean had very strong memories of air raids. So, we went with that”. 

 There are war symbols afoot throughout the Liverpool Oratorio. A shanty singing about Air Raid Siren Slices Through.. was a timely reminder how much of a support songs were for those growing up in World War II Britain, Mother and Father Holding Their Child sought to remind how dreadful air raids were for families, and a prayer which rang through of upset I Know I Should Be Glad of This reminded audiences how far they’d come since 1991. And yet, there was a buoyancy to the work. “We went from the air raids to discussing the school, a school where Paul went to, and then we brought that element into it. And we knew that the piece was going to be performed at the Liverpool Chapel, so we brought in the stories of going back around into the crypt. It was a very interesting process, quite like a dialogue between us”. 

 McCartney has an enviable skill of musical mastery. While playing with The Beatles in Hamburg in 1960, the eighteen-year-old effortlessly changed from guitar to piano to drums. His bass guitar prowess by 1966 (hear Taxman, Rain and Paperback Writer) are still largely unsurpassed and when two members of Wings left the band acrimoniously in 1973, McCartney simply played their parts himself on Band On The Run. Even more incredibly, behind all that McCartney has never been able to read or write music! “We developed a dialogue between us, I was one of his collaborators. I wasn’t a Lennon in that I’d suggest a note, but I would get through his ideas. He’d sing or hum what he wanted, and I’d fervishly write them down. He could get a chord, like a G or a C or E minor on guitar, but there’s a difference in writing in the pop world. They don’t write them down until after, they have the words and some of the chords, but its not noted down, so that was where our dialogue came in, and our work together. It was a learning experience for Paul who wasn’t so used to writing this way”. 

It was a work classical in sound, mindful in topic, elegiac in performance. It was a work devoid of pop motifs and was written as thoroughly and as passionately as any Oratorio. Nothing was off limits. A documentary, Ghosts of The Past, captured these two men amid their creative process (it was directed by Geoff Wonfor, who would later steer the Anthology series). “The philosophy was we’d have the best” Davis continues. “And in those days there was no one better than Kiri Te Kanawa, beloved as a soprano, and willing to crossover. We decided we could have four singers, two male, two female, and there’s a lot of choruses throughout. When we opened it up the success was pretty immediate, the Beatle/McCartney thing ensured a success, but critically it was mostly scorned. But people were coming to see it and Paul’s attitude was ‘Well, it can’t be all that bad then!’ ”.

 It wasn’t bad, and the world premiere of Liverpool Oratorio taking place on Friday 28 June 1991 drew 2,500 people at the cathedral. Those seated had the opportunity to watch a lavish spectacle featuring 90 members of the Liverpool Philharmonic, 160-strong Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, 40 choristers of the cathedral, and four extraordinarily gifted solo singers: Kiri Te Kanawa, Sally Burgess, Jerry Hadley and Willard White. If the critics were unimpressed with this addition to McCartney’s bow, it didn’t stop the popularity of the production. It left Liverpool to premiere in London and New York- then it travelled the world. 

“Within three years I had done my 100^th show,” Davis says. “We did a wonderful production in Ireland and Northern Ireland, and it is still performed in universities in Spain, in Germany and in France. It’s been very good to me. There’s a huge Japanese fanclub over there, and we even had it over there. The Beatle connection has made sure that its still performed. I haven’t looked at it in a few years, I’m writing two ballets simultaneously right now to be performed in different parts of the world in nineteen, but like yourself, an enthusiast came to me recently, he’s French, and said he wants to put it on in France. So, that’s brought me back to the work, there’s the two ballets and the Paris Liverpool Oratorio in 2019 to do”.

Mike McCartney: The McGear Interview

“That’s a picture of my mother on Woman,” Mike McCartney explains. “Danny Baker was a popular D.J., he’s sacked now, I think. I was on years ago for the re-issue of McGough& McGear album. So, I was there to talk about that, and he tells me Woman is his favourite album. I was there to talk about another album, and he says “no, this is my favourite”. I told him that was my mother on the cover, she died when I was twelve years old, one of my regrets. He said he didn’t know that, he thought it was a nun! She’s in her Liverpool nurses’ outfit. There’s an Indian saying that when you’re born, you get to choose your parents. I’ll have him, I’ll have her. So, when you complain, what are you complaining about? Me and my brother were very lucky in the parents we chose”. 

