Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Hi, everyone, it's Paul molldoin. Before we get to this episode,
Speaker 2: I wanted to let you know that you can binge
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Speaker 3: Now, this is a song here, There and everywhere Leader
Speaker 3: letter I've seen described as one of your own favorites.
Speaker 4: He yeah, I'm often asked what my favorite song I've
Speaker 4: ever written is, and I don't ever really want to
Speaker 4: answer it, But if pushed, I would go to here,
Speaker 4: there and everyone.
Speaker 2: Lessen, I'm Paul will do for a while. Now, I've
Speaker 2: been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest
Speaker 2: songwriters of the era, and.
Speaker 4: Will you look at me, I'm going on to I'm
Speaker 4: actually a performer.
Speaker 2: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
Speaker 2: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 2: of our conversations.
Speaker 4: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 4: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 2: This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 2: an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures
Speaker 2: in popular music. In this episode, Here There, and Everywhere, lesson.
Speaker 5: Learning.
Speaker 2: When I asked Paul McCartney, why, out of the hundreds
Speaker 2: of songs he's written, he considers Here, There and Everywhere
Speaker 2: his favorite, he kept returning to the structure of the lyrics,
Speaker 2: where one verse ends, the next begins, only in a
Speaker 2: new context. It's a move he borrowed from one of
Speaker 2: the classics, a song by Irving Berlin.
Speaker 4: One of my favorite songs because us of its structure
Speaker 4: is cheek to cheek Heaven as song by Fred Asta.
Speaker 6: I'm in heaven and my heartbeats so that I can hardly.
Speaker 7: Spe and I like very much. Can starts off heaven.
Speaker 4: I'm in heaven literally really really fast forward, and then
Speaker 4: that's with me.
Speaker 2: I want my arm about.
Speaker 7: You, a middle late carry me through, to carry me
Speaker 7: through heaven.
Speaker 8: I'm in heaven.
Speaker 4: It's like, yes, just the way it just resolves up
Speaker 4: its own tail. I always found wonderful, and I think
Speaker 4: somebody said I do it in this, I.
Speaker 8: Wonder everywhere, and if she's beside me, I am the line.
Speaker 9: Knowing Courridge has alignment and somewhere in the Biographia literary
Speaker 9: or whatever it's called where he talks about all narrative
Speaker 9: being like a snake with its tail in its mouth
Speaker 9: and in that circularity be relevant here, well, I don't.
Speaker 4: Know if i'd agree with him about all, but I
Speaker 4: think attractive stuff often does that often kind of comes
Speaker 4: back to where it began, and there's a little glee
Speaker 4: arriving there.
Speaker 7: Like I said, heaven, wait a minute, we just started
Speaker 7: with that, and now we're back there and.
Speaker 4: Very clear fully done, and without me suspecting he was
Speaker 4: going there. So there's just something that's sort of little
Speaker 4: thrill when you do that. And I like the fact
Speaker 4: that we think we're on a path off on the
Speaker 4: moors and we're going for a walk, and then suddenly
Speaker 4: we've arrived where we started, and it's not like as
Speaker 4: if we've gone around in a circle.
Speaker 7: It's magically more magical.
Speaker 4: Than that, we've come to another beginning of the path.
Speaker 4: It's not just like we run in a circle and
Speaker 4: just come back to the beginning. That's quite boring, but
Speaker 4: it's just this trick where you suddenly.
Speaker 7: Where you were, but it's surprising.
Speaker 2: So something is cheap, is what we comes back there.
Speaker 4: Well, you're where you were, but you're not because you
Speaker 4: you can see back where you came from, and you're
Speaker 4: definitely not there. You're at a new place. But it's
Speaker 4: trity and it's got the same scenery again.
Speaker 7: Leader Letter.
Speaker 2: While the song is grounded in this spiraling structure, one
Speaker 2: place it never returns is to the very first two lines.
Speaker 2: They stand on their own, separate from the core melody
Speaker 2: of the song.
Speaker 4: They were to emulate the openings that old songs had.
Speaker 4: John and I were fascinated by this idea that in
Speaker 4: the old days did this complete ramble that didn't appear
Speaker 4: to be about the song at all.
