Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: We're so sorry, Uncle Louder.
Speaker 3: So we look at Albertbert. Yeah, I actually had an Unclouder.
Speaker 4: We're so sorry, Uncle loud. Unclouds worked with my dad
Speaker 4: in cotton firm. Dad was a salesman.
Speaker 3: Cloud I think was there was something a little higher.
Speaker 4: We certainly had more money, but it was you know,
Speaker 4: our family gatherings were always very great, very friendly, very
Speaker 4: humorous occasions, and they would get pissed.
Speaker 5: A lot of the.
Speaker 4: Uncles were were referred to as piss artists and the
Speaker 4: drink a bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so sorry, Ocao, that.
Speaker 4: Was standing on the table and recite the Bible shit,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: Keep everyone straight in the way of the light.
Speaker 1: And Paul will do. And I've been fortunate to spend
Speaker 1: time with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 3: And will you look at me?
Speaker 5: I'm going up to I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: of our conversations.
Speaker 5: Actual, I'm a songwriter. My god, well that that crept
Speaker 5: up on me.
Speaker 1: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 1: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: figures in popular music in this episode, Uncle Albert, Admiral Halsey.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty three, their manager Brian Epstein, relocated the Beatles'
Speaker 1: base operations to London. By the end of the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: when Paul McCartney wrote, Uncle Albert, his old life in
Speaker 1: Liverpool seemed far away.
Speaker 4: I'd moved away from Liverpool quite firmly by this point,
Speaker 4: and I wouldn't see the family anywhere near as regularly
Speaker 4: we might go back up for a.
Speaker 5: New Year's Eve party.
Speaker 4: After I moved to them, I would sometimes throw a
Speaker 4: New Year's party with the idea of reassembling family in
Speaker 4: the good times.
Speaker 6: So there were a lot of jokes, a lot of songs,
Speaker 6: a lot of wit, a lot of play. All my
Speaker 6: uncles I can't think of war wasn't funny. But it
Speaker 6: became less and less as time went on. They became
Speaker 6: less and less. They died, so the older generation, my
Speaker 6: Dad's generation, and they're all gone now.
Speaker 4: So yeah, there was a nostalgic feeling for you know that,
Speaker 4: and also this feeling of I've moved myself so far
Speaker 4: out of what you know, what Uncle Albert knows about
Speaker 4: the cotton exchange, and then getting up on the table
Speaker 4: and getting drunk smoke in his pipe.
Speaker 1: As Paul McCartney left his family behind in Liverpool, he
Speaker 1: was also leaving behind an era of war and poverty
Speaker 1: that framed the decades of his youth, the nineteen forties
Speaker 1: and nineteen fifties.
Speaker 7: This is a part of Liverpool, a city of nearly
Speaker 7: a million inhabitants and one of the biggest ports and
Speaker 7: shipbuilding areas in the world. During the war, it was
Speaker 7: a target for air raids which laid waste whole areas.
Speaker 1: Even though they were surrounded by these bombed out areas,
Speaker 1: the McCartneys weren't directly affected by the war. Paul's father
Speaker 1: worked at a cotton mill and as mother was a nurse.
Speaker 1: It was a striving working class home. But the effects
Speaker 1: of the war were still very much felt in Liverpool,
Speaker 1: a city which throughout the nineteen fifties had rationing protocols
Speaker 1: in place and was littered with bomb sites on Rove
Speaker 1: toward From all.
Speaker 5: Of that, it was just like as if it had
Speaker 5: just gone just because of the circumstances of your life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it had kind of gone mentally and were also physically.
Speaker 4: It was like I was in a film. You'd just
Speaker 4: see that set drift off.
Speaker 7: Now the City Council are rebuilding fast. One of the
Speaker 7: most interesting achievements of the council was to establish, over
Speaker 7: one hundred years ago, public wash houses, where even now,
Speaker 7: thousands of Liverpool housewives bring their weekly wash.
Speaker 1: On top of the physical distance McCartney had put between
Speaker 1: himself and his hometown of Liverpool, he had also taken
Speaker 1: up a lifestyle that was light years removed from his
Speaker 1: humble beginnings.
Speaker 5: We're so sorry, un.
Speaker 4: We're not really saying I'm sorry, but I'm saying you
Speaker 4: wouldn't get where I am now.
Speaker 3: I'm like in the Beatles, I'm like living in a
Speaker 3: big house in London.
Speaker 5: But isn't that also saying I want to be with you.
Speaker 5: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 3: If we course you any pain, there's no one left
Speaker 3: from home.