Although imperfect, Please Please Me (1963) set the template for the modern-day rock album. It was reflective (There's A Place), considerate (P.S. I Love You), mournful (Misery) and joyful (I Saw Her Standing There), showcasing Paul McCartney's formidable, precocious talents as Britain's most exciting songwriter. This was a calibre by which all musicians felt the need to match, but for Mike McCartney, the connection proved stiffer still. Wisely referring to himself by McGear, this nom de plume offered Mike the chance to be judged by his commendable standards, as opposed to a familial connection with The Beatles bassist. 

 “I wrote with Roger McGough. Some of it was very easy, some of it came very naturally. One of the lyrics came from a letter from McGough. He wrote “do, do do, you remember, do, do do, you recall”. That came from the letter McGough wrote. We were in The Scaffold; I wrote a song that went “Thank You Very Much For The Aintree Iron”. That got us on tv. There were other hits with The Scaffold, we had Lily The Pink. Comedy was very important to us. We worked with George Martin, not because of The Beatles, but because of his stuff with Peter Sellers and The Goons! On the McGear album, I have a song called Norton. It’s about being very naughty. I guess I was a naughty lad in school. I never liked swots. Those who wanted to be politicians, academics, those swots. So, the words “and if he gave me half a chance, I’d wring his bleedin’ neck” come from. Years later, at the launch of Wings, I saw Gilbert O’Sullivan walking in his school uniform. When I went to the bathroom, I met Reginald Dwight. I remembered him from the Dick James days. I said hello to Reg, and he said he wasn’t Reg anymore. He was now Elton John. I said, “alright Dwight/Elton”. He told me he loved working in Abbey Road and singing with The Scaffold. I didn’t remember that! I was the only singer, so we needed backing singers, so Elton and his mates sang with us. He told me they were the happiest days, a laugh all day singing and then you got paid! Anyway, The Scaffold finished, Grimms finished, so Our Kid says to me “Whatcha doing?” Nothing. He says, “You’ve got six children!” Now that I think about it, I only had three girls in 74’! He says, “want to bring some money in for the three girls?” I said “sure”. So, we started in Abbey Road, working on a great track called Leave It. On this album, we have a six-minute-long version on Disc 2. Had to change that for the radios. So, we started in Abbey Road, then we went to Strawberry Studios.”

Invariably, a project called for the brothers to work together. In the midst of the progressive pop revolution, Mike found himself writing for his second solo album concurrent to Paul leading his second band. Together, they could pull their strengths and support each other’s weaknesses. Paul, gifted with melody, replete with beautiful chordal arrangements, often suffered in his lyrical department without the advice of pensive guitarists George Harrison and John Lennon. Conversely, Mike McGear, steeped in literary and poetic agencies, needed an ear to bring his more prudent works into the rock conversation. Paul, a superlative musician, could bring his expertise to the regardful Mike, whose attentive eye led him to a career in photography. “There’s a picture I took of Our Kid [Chaos and Creation In The Backyard] which features my Mum’s knitted curtains. I don’t do a lot of music these days, more photography. For the McGear, it was my idea of the Gulliver picture, me chained with the Lilliputian people, all those little people. I did a drawing, not a very good one, but one in the book of me lying down and another one of me breaking free from the chains, putting my foot in the Merseyside River”. 

McGear, punchy, pretty, powerful and potent, showcased the greatest qualities seventies avant-pop albums boasted. Only doors away in Manchester’s Strawberry Studios, 10cc were putting together their finest work. Steeped in the Beatles mythos, 10cc's Sheet Music exalted all the idiosyncratic virtues pre-empted from Abbey Road. Bathetically, guitarists Graham Gouldman and Eric Stewart were convinced that the presence of a Beatle poured an invisible magic into their formula, Sheet Music a shared favourite work. McGear worked on its own magical formula. Mike sang, Paul produced, both wrote while Wings played. “What I liked about Lin,” Mike admits “was that she was American and really didn’t give a shit [laughs]. She was in the band and did what Our Kid told her to do. She’d say “ok, I’ll play this”. She just got on with it. Her main thing was her husband and her children. There’s one track where she’s playing very loud. We were in the control room and she said she couldn’t hear the Moog she was playing. She said she wanted it louder. Louder. I thought, it’s driving out the track, but of course, she was right! She copied something The Beatles did. They’d be in the control room, saying “I want to do this” and were told “that’s never been done”. That’s why they wanted to do it! They made history that way, I saw a lot that and Lin copied from that. Engineers are taught never to let the needle go red, and here they were [laughs uproariously]. There’s great playing. Paul does what I think is his first bass solo on a track. The drummer, Gerry Conway, he soloes. Denny Laine’s very good. Do you know Johnny Kidd and The Pirates? Well, on Givin’ Grease A Ride, you can hear him doing stuff like that on the end. That was a track, we wanted a car sound effect. So, we were very inventive. I went into my Alvis for that broom broom effect. There’s footage of me in the DVD driving with a girl with very little clothing on. To get the effect, I started the car to the track to get the rhythm right. I didn’t crash into a pub at the end. That was just a studio effect!”

A potpourri of pristine psychedelic pop, the album drives from the illustrative (What Do We Know, Rainbow Lady) to the perceptive (Have You Got Problems? The Man Who Found God On The Moon). Aware of the importance an opening track holds, Paul cannily optioned a thundering cover, textured in theatrical guitar driven pyrotechnics. “To this day, I still haven’t heard the original Sea Breezes,” Mike confesses. “People tell me its much slower. Our kid suggested it. And I got a message from Bryan Ferry who said he really liked it, he liked how we condensed it. Got it all across. Bit like how Paul got us make “Liverpool Lou” work with The Scaffold. He’s not bad, is he? And I taught him everything he knows!”

Woman, Mike's sombre yet beautiful debut, showcased a striking photo of Mary McCartney, the majestic midwife whose life was celebrated by Paul on the laudatory Let It Be. McGear, an assortment of post sixties psychedelic rock, features one delicate moment which honoured the homeland of the McCartney's shared mother. “The Casket was a McGough poem,” Mike recalls. “Our kid put music to it. He thought it sounded a bit Irish, so we should do it like that. I knew the perfect musician to play on it! Gay Byrne was a presenter on Irish telly. I knew him from Granada in Liverpool, so I thought fantastic when I got the call to be on his show. So, I was going to go on with April Ashley. She was a woman who was called George, she was one of the first sex change artists. Before I went on the show, I was asked if I’d sing Liverpool Lou? I said, you’ll have to fly, feed and get beds for my band. So, I was there without a band. Then, I’m told would I sing Liverpool Lou? I was after April Ashley, I didn’t think I’d sing and anyway, no band. They pointed to my band. In the first two rows, there sat Garech Browne, Tara’s brother, and Paddy “The Pipes” Moloney. Some band, I thought. Then, Paddy took out his instrument and I sang. It was fantastic. I think I was on feeling form, got all the words. If only this happens in my country, I thought. So, Paddy came in to play on The Casket. Such a great musician, the penny whistle, the uilleann pipes. Anyway, I love Ireland. The laid-back nature. Always a brush and comb, always a pennywhistle, always a song. We were a mad Irish family too! Eoghan, you have the same name as my Grandfather {Owen Mohin]. And if anyone in Ireland or reads We Are Cult [sic] knows anything about that Gay Byrne performance, a video or recording, something, anything, I would love to hear about it”. 

 It’s that synergy, the tranquil poetry of folk fabled Ireland nestling itself in the bustling rock milieu which makes McGear one of the most outstanding albums of either McCartney. Paddy Pipes, a corking outtake showcasing the Dublin born Chieftain exploring the various scales his instrument provides. It’s a marvellous moment, one of many which makes this re-issue an essential buy for those invested in the McCartney/McGear mythos. “There’s a lot here. We have a DVD which starts with me at the Liverpool Institute High-School, now called LIPA. Then there’s an interview at The Everyman. On Disc 2, there’s songs like Do Nothing All Day, a great title, A to Z, Girls On The Avenue and Dance The Do, which we did in the original sessions with Viv Stanshall of the Bonzos Dog Doo Dah Band. We’re also working on something called The Weirdos to animation. When we did the music, I thought we needed something weird, there’s that [sings What Do We Know], almost a Jimi Hendrix bit. My son Josh, who worked in America and brought Breaking Bad to everyone, has this wonderful intro and outro, which is in the DVD. I was a bit apprehensive bringing this old album after forty-five years. I listen to the radio; I know what the hits are. I didn’t know what fans, old and young, would feel in this day and age. Then I listened to it. It’s good. Then, the second track, woah, that’s really good. And the next. It’s all done with feeling, love, professionality. I think it really holds up after all these years. I really, really do.”

Originally published on We Are Cult between 2018 and 2019.