Speaker 5: The only exception I know is the kid.
Speaker 9: When I'm out on a quiet spreeze, fighting vainly the
Speaker 9: al loe we.
Speaker 5: And I suddenly turn and.
Speaker 6: See your fabulous face. I get no kick from Champagne.
Speaker 7: An intro. It was an intro. They called it verse.
Speaker 4: We call versus the sort of first main body, and
Speaker 4: of course then the second main body.
Speaker 7: They called that word. Yeah, so we like that. We
Speaker 7: liked you know.
Speaker 4: I was walking around Manhattan. I had my scar phone
Speaker 4: and then I came to the corner of so I
Speaker 4: new thinking. First I looked at the deceited I didn't
Speaker 4: notice that. But then suddenly you came around the corner. Heaven,
Speaker 4: Oh there's the song, you know, running.
Speaker 5: Speaking happen soon speaking, but she does.
Speaker 4: Someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there. I
Speaker 4: don't know who it is, probably the Telly.
Speaker 7: It's like that. It's kind of a romantic idea. We
Speaker 7: are just us, not listening to him.
Speaker 5: Knowing his.
Speaker 7: Remember writing this song whilst waiting for John one day.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney wrote much of Here, There and Everywhere one
Speaker 2: morning while sitting poolside waiting for John Lennon to wake up.
Speaker 10: I would go out to his house in Weybridge for
Speaker 10: a writing session, and he wasn't always up, so I
Speaker 10: would often have twenty minutes.
Speaker 7: Half an hour when someone told him I was here,
Speaker 7: and he would get up.
Speaker 2: In the song's leisurely tempo, it's almost as if we
Speaker 2: can hear McCartney's patience.
Speaker 5: Everywhere.
Speaker 11: I remember sitting out by swimming pool in his house
Speaker 11: in Weybridge, which is a sort of golf suburb of
Speaker 11: London and had a guitar because I was ready for
Speaker 11: the writing session, so he sat out and started something
Speaker 11: and it was here he.
Speaker 4: Lived in here, And yeah, I just sort of went
Speaker 4: quite nice and smoothly, so that by the time I
Speaker 4: came to write with John, the time he deigned to
Speaker 4: get up and have his coffee, I would have something to.
Speaker 10: Go, watching.
Speaker 5: End, helping him, always watching rins end, hoping. I am always.
Speaker 2: The slow, steady pace and the way the verses spill
Speaker 2: into each other. It's mesmerizing, like water rippling across a pool.
Speaker 2: Is it possible that Ringo Star hits his snare just
Speaker 2: a fraction after the beat, as if the song is
Speaker 2: trying to slow itself done.
Speaker 5: Making changing.
Speaker 4: I like the line changing my life for the wave
Speaker 4: of a hand. You know, I look at those kind
Speaker 4: of lyrics now and sort of.
Speaker 7: Think, where did that come from? What was it?
Speaker 4: Do I think of the queen waving out of a
Speaker 4: royal carriage, or you know, just my love can just
Speaker 4: do it by hardly doing anything, waving a hand.
Speaker 7: Oh my god, you's chenting my life. It says a
Speaker 7: lot in a line.
Speaker 2: The picture of a royal hand waving from a carriage,
Speaker 2: the pinnacle of effortlessness. It's a McCartney trademark, this rare
Speaker 2: ability to assemble lyrics and melodies with the ease of
Speaker 2: strumming a few chords on his guitar. He seems to
Speaker 2: fool himself into thinking there's nothing at stake. He trusts
Speaker 2: that the right lyrics will find their way to them.
Speaker 4: Even when you get lyrics like this, the purpose of
Speaker 4: the lyric is to support the song rather than be
Speaker 4: a lyric, So it's quite liberating. You can sort of
Speaker 4: just kind of experiment as you go along, you know,
Speaker 4: so things slip out like they would in a session
Speaker 4: with a psychiatrist.
Speaker 5: And everywhere.
Speaker 7: I like it when that happens.
Speaker 4: I think, you know, that's the idea of the word
Speaker 4: dancing idea.
Speaker 7: You know, you just.
Speaker 4: You play with things like that, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: I think a lot of this comes naturally from Liverpool
Speaker 4: for me, Like jokes often have that, you know, just
Speaker 4: there's a little you think you're going one way and
Speaker 4: then there's a little surprise and it takes you another way.
Speaker 4: And I like to be able to do that because
Speaker 4: I think it keeps it moving, it keeps you interested.
Speaker 4: Dancing round words, shuffling them like a deck of cards.
Speaker 7: Basically.
Speaker 4: You know, I always say when I'm writing a song,
Speaker 4: I'm kind of following.
Speaker 7: A trail of bread crumbs.
Speaker 4: Someone's thrown out these bread crumbs, and I see the
Speaker 4: first few, and you just, you know, we go along,
Speaker 4: and I feel like I'm following the song rather than
Speaker 4: writing it.
Speaker 8: And everywhere, and if she's beside me, I know, line neednerbo.
Speaker 9: Do you ever look ahead and plant on it with
Speaker 9: the phrase or two versus down the road?
Speaker 4: Not versus, but the lines. I will, I will, I
Speaker 4: will think of the line that's coming and think of
Speaker 4: how to get in it. Yeah, like stepping stones kind
Speaker 4: of thing, you know, just think well, I've got to
Speaker 4: do that to get there.
Speaker 7: Yeah. I quite enjoy that.
Speaker 4: It's an interesting process. I like that about writing that
Speaker 4: it's it's a puzzle. I often liken it to crossword puzzles.
Speaker 4: You know, my dad loved crossword puzzles. And if you
Speaker 4: put that together with that, and when you twist that
Speaker 4: word around, then you get that.
Speaker 7: And my answer is that, yes, I mean it is.
Speaker 1: It is about filling in gaps, the structural and rhetorical
Speaker 1: tricks of here, there, and everywhere are obscured by the
Speaker 1: song's apparent spontaneity. It's flowing melody, it's gentle vocals. McCartney's
Speaker 1: singing on the track is reminiscent of an earlier era,
Speaker 1: which brings us back to Fred Astare.
Speaker 8: Oh, I love to go out fishing in the river
Speaker 8: are a Greek, but I don't enjoy have as much
Speaker 8: dads A.
Speaker 7: I was big fan of Fred Astare.
Speaker 4: I still have, and unlike the studio executive thought he
Speaker 4: could dance a little has no voice. I always loved
Speaker 4: his voice. I still do, and I actually use it
Speaker 4: often as an inspiration. I did an album of standards,
Speaker 4: and that's.
Speaker 5: Sort of heaven.
Speaker 7: That little place for your voice is a lovely place
Speaker 7: to sing from. It's not there, it's sort of heaven.
Speaker 7: Being there.
Speaker 2: And here, there and everywhere has inspired many other vocalists
Speaker 2: and has itself become one of those classics McCartney was
Speaker 2: trying to emulate. Even John Lennon, rarely wanted to give compliments,
Speaker 2: was impressed when he heard the song and said it
Speaker 2: was his favorite track on the album Revolver in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 2: He even told a reporter from Playboy Magazine that it
Speaker 2: was one of his favorites from the tire Beatles cattalog.
Speaker 2: So to Lennon when he did get up, did he contribute, I'm.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm not sure he did.
Speaker 4: Actually I suspect he did, but it does sound like
Speaker 4: something I might have sort of just done by the
Speaker 4: pool side, sort of just delivered to him because it
Speaker 4: doesn't sound like anyone else is working now.
Speaker 7: Starts sounds like one head.
Speaker 5: He's to share each one.
Speaker 6: Never dies, watching a rise and hoping him All Andy.
Speaker 2: And here, there and Everywhere, released on the Beatles album
Speaker 2: Revolver in nineteen sixty six. In the next episode, have.
Speaker 4: Said throughout the day that they hope to use minimum.
Speaker 2: Face, an unusually sharp political song written in response to
Speaker 2: Bloody Sunday.
Speaker 5: To the US, make them take it away.
Speaker 4: In to the Iris became irsay.
Speaker 2: Give Ireland back to the Irish. That's next time on
Speaker 2: McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
Speaker 2: is a co production between iHeartMedia and pl and Pushkin Industries.