Speaker 5: But I believe on a round.
Speaker 3: It's just that a distance.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry. I'm not only by that, but you don't
Speaker 5: want that distance. You yourself don't want that distance.
Speaker 3: I don't didn't all you didn't well I didn't.
Speaker 5: That's like saying you don't want anyone to die.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's it's an unfortunate reality, that distance it
Speaker 4: must have unless you still live with your moment. Dad,
Speaker 4: I gave you the one and all Bobulous.
Speaker 1: The people's wild popularity meant that Paul was living an
Speaker 1: extravagant life in London. His uncle Albert didn't I actually
Speaker 1: do much calling, but his aunt Jin would occasionally make
Speaker 1: the trip down to check in.
Speaker 4: I mean, you go back into the sort of bosom
Speaker 4: of your family when when your auntie comes to visits and.
Speaker 5: You just do sort of all the old things.
Speaker 4: And so I was just sort of sitting around playing
Speaker 4: a bit of piano, and then in the evening swedes
Speaker 4: Horda sit around, have a drink and play cards and
Speaker 4: just talk and everything, you know. And she originally come down.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons she'd come down was to talk
Speaker 4: to me about the sin of smoking pot. She'd been
Speaker 4: sent down. She was they called it, used to call
Speaker 4: her control. She'd been sitting down as an emissary.
Speaker 3: And who would have sent her on.
Speaker 4: The family family? Who knows which one or how many?
Speaker 4: I don't know, really, I think you know the word
Speaker 4: that just got back that our pole's going a bit
Speaker 4: wild in London, you know, so go and check him out, Jenny.
Speaker 1: In the song, McCartney sings the first verse in a
Speaker 1: tone aligned with his younger, naive self, new to London
Speaker 1: far from home, apologizing for his departure, promising to get
Speaker 1: in touch only if he has something to report.
Speaker 2: We're so sorry when we have name day, We're so sorry.
Speaker 3: Oh cool.
Speaker 4: Me so so, I'm saying I used to hear from
Speaker 4: him a lot, and so now I'm saying we haven't
Speaker 4: heard a thing all day. So sorry, I'm but anything
Speaker 4: should have movie show to get a ring. It's just
Speaker 4: that sort of dismissing thing, you know. Back pap pat
Speaker 4: on my head, will be in touch.
Speaker 1: Neither speaker of the song seems to talk down to
Speaker 1: his relatives, who cannot possibly understand his fabulous new life
Speaker 1: in the city.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just imagine him now as a character.
Speaker 5: There is uncle.
Speaker 4: But we're so sorry, but we haven't done a bloody
Speaker 4: thing all day. And I go into character now and
Speaker 4: I'm now some sort of very arrogant POSHTI.
Speaker 3: Now I'm so sorry, La, I'm doing a bloody thing
Speaker 3: all day. You know, we've got another life here and
Speaker 3: I'm afraid you know, I'm dismissing you.
Speaker 5: So the act, the shift and accent is enough. I'm
Speaker 5: trying to remember and I how you do this?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: By the time Paul McCartney wrote the song Uncle Albert
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy, even the shine of London had worn off,
Speaker 1: the stodgy business meetings, the decline of the Beatles, fame
Speaker 1: and glamour losing their luster. The band had once carried
Speaker 1: the playful, spontaneous energy of their hometown, but at the
Speaker 1: end of the decade this playfulness had fizzled out. Once again,
Speaker 1: McCartney would have to create a new life.
Speaker 3: So then it goes into hands across the water, across
Speaker 3: the This is more now bringing you, This is more
Speaker 3: Me and Linda, hands.
Speaker 4: Across the water, you know, American and British, Okay, heads
Speaker 4: across the sky.
Speaker 1: I like that in which a lot of hands across
Speaker 1: the water, heads across the sky.
Speaker 4: It's interesting, it works for Anglo American.
Speaker 5: Yeah sort of thing, couldn't.
Speaker 1: As the song shifts into a kind of carellesque nursery rhyme,
Speaker 1: another character enters the scene. This is William Bull Halsey,
Speaker 1: an admiral in the American Navy during the Second World War,
Speaker 1: and who you can tell from interviews, wasn't an especially
Speaker 1: nursery rhyme like character.
Speaker 4: We have not done our playing. We have branded them.
Speaker 4: We have drowned them, and I just planning to brand
Speaker 4: I ad a drowned.
Speaker 5: It does Halsey in any particular?
Speaker 3: Is that a historical I don't know where I got
Speaker 3: any more Halsey from.
