Speaker 1: Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Inside the
Speaker 1: Studio on iHeart Radio. My name is Jordan runt Hog.
Speaker 1: But enough about me. We're doing something a little different
Speaker 1: this week. We're dipping into the I T. S Vault
Speaker 1: to bring you something special from our formidable archives, and
Speaker 1: today I'm thrilled to present an interview with quite frankly,
Speaker 1: my all time favorite human being on the planet. I'm talking,
Speaker 1: of course, about Sir Paul McCartney. He was a guest
Speaker 1: on Inside the Studio during my friend Joe Levi's tenure
Speaker 1: as host. This interview is from two thousand eighteen, soon
Speaker 1: after the release of his stellar album Egypt Station. It
Speaker 1: became his first number one record in thirty six years,
Speaker 1: and it couldn't have been better deserved. The themes of
Speaker 1: travel mirror mind. Constantly on the move, piqued by the new,
Speaker 1: the different, the unexpected and the fun. Each of the
Speaker 1: sixteen tracks brims with McCartney's undiminished and seemingly boundless energy
Speaker 1: and trademark gift for melody. It's a gift that he
Speaker 1: showcased most recently on Twenties McCartney three, an album recorded
Speaker 1: at his home studio in Lockdown, or as he called it, Rockdown.
Speaker 1: In honor of Sir Paul's recently announced Got Back tour
Speaker 1: of North America, arguably the summer's hottest ticket, we decided
Speaker 1: that was a good reason as any to share these
Speaker 1: words from the master. Listen to what the man said,
Speaker 1: and enjoy Paul McCartney. Welcome to inside the Studio, Key Joe,
Speaker 1: or a very special edition of Backstage at the Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney Show. Okay, and here we are in the Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: In Winnipeg winned the Peg a few months ago. I'm
Speaker 1: walking up Park Avenue and I pass a guy coming
Speaker 1: down the street who looks remarkably like Paul McCartney Park
Speaker 1: Avenue in eighty nine street. I think, can't be Paul McCartney.
Speaker 1: No one with him, no one around did a double take.
Speaker 1: It was Paul McCartney. It couldn't have been him, but
Speaker 1: it was. You were just walking down the street by yourself.
Speaker 1: I walked down streets therefore, walking down I've heard that,
Speaker 1: you know, I like to get out and about and
Speaker 1: people say, oh no, you're gonna have acres of security
Speaker 1: behind you and stuff. But I'd like to just get out,
Speaker 1: you know, just so as you feel like yourself instead
Speaker 1: of like a rock star. Are there times you do
Speaker 1: like to feel like a rock star? You know, when
Speaker 1: I do the show, that's good, But then you know
Speaker 1: you need to balance it, so you get off the
Speaker 1: stage and maybe you know, like you said, you're walking somewhere.
Speaker 1: So I like to just get out like I always
Speaker 1: did when I was a kid. So you know, it's
Speaker 1: just keeps me sane, and it's it's the same feeling
Speaker 1: as when I was just walking around, only differences. I
Speaker 1: get recognized. Everyone reaches in their pocket immediately, you know,
Speaker 1: but no, I got you know, quite a lot of
Speaker 1: freedom actually, and I value it. And then you know,
Speaker 1: if I'm out at a restaurant and stuff with my wife,
Speaker 1: someone might come over to grab a photo. I say,
Speaker 1: oh not not just now. You know, it's a private
Speaker 1: moment and most people are very cool, understand it. So
Speaker 1: I like to keep that, you know, a private bit
Speaker 1: of my life. And then I like the other bit
Speaker 1: even more because it's like, wow, this is cool. The
Speaker 1: other bit being in public, being on stage, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have to like it. You are playing these three hour shows.
Speaker 1: We just saw a one hour sound check, and that's
Speaker 1: something that people don't actually know that many concerts are
Speaker 1: preceded by this one hour sound check. I think you
Speaker 1: have no set list for that. Many of those songs
Speaker 1: aren't in the set, right. Yeah. No, we always do that,
Speaker 1: I mean because it's good because we need to check
Speaker 1: the instruments we're going to use, just to make sure
Speaker 1: they're all plugged in. They all work, and I mean
Speaker 1: there was a little moment there. Normally doesn't screw up
Speaker 1: too much, but our keyboard players moog didn't work. So
Speaker 1: that's good. That's what the sound checks for, instead of
Speaker 1: just doing all the numbers from the show, which kind
Speaker 1: of spoils the show for us because when we get
Speaker 1: a bit bored doing the numbers again, we just use
Speaker 1: the same instruments we're going to use, but we switch
Speaker 1: the numbers about. We do any old thing, you know,
Speaker 1: so we'll do kind of like skifful things, folk things,
Speaker 1: early rock and roll things, like a little solely things.
Speaker 1: Midnight Special tonight, which was kind of amazing, and we
Speaker 1: always do Midnight specially. Yeah, what you often do? You know,
Speaker 1: You've got certain songs that go way back before I
Speaker 1: started even playing, you know. I think that's like a
Speaker 1: big Bill BRUNSI song. So he's an old blues singer
Speaker 1: and they're just songs you learn along the way and
Speaker 1: you like them. So if you get an opportunity or
Speaker 1: something like this where there's a sound check, all you
Speaker 1: really need to do is just make sure everything's working.
Speaker 1: Then you can indulge yourself and play something like that,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's nice. Keeps it all fresh, you know.
Speaker 1: Talking about the songs, you do know, there's something I
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about in the set list now,
Speaker 1: is in spite of all the danger, the first song
Speaker 1: recorded by the Quarryman in nineteen Oh my god, so
Speaker 1: it's now sixty years old and that can't be true.
Speaker 1: That's before my time. I will say, for those just
Speaker 1: listening at home, he could pull that off because it
Speaker 1: does look like he's not old enough to have written really,
Speaker 1: but thank you. But that said, the amazing thing that
Speaker 1: I realized is that you know, you're performing songs from
Speaker 1: your your newest record, Egypt Station, and the very first
Speaker 1: thing you ever recorded. So the audience tonight will hear
Speaker 1: sixty years Paul McCartney songs. That's right, Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is crazy. You know, it's um I've been enjoying playing
Speaker 1: for that long, and when I do that song in
Speaker 1: spite of all the danger, which was just the first
Speaker 1: little demo we ever did with the Beatles, before we
Speaker 1: got a record contract or anything. So I always imagine
Speaker 1: us all going to this little studio in Liverpool, all
Speaker 1: paying a pound each for five pound demo and doing
Speaker 1: this little song, you know, and it's it's so ancient
Speaker 1: that it's great for me because it's like what it is,
Speaker 1: it's like reaching back into your childhood. So it would
Speaker 1: be like somebody maybe listening to this thinking of when
Speaker 1: they were on the beach when they were one, and
Speaker 1: it's what a great memory, you know. So it makes
Speaker 1: it special for me just thinking that, Wow, you know,
Speaker 1: it goes back really before we ever went down to
Speaker 1: Abbey Road, before we got a record, country, before you
Speaker 1: did into Hamburg, before we've been to Hamburg. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's a great memory for me, and I like doing
Speaker 1: it because we get the audience involved on that one,
Speaker 1: you know, and so we have fun with it. So
Speaker 1: it is nice to be able to say this is
Speaker 1: the very first thing we ever did, first record I
Speaker 1: was ever involved with, and then we come right up
Speaker 1: to date and were saying, now this is like the
Speaker 1: most recent. Somehow it seems to fit together, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, So that's twice now that you've mentioned drawing
Speaker 1: on those childhood feelings. First when we were talking about
Speaker 1: walking around by yourself, and now when we're talking about
Speaker 1: playing that song in spite of all the danger. Is
Speaker 1: that a wild spring for you going back to that
Speaker 1: time or holding onto that energy. Yeah, you know. It's funny.
Speaker 1: In the Beatles, even when we were like maybe twenty
Speaker 1: four years old or something in the height of the Beatles,
Speaker 1: we often would we were trying to work out something
Speaker 1: on a song or what we're going to do with
Speaker 1: the recording, we'd often say, what would we have done
Speaker 1: when we were seventeen, and we check back to our
Speaker 1: seventeen year old selves, who we thought like we're like
Speaker 1: the coolest opinion in the world. Well, we would have said, yeah,
Speaker 1: do it, Yeah do it man, or no way, that's
Speaker 1: no good. You know. So you always refer to that period,
Speaker 1: you know, it's your formative period. So when you get
Speaker 1: a lot of your ideas, and in my case, if
Speaker 1: you're writing songs, those memories are very rich wells of inspiration.
Speaker 1: So you know, I can just think. I remember walking
Speaker 1: along the road with our guitars on our backs, me
Speaker 1: and John just before we were famous, you know, and
Speaker 1: me writing let us to people, dear sir, we are
Speaker 1: a rock combo, and you know, we would love to
Speaker 1: play at your place, you know, so all that sort
Speaker 1: of stuff. It's kind of like magic for me. I
Speaker 1: think also because of how far I've come. So you've
Speaker 1: got that very early innocent period, and then we get
Speaker 1: famous with the Beatles. Well before that, we go to Hamburg,
Speaker 1: as you say, and then we get famous with the Beatles,
Speaker 1: and then we get the American fame, and then we
Speaker 1: make records and we we go through our various phases.
Speaker 1: So it's a long, long, long journey. And then right now,
Speaker 1: you know, here I am, you know, making a new
Speaker 1: album in Egypt Station, and long behold, it goes to
Speaker 1: number one in America. You know, you can imagine, you know,
Speaker 1: we're partying that night was a party, we'll see. I
Speaker 1: want to ask you about that. Egypt Station enters the
Speaker 1: charts at number one, So I guess that, if you're
Speaker 1: keeping score at home, that's your first record to debut
Speaker 1: at number one since the Beatles. Since the Beatles and
Speaker 1: the first number one, and I believe thirty six years.
Speaker 1: So what was the party? What was the well, you know,
Speaker 1: the great thing was after the show. Sometimes if the
Speaker 1: guys don't have to load out, if they're all in
Speaker 1: a place and we're going to play the place tomorrow,
Speaker 1: which was that occasion, I'll say, okay, let's all get together,
Speaker 1: have a little drink of something to eat, and we
Speaker 1: get the crowd, and so we all get to hang
Speaker 1: with each other because it's a bit like a family,
Speaker 1: your tour family, you know. So we all get together
Speaker 1: and then our DJ who comes with us on the tour,
Speaker 1: he'll DJ some nice dance music stuff. So we were
Speaker 1: going to have that little party anyway. And then suddenly
Speaker 1: that afternoon, right after sound check, on my phone, I
Speaker 1: get the message bank congratulations requiescunt it in the morning
Speaker 1: and I'm just about to go to the dressroom, which
Speaker 1: I stopped going, Oh wait a minute, hey, guys, I
Speaker 1: announced to everyone every number one, you know. So that
Speaker 1: party that evening, that was special because we had a
Speaker 1: real great reason to celebrate. We were going to celebrate anyway,
Speaker 1: just having a party, but it became really special. We
Speaker 1: danced the night away. Baby. I was talking to someone
Speaker 1: at your label in Los Angeles Capital and the people, well,
Speaker 1: they said back at you. They said, we're amazed at
Speaker 1: how hard this guy works, seventy six years old, three
Speaker 1: hour concerts. But also he's out there doing things, taking
Speaker 1: advantage of opportunities we bring him. If we bring them
Speaker 1: to a twenty three year old the artist, they might complain.
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, let's do it what I always do.
Speaker 1: Promoting a record used to be quite boring because they
Speaker 1: would trot out the same old things. You've got to
Speaker 1: go there, you've got to do thirty six interviews. We're
Speaker 1: going to take you to some place central in Europe
Speaker 1: where all the European territories can come in. And how
Speaker 1: it was that was Cologne. They always say you're going
Speaker 1: to Colone and said why Cologne. So well, it's in
Speaker 1: the middle of Europe, and we'll bring the Italians, the
Speaker 1: French and Swiss and everybody in. And so I kind
Speaker 1: of did it, thinking what I've got to promote the record,
Speaker 1: But it was a deadly ball. It was really like,
Speaker 1: oh no, not that again. So I kind of rebelled
Speaker 1: one day and the meeting I said, look, you know,
Speaker 1: let's make it something that we're excited about. Because if
Speaker 1: we're excited, we actually have a good time. So let's
Speaker 1: cook up some ideas that are like fun and they're different,
Speaker 1: and it's not going to Cologne and would end this interviews.
Speaker 1: So we had some great little things. We had playbacks
Speaker 1: at the studio in l A. We were working at
Speaker 1: Henson and we had these little playbacks for I Heart.
Speaker 1: These are great little sessions. We just cranked it up,
Speaker 1: played the album for them. So that was easy. That
Speaker 1: wasn't like the concer to Debbey Road that you did.
Speaker 1: And then we did we did a CAVN. We went
Speaker 1: back to my old school and the little concert there,
Speaker 1: so you know, it made it fun, it made it interesting,
Speaker 1: and each little thing was different, and so it was, yeah,
Speaker 1: capital we're happy. But I was happy with the ideas
Speaker 1: we were cooking up together, you know, as long as
Speaker 1: they were good ideas that were exciting everyone. We had
Speaker 1: a blest You worked with great Kurtin and Ryan Tater
Speaker 1: this record, and Ryan and you did the single for
Speaker 1: you or some might hear it the way I do M,
Speaker 1: which would be a knott of your word. And we
Speaker 1: can say it for you. There we go, so give you.
Speaker 1: If you give someone a present, you don't say this
Speaker 1: is for you. You go, this is for you, for you, okay,
Speaker 1: if you h okay. So this is my story and
Speaker 1: I'm sticking to it, okay. And yet I was immediately
Speaker 1: reminded of something I grew up reading a Grill Marcus
Speaker 1: essay in the Old Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock
Speaker 1: and Roll about the Beatles, where he recalls hearing I
Speaker 1: saw her standing there on the radio immediately in the
Speaker 1: days after the first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show.
Speaker 1: He writes, Paul's one two three, fuck opening. How in
Speaker 1: the world did they expect to get away with that?
Speaker 1: And the thing is is, after I read that, I
Speaker 1: never heard it another way. I always heard it, but
Speaker 1: I'll never hear an other way. Now. It wasn't that,
Speaker 1: But I like it, man, you know, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a kind of nice thing when people kind of misinterpret
Speaker 1: what you've doneal they put extra meaning on it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I did the song Hi Hi Hi, which we'll do tonight,
Speaker 1: and there's a line in it which I was kind
Speaker 1: of writing just like surrealist lyrics. I was like, so
Speaker 1: I wrote, I wrote lie on the bed and get
Speaker 1: ready for my polygone. It doesn't mean anything was a polygon,
Speaker 1: you know, but people thought it was get ready for
Speaker 1: my body Gune. I thought, you know what, that is
Speaker 1: better if you ever sung it that way. Okay, So
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes the misinterpretation is actually better than the
Speaker 1: real lyric. You know. Tell me you've said that the
Speaker 1: songs you you worked on with Greg, you brought into
Speaker 1: the studio, but when you worked with Ryan Tedder, he
Speaker 1: wanted to make it up in the studio. Yeah, tell
Speaker 1: me a little bit about putting that song for you together.
Speaker 1: As you say. When I was working with Greg, which
Speaker 1: was most of the time, I had a lot of
Speaker 1: songs I wanted to record, so I came in and
Speaker 1: we worked on them together, but they were ready written.
Speaker 1: And then there was a period there where Great couldn't work.
Speaker 1: But I had a couple of weeks off, so I
Speaker 1: took one of the weeks as a holiday. Uh, And
Speaker 1: then the other week my manager said, you want to
Speaker 1: keep the momentum going. You know, you're on a bit
Speaker 1: of a role here, and if you want to keep
Speaker 1: it going, you know, I can suggest other people you
Speaker 1: might work with. You know. So he sent me a
Speaker 1: few suggestions and I liked what I was hearing that
Speaker 1: Ryan was doing. I didn't know much about him. Maybe
Speaker 1: I phoned him up and we had a great conversation.
Speaker 1: So I said, well, come to my studio in England
Speaker 1: and we'll just figure it out. We'll just think of something,
Speaker 1: you know. So I said, I've got a couple of
Speaker 1: songs we could do these. He said, no, no, let's
Speaker 1: let's just make it up because we didn't have long
Speaker 1: We just had the seven days. It might have even
Speaker 1: been five days, and so we just made them up.
Speaker 1: And we ended up making up three tracks. And where
Speaker 1: you when you say make them up? Were you writing
Speaker 1: side by side? Were you trying just having ideas, you know,
Speaker 1: just throwing ideas out. He'd sort of say, what about
Speaker 1: yeah do John Dudandu. I go yeah, da Dado. So
Speaker 1: I go out on the mic and go yeah Dado,
Speaker 1: And they think, oh God, let us stick some words in,
Speaker 1: Hey you want Udandu and I eventually put some words
Speaker 1: to it, and then we put a beat to it,
Speaker 1: and I put some guitar on or bass on or whatever,
Speaker 1: and him and his co producers zac you know, they
Speaker 1: just got grooving with the sounds, and I'd get sort
Speaker 1: of thinking of what I was going to do on
Speaker 1: the vocal. They throw ideas out and he said what
Speaker 1: about that? He said, well, let me try it, you know.
Speaker 1: So some of the things didn't work. We can those.
Speaker 1: It was funny because because of this method of working,
Speaker 1: the trouble was often that yeah do dad dudando becomes yeah,
Speaker 1: I love you baby, and it's like, this is a
Speaker 1: bit boring. So I said to Ryan in the middle
Speaker 1: of the week and I said, hey, know, man, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm known for doing songs like eleanor Rigby or you know,
Speaker 1: Live and Let Die, which you've got a little bit
Speaker 1: of meaning to them, you know. So I said, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure I can do this. Hey, I love your baby.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'll tell you what. So we decided
Speaker 1: what we would do was we'd carry on like that
Speaker 1: and then I'd revisit it and come up with what
Speaker 1: I thought were better lyrics. So that was how how
Speaker 1: we did it. It made a lot of it up
Speaker 1: as we went along and thought that was good, but
Speaker 1: the bits I thought were a bit corny. I just
Speaker 1: rewrote and then went in and fix the vocal with
Speaker 1: these new words. You know. A week or sore ago,
Speaker 1: I was in Los Angeles. I saw a band, Lake
Speaker 1: Street Dive, terrifically talented band and the will turn and
Speaker 1: they do in their set let me roll it, and
Speaker 1: it's it's great. And afterwards I was talking to them,
Speaker 1: that's terrific, and they looked at me and they shrugged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Paul McCartney song. But then they started talking
Speaker 1: about for You, and he's got a song out now,
Speaker 1: and the thing is it's so on trend, like it's
Speaker 1: got these the drum track and these little drops in it.
Speaker 1: So they were like amazed at that classic McCartney melodicism
Speaker 1: up against the sort of modern touches that Bryan Tyler
Speaker 1: brought to it. Yeah, well that's that's what it was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Ryan brought that to it, and say, Zac's called producers,
Speaker 1: a young guy called Zac, and the two of them
Speaker 1: took care of that side of things. What's about this
Speaker 1: you know list? So they would take a little bit
Speaker 1: of my vocal and speed it up and drop it
Speaker 1: back in and do these little crazy things. And you know,
Speaker 1: the idea was if I didn't like it, I go,
Speaker 1: oh no way, man. But most of the time, I go,
Speaker 1: that's cool. I like that. There were three tracks. Only
Speaker 1: one has been released from that week, but the others
Speaker 1: are pretty good too. And then when you were working
Speaker 1: with Greg that's over a longer period, and you've said
Speaker 1: that one thing it charged those sessions was seeing this
Speaker 1: documentary Howard Goodall did about the rerelease the fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: set of Sergeant Pepper's that you actually had this experience
Speaker 1: of learning wait, wait, that's how we did it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I wasn't really gonna watch this
Speaker 1: because you know, it's like I thought, well, I kind
Speaker 1: of know everything he didn't tell me. I know about this,
Speaker 1: But then he started in on Penny Lane. It hooked
Speaker 1: me in because he started to say, oh, now Paul
Speaker 1: wants to go higher, but he actually modulates down a key.
Speaker 1: I'm going, did I Oh, wow, that's good. I'm getting
Speaker 1: impressed by this young twenty four year old's work. You know.
Speaker 1: Now I'm intrigued. And he got to this bit where
Speaker 1: he sort of said and the Penny Lane piano. I thought, yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I know I played it. I know how that went.
Speaker 1: And he said, it's not just one piano and I'm
Speaker 1: certainly there, going, yeah it is, what do you mean
Speaker 1: it's not just one? And he's so he starts going
Speaker 1: back to the multi tracks and he goes, well, there's
Speaker 1: this one piano. I said, yeah, that's it, and he
Speaker 1: goes and then they've got this little spiky piano and
Speaker 1: then he plays and there's this very trebling, little ding
Speaker 1: ding ding piano playing along with it, and he goes on.
Speaker 1: Then there's this harmonium, and it turned out I'd forgotten,
Speaker 1: but we'd put all these layers into this piano that
Speaker 1: eventually sounds like one very groovy piano, so much so
Speaker 1: that I believed it myself. So I went in the
Speaker 1: next day with Greg and I said, why wait a minute.
Speaker 1: You know, so this is a really great idea. So
Speaker 1: we started messing with like harpsichords and piano and mixing
Speaker 1: them and getting them very exact so you couldn't tell
Speaker 1: it was two pianos, but it was like a hybrid.
Speaker 1: That's kind of interesting way to work. And you've been
Speaker 1: working for almost a year at that point, so were
Speaker 1: you going back and adding or retexturing tracks that you
Speaker 1: don't the truth We've been doing a bit of that anyway,
Speaker 1: because the rerelease of Sergeant Pepper, I was inspired by
Speaker 1: how experimental we were and the inspiration that we'd had
Speaker 1: for Sergeant Pepper, and I thought, yeah, you know, that's
Speaker 1: a kind of good way to go is to just
Speaker 1: not make the same old record, just try and think
Speaker 1: outside the box and think, you know, what can we
Speaker 1: do now? That's crazy and at the same time it
Speaker 1: comes out just like a song. You know, it's still
Speaker 1: in the end, isn't isn't some crazy mess. It's actually
Speaker 1: Penny Lane, you know, your day in the life. It's
Speaker 1: it's a proper song. But the approach was very experimental.
Speaker 1: So we've been doing a bit of that with Greg.
Speaker 1: But once I saw that program about it, we then
Speaker 1: started to pick apart some of the stuff we've done,
Speaker 1: made pianos consisting of a few things instead of just
Speaker 1: the piano. Were there any particular tracks that you remember
Speaker 1: that you began to to rewire this way. I think
Speaker 1: the track that's the opening track, the opening song, I
Speaker 1: don't know. Yeah, I think we cooked the piano a
Speaker 1: bit there, and also we kind of de tuned it
Speaker 1: because what was a nice was I played it in
Speaker 1: a certain key and song along with it, but I
Speaker 1: was finding the vocals a little bit too high and
Speaker 1: I was just going to struggle with it. But Greg,
Speaker 1: a good producer, says, why don't we just take it
Speaker 1: down a bit? You know, it would be easier to sing.
Speaker 1: And what was cool about it was the piano I
Speaker 1: had already played now got a little bit darker. And
Speaker 1: it actually is a bit one of his sounds. I
Speaker 1: think I heard it on the Adele Hello. I listened
Speaker 1: to that piano. I thought this is one of greg tricks,
Speaker 1: you know, But it happened anyway to us, and I
Speaker 1: liked the sound of the piano we were experimenting. And
Speaker 1: the thing is, you know, it keeps it really interesting.
Speaker 1: So you go in each day and instead of thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: I gotta do this song, I'll but do it good.
Speaker 1: There'd be a bit of that, but mainly it'll be whatever,
Speaker 1: don't do it good. We'll mess around, you know, we'll
Speaker 1: get something that excites us. We'll put a crazy sound
Speaker 1: on it. And I got, yeah, I can see it
Speaker 1: to that. And it's often that when we did a
Speaker 1: lot of that in the beatings. I mean, John was
Speaker 1: particularly fond of putting an echo when he was doing
Speaker 1: the vocal so he would do what we called the
Speaker 1: bog echo. In Liverpool, Bog means the toilet. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm going to bog and the toilet traditionally has got
Speaker 1: a good acoustic, so we would call this little delay
Speaker 1: on the vocal sound the bog echo. It just gives
Speaker 1: you a little bit different feeling than when you're just
Speaker 1: hearing your own voice plane and straightforward. It's like your
Speaker 1: eldest somebody with a crazy sound on his voice, Jean Vincente,
Speaker 1: you know whatever. The sounds like your old rock idols.
Speaker 1: So it inspires you a little bit. You know. It's
Speaker 1: interesting you you mentioned the darker sound that Greg brought
Speaker 1: to that to the piano, and then you talk about
Speaker 1: John's experimentation, because John was sometimes the one bringing in
Speaker 1: the darker energy that the slight darkness of you know,
Speaker 1: like it's getting better all the time. It couldn't couldn't
Speaker 1: get much worse like that. That's the famous example of
Speaker 1: a little addition that that just adds a different shadow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean we all brought that. You know.
Speaker 1: This is the thing what happens, you know, over time,
Speaker 1: things become legendary, so you'll get John was the dark one,
Speaker 1: Paul was the cute one, and that's not true because
Speaker 1: we each had a bit of that or the other.
Speaker 1: So George could be very much the one who would
Speaker 1: bring that in. But you know what I'm talking about it.
Speaker 1: I always used that example of the song getting better.
Speaker 1: I always getting better all the time, and John goes
Speaker 1: couldn't get much worse. So you know, that's a good
Speaker 1: example of how he would do that. But often it
Speaker 1: could be George who do it just as much as
Speaker 1: John would. And I think you know, I would sometimes
Speaker 1: take John's songs and darken them. I mean, Come Together
Speaker 1: was a very jolly little song when John brought it in,
Speaker 1: and it was like, no, we're not going to do that,
Speaker 1: seventeen year old, you seventeen year old, Yeah, we would
Speaker 1: have swamped it out, man. So that's the point in
Speaker 1: case swear John's thing was, and then I would. We
Speaker 1: had those kind of influences on each other. But the
Speaker 1: story sticks that John was the dark one, I was
Speaker 1: the light one. George was the mystic one, you know,
Speaker 1: and to some degree that's true, but we each had
Speaker 1: aspects of all those kind of forces. And Ringo too,
Speaker 1: you know, he would come in sort of put some
Speaker 1: drumming on it. That would be like whoa. I mean,
Speaker 1: I had the song get Back and I'm just going
Speaker 1: to get back, get Back and he comes up with
Speaker 1: and that drum makes that record, you know. So it's yeah,
Speaker 1: we're all four corners of a square. The Beatles, it
Speaker 1: was a very democratic group, so we all brought ideas in.
Speaker 1: Maybe John and I wrote most of the songs, but
Speaker 1: George wrote some of the best songs, you know, like
Speaker 1: something you know, some of those songs he wrote. So
Speaker 1: sticking with this idea of it comes the legends that
Speaker 1: stick and what we might be missing. Will soon hear
Speaker 1: the fiftieth anniversary box set of the White album. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what surprises are in store for us. So the legend,
Speaker 1: of course is that this is where things get difficult.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of tension during these sessions that have
Speaker 1: spread over I think five months or so, and sometimes
Speaker 1: the group is recording as individuals rather than as a group.
Speaker 1: Is the legend they're true? Or do you remember those
Speaker 1: sessions differently? You know. The thing is, because it was
Speaker 1: towards the end of the Beatles, all the forces that
Speaker 1: were later going to break the Beatles up, which is
Speaker 1: mainly business. To tell you the truth, there was a
Speaker 1: lot of arguing about business and we didn't like that.
Speaker 1: We'd always traditionally just left that to someone else, but
Speaker 1: it got a bit dangerous to do that, and that
Speaker 1: someone else, it was a different someone else, actually was
Speaker 1: about to nicke it all. So that got This is
Speaker 1: a period after Brian Epstein's death and the start of
Speaker 1: Applecord referring to is called Alan Klein. You know, it
Speaker 1: got dangerous. It was an idea that he was maybe
Speaker 1: going to take over and take over all the money
Speaker 1: and all the stuff that we'd ever done, and that
Speaker 1: made it a difficult period. But you know, the great
Speaker 1: thing was when we got in the studio, it all
Speaker 1: changed because we were just these four guys again and
Speaker 1: it wasn't to do with business. It was now to
Speaker 1: do with music, and so sometimes we did record separately.
Speaker 1: I would do Blackbird, but only because it's a solo
Speaker 1: song I did yesterday and I said to him me, okay, guys,
Speaker 1: what are you going to do on this? And they also, well,
Speaker 1: we can't. It's a solo song. You know. It wasn't
Speaker 1: because we were arguing. Some of the great songs like
Speaker 1: she's so heavy John's I mean, we all got right
Speaker 1: in there. There's no we were at peace. When we
Speaker 1: were playing music in the studio. It was always a
Speaker 1: thrill from the word go when the Beatles were formed
Speaker 1: to the word stop. You know, we always got in
Speaker 1: the studio and even if we were arguing, that kind
Speaker 1: of got superseded by the music. And you know, we
Speaker 1: argued like families argue. I mean, in the early days
Speaker 1: it was always John and George arguing about who would
Speaker 1: have his amp loudest. They agree, okay, look, you know
Speaker 1: we've gotta yeah, let's put it at seven. Okay, and
Speaker 1: they put it at seven, and then you will be
Speaker 1: playing and you just see George kind of back towards
Speaker 1: his up and go nine. And then Johnathan noticed, so
Speaker 1: he quietly sneak towards his ten, you know, and then
Speaker 1: that would go, hey, well what are you doing? You
Speaker 1: know that might cause a bit of an argument, but
Speaker 1: other than that, you know that when we played music,
Speaker 1: it came good. But we're not going to keep you
Speaker 1: any longer. It is almost time to I'm in a mispronounsis,
Speaker 1: but they're going mak chow buckshaw. Yeah, all that's what
Speaker 1: they used to say in Germany. I remember the guy's name, Billy.
Speaker 1: He was the chefts for to like, the manager of
Speaker 1: the little club. We first played him and he used
Speaker 1: to come okay, chow. We tried to it weren't very
Speaker 1: good at MAC and show. Make show in German. Come on,
Speaker 1: make a show in German. But sometimes there's people in
Speaker 1: the audience hold that sign up, so it's stuck. You know.
Speaker 1: There we all and that is it. I do have
Speaker 1: to go. Thank you so much, we have to go
Speaker 1: on show. Thanks very much for chatting. We hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed this episode of Inside the Studio, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio. For more episodes of Inside the Studio
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