Speaker 5: I wasn't just read it or heard it somewhere. And
Speaker 5: then now I'm in.
Speaker 4: I'm in this arrogant upper class person who's got into
Speaker 4: the song and I'm just having fun with it.
Speaker 5: I like that. Yes, he goes, So it's a playlet.
Speaker 4: Basically, it's a little plays elect But I suppose if
Speaker 4: this was a play you could give these lines to
Speaker 4: different characters.
Speaker 3: Before he couldn't get the thing.
Speaker 1: I had another, and I had a couple of the plane.
Speaker 1: Admiral Halsey needs a birth to get to see, but
Speaker 1: the narrator is ignoring him, is too busy having a
Speaker 1: cup of tea and some butter pie.
Speaker 3: The border wouldn't also put it in the pie.
Speaker 5: I like that.
Speaker 1: Amid the bleak negotiations surrounding the Beatles and the impossibility
Speaker 1: of returning home to Liverpool. McCartney found the humor and
Speaker 1: lightheartedness he remembered from his extended family in his new
Speaker 1: wife Linda Eastman.
Speaker 3: But is this little pats you get around? This is
Speaker 3: me and Lenda at that time, and this is sort
Speaker 3: of what we do.
Speaker 5: What did you do? Want to the rigid systems we
Speaker 5: were living in.
Speaker 4: Mine was apple business, alan Cline takeovers all of that,
Speaker 4: and I always I wanted to buy my own Christmas tree.
Speaker 4: I didn't want the office to send a Christmas tree
Speaker 4: around for me. That's a great, great web I did.
Speaker 4: I started actually doing that, or chopping one down in
Speaker 4: the forest in the back of the land rover. It's
Speaker 4: not as strong as a rebel, but we were rebellious
Speaker 4: rebels with a sense of humor that we were doing
Speaker 4: all sorts of things like that. I would involved with
Speaker 4: like the animal activists getting on Christmas tree.
Speaker 5: Then there would be cooking and stuff.
Speaker 4: We got vegetarian and now she's going to figure out
Speaker 4: how we do turkey. So we do a macaroni turkey.
Speaker 4: It's like mac and cheese, but it goes solid and
Speaker 4: then we'd slice it and we'd have that. I saw
Speaker 4: a macaroni tack.
Speaker 1: Paul and Linda managed to cut free and establish not
Speaker 1: only a new family, but a creative partnership. The song
Speaker 1: Uncle Albert, credited to the Husband Wife Jo, was number
Speaker 1: one on the American charts. In their new, more bohemian lifestyle,
Speaker 1: Paul and Linda could also establish the family life they wanted,
Speaker 1: filled with joyous humor and fun. It was perhaps this
Speaker 1: experience raising children on the farm that inspired McCay need
Speaker 1: to write about his extended family back in Liverpool, his
Speaker 1: uncle Albert, who had countered the war with a similar
Speaker 1: sense of humor.
Speaker 3: It was a good up front of me, and I
Speaker 3: thought everyone's families were like that.
Speaker 5: John and here about his family life. He was like,
Speaker 5: oh my god.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: So I really praised my family for that because it
Speaker 5: was so rich.
Speaker 3: It really was rich. And I think a lot of
Speaker 3: what I am and a lot of what I write
Speaker 3: about a lot of what I think is that, you.
Speaker 4: Know, I often say I've met a lot of very
Speaker 4: amazing influential people in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Sacha bark Palm, you know, the one and only
Speaker 1: Sir Paul McCartney, Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Oh some of my Liverpool family I think was was better.
Speaker 4: We just had something going for them. Besides this niceness
Speaker 4: and besides this good mamics. Sense of humor was ridiculous.
Speaker 4: They were always being funny. And my theory is because
Speaker 4: they just got out of a bloody war. Unlike a
Speaker 4: lot of their friends. They just escaped being bond.
Speaker 6: H with THO.
Speaker 2: Sorry but we had a name.
Speaker 5: With those, Sorry.
Speaker 2: Uncle Albert, Admiral Housey from Paul and Linda McCartney's nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy one album Ram.
Speaker 4: But we have a plenty name Monday.
Speaker 5: We're so sorry aloud but the candles out the oil
Speaker 5: and were.
Speaker 6: Going away.
Speaker 1: In our next episode.
Speaker 5: And if I said I really knew you well, what
Speaker 5: would your answer be?
Speaker 4: If you readed day.
Speaker 1: Here Today a love song to John Lennon had a
Speaker 1: conversation that never took place. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
Speaker 1: is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries