Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul molldoin. Before we get to
Speaker 1: this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
Speaker 1: can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Speaker 1: Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
Speaker 1: Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics
Speaker 1: show page in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin dot fm,
Speaker 1: slash Plus.
Speaker 2: When we first got money and we're in a meeting
Speaker 2: with my accountant, he said, now you've got to invest
Speaker 2: in stuff, and I said, don't worry about it, just
Speaker 2: putting the bag leave it.
Speaker 3: I do so, no, no, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 3: For some reason I believed.
Speaker 2: In and so what I advise you to do is
Speaker 2: to buy something like there's this little farm that's come
Speaker 2: up in Scotland. I ended up taking advice and port
Speaker 2: it a bit approachately.
Speaker 4: Thattelar Beatle Paul McCartney has bought a hill farm on
Speaker 4: the remote Mull of Kintyre in the west of Scotland.
Speaker 4: Farmer Brown said, last night I recognized mister McCartney immediately.
Speaker 4: We showed them through the farmhouse and they said they
Speaker 4: were delighted with it.
Speaker 2: But it was it's falling apart, you know, there was
Speaker 2: nothing great about it. So I kind of left it
Speaker 2: and didn't really bother. But then when I met there, know.
Speaker 5: She just said, you know, you got to fuck up
Speaker 5: in Scotland. I said, yeah, but I'm not sure you'll
Speaker 5: like it. She loved we could fix it up.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul Muldoon and I've been fortunate to spend time
Speaker 1: with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 3: And will you look at me?
Speaker 2: I'm going on too.
Speaker 3: 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 3: Actually I'm a songwriter, my god, Well, that crypta homie.
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 when Winter Comes
Speaker 1: and Mull of Kintar.
Speaker 6: Well, Winter comes one or two twouesday.
Speaker 1: And just a couple of years ago, after we'd already
Speaker 1: been having our conversations for some time Paul McCartney was
Speaker 1: preparing for a reissue of his nineteen ninety seven album
Speaker 1: Flaming Pie. His archivists had sent him some options for
Speaker 1: bonus extras, songs which would have been recorded at the
Speaker 1: time of the original album but had yet to be released.
Speaker 2: But they just sent me some tracks for consideration as
Speaker 2: bonus extras.
Speaker 3: And I'm listening to this one.
Speaker 2: I think, gosh, I mean, it's it's good. I am
Speaker 2: actually thinking of releasing it.
Speaker 3: It's very sort of hippie, almost relates to living on the.
Speaker 6: Farm when summer's garden. We're Gonna fly away.
Speaker 1: When winter comes was recorded in nineteen ninety two with
Speaker 1: George Martin at the mixing desk. It's a sweet, simple
Speaker 1: song HARKing back to the time McCartney spent living on
Speaker 1: his farm in Scotland. Nestled in the heart of the
Speaker 1: Kentire Peninsula just thirty miles from the coast of Ireland
Speaker 1: is high Park Farm, the one hundred and eighty three
Speaker 1: acre property McCartney purchased in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 3: And I was.
Speaker 2: Greeted by an extraor neighbor, Ian McDougall, who's very old
Speaker 2: Dall Scots carries, spoke mcgallac, and very old farmer in.
Speaker 3: A Really it's a total stereotype.
Speaker 4: He admitted to me as he walked over the grounds
Speaker 4: that he had no knowledge of farming, although he wanted
Speaker 4: to keep it as a farm. I told him that
Speaker 4: it would be all right if he put a reliable
Speaker 4: man in, and he seemed to agree. He has seemed
Speaker 4: a very sensible sort of chap.
Speaker 3: He said. You'll be then a layered.
Speaker 2: What. I could never understand him, but I've worked out
Speaker 2: the system of hanging on to the last word in
Speaker 2: the sentence.
Speaker 3: Sheep, I go, hie the sheep, fine, hi the clipping. I.
Speaker 1: When McCartney bought the property, the old wooden farmhouse was
Speaker 1: falling apart, the fences crumbling.
Speaker 7: I will find it out.
Speaker 3: This is this place. I really didn't like it.
Speaker 1: He had no idea that years later it would become
Speaker 1: a cherished setting for his life with Linda Eastman, or
Speaker 1: such a whale of inspiration for his songwriting.
Speaker 6: Sweet Dagger Gay.
Speaker 2: We're only really up there because of Linda's love of it.
Speaker 3: And we went up to she said, oh, this is fantastic.
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 2: So she made me love it through her eyes.
Speaker 7: I went, oh, well that is a fine mountain.
Speaker 2: Gosh, he's covered in health.
Speaker 3: That's very beautiful, you know.
Speaker 2: So we brought up the kids.
Speaker 1: There in the early nineteen seventies, with the help of
Speaker 1: Linda McCartney came to see the lush rolling highlands as
Speaker 1: romantic and the dilapidated farm property as full of potential.
Speaker 1: After all, the thing beyond repair in his life at
Speaker 1: the time was not the barns, but the Beatles, who
Speaker 1: were mired in business disputes back down in London.
Speaker 2: I was getting called into meetings in London in our
Speaker 2: office in sabil Row. Well, you would have to sit
Speaker 2: there and listen to an accountant or the manager and
Speaker 2: talk about this boring or that even more boring.
Speaker 3: And it was nothing that we did.
Speaker 2: It's nothing that we liked. We liked playing music, we
Speaker 2: like making music like and this was suddenly a deadly
Speaker 2: period where actually actually think about money and stuff that
Speaker 2: we'd not really given much thought to. So I was
Speaker 2: going under kind a bit depressed the whole thing, and
Speaker 2: suddenly Linda and I just said, don't know, we just
Speaker 2: sort of said, well, let's let's go to Scotland. Well,
Speaker 2: literally taking ourselves out of the situation. So anyone needed
Speaker 2: me they had to ring me come into the meeting today,
Speaker 2: Sorry I call them in Scotland. And so that freedom
Speaker 2: was just it's great.
Speaker 1: Away from the dreary business meetings and the crumbling band. Paul, Linda,
Speaker 1: their two children and their English sheep dog Martha started
Speaker 1: living a more simple pastoral life on the farm. They
Speaker 1: were inspired to eat more vegetarian food. Paul patched up
Speaker 1: the fences and planted trees which could grow even in
Speaker 1: the harshest of Scottish winters.
Speaker 2: It allowed me to be a man. If a picture
Speaker 2: needed hanging, I'm your boy. If somebody needed doing on
Speaker 2: the farm, I'll do it. And so it was very nice.
Speaker 2: It was quite a difficult period because it was to
Speaker 2: do with the Beatles break up and everything. But it
Speaker 2: allowed me to see another side of myself because I'd
Speaker 2: grown up in Liverpool, not very much the handyman. I'd
Speaker 2: gone on the road with the Beatles round the world
Speaker 2: and round again, and now here I was just on
Speaker 2: a farm in the middle of nowhere. It was.
Speaker 1: It was sensational in contrast to their busy life in London.
Speaker 1: The Highlands permitted the McCartneys to live at a slower pace.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a bath, for instance, in this little farmhouse,
Speaker 2: but there was a big steel tub that they cleaned
Speaker 2: the milking equipment in bloody cold in the winter, and
Speaker 2: we'd run in and we'd jump in this bath, which
Speaker 2: was not easy to get in, but we were young
Speaker 2: in vieryle and we'd jump in this path and have
Speaker 2: this fantastic for a Japanese style bath. So those are
Speaker 2: the kind of things we're doing that I'd never done
Speaker 2: ever in my life, and it was it was liberating.
Speaker 2: So I would fix fences, I would dig a drain.
Speaker 2: I would keep some chickens. I would plant a vegetable garden.
Speaker 6: Must fix the fence by the acre plot. Two young
Speaker 6: foxes have been nosing around the lambs, and the chickens
Speaker 6: will feel safe until it's done. I musty a drain
Speaker 6: by the carrot patch. The whole clap spiles if it
Speaker 6: gets too down. And where will we be in an
Speaker 6: empty store when winter comes.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of young people dream about that today. Still,
Speaker 2: I sense a lot of people want that freedom. Escaping
Speaker 2: the rat race.
Speaker 1: Escaping the rat race entailed a great deal of manual labor,
Speaker 1: but the McCartneys began to relish the simplicity of their
Speaker 1: life on the farm.
Speaker 2: I would get tradesmen from the village who would put
Speaker 2: the roof on and then then I painted.
Speaker 3: I talked to them about how you paint the roof.
Speaker 3: It's only needing under coat. So I get the system.
Speaker 3: But we listened to Titan Records, the two.
Speaker 2: Volumes, so it was reggae and Freedom and you know,
Speaker 2: Linda cooking, planting a little veg garden.
Speaker 3: I was just pretty amazing. It was fabulous and it
Speaker 3: was just what the boy was wanting.
Speaker 1: Instead of wrangling crowds of Beatles fans, McCartney found himself
Speaker 1: wrangling sheep with the help of a shepherd, Duncan Kerns,
Speaker 1: who would look after the property when the family was away.
Speaker 3: I said, I learned to share the sheep with hand clippers.
Speaker 2: No one does.
Speaker 3: That's hard. It is quite hard.
Speaker 2: I did about fourteen to twenty in a day, and
Speaker 2: Duncan would do like a hundred Oh you know, just
Speaker 2: getting a sheep on its back is cool.
Speaker 3: And that ended up with a cover of ramp right.
Speaker 3: But that was real cheering time, and we did crazy
Speaker 3: things like Linda took a portrait of every one of
Speaker 3: our flock.
Speaker 2: So we have this, let's make.
Speaker 3: Into something one day. It's it's huge, it's just all
Speaker 3: all these different sheep. But we're doing stuff like that,
Speaker 3: you know, because because we want to. It's genuine, you know.
Speaker 3: This is how we were living.
Speaker 1: When winter comes. Chronicles the mundane chores of farm life.
Speaker 1: Fixing the fence, digging a drain. These little actions express
Speaker 1: attention and care, both for the speaker's family and for
Speaker 1: the natural world at large.
Speaker 2: So this is it's someone like me upon a farm
Speaker 2: somewhere and he's looking after things. So I must fix
Speaker 2: a fence by the acre plot. Two young foxes have
Speaker 2: been nosing around the lambs, and the chickens won't feel
Speaker 2: safe until it's done. I must dig a drain by
Speaker 2: the carrot patch. Whole crop spoils if it gets too damp,
Speaker 2: and where will we be with an empty store when
Speaker 2: winter comes. So these are things I learned. You've got
Speaker 2: to put a fence up or the fox will have
Speaker 2: your chickens. And you've got to dig a drain because
Speaker 2: patch gets too wet, nothing will grow there. So this
Speaker 2: was me remembering that when summer's gone.
Speaker 6: We're gonna fly away fine the sun when when it goes.
Speaker 2: I really like this song.
Speaker 1: I don't want to diminish it by saying it's a
Speaker 1: series of thumbnail sketches.
Speaker 2: That's right. I think you're right. I mean, I don't
Speaker 2: think it diminishes it at all. I think it's memories
Speaker 2: of actual, actual things. And each one makes up a
Speaker 2: nice little scene. Fixing the fence for boxys that at
Speaker 2: a next one, digging the trench a little at a
Speaker 2: planting trees.
Speaker 6: I must find the time to plant some trees in
Speaker 6: the manner where the river flows in time to come down,
Speaker 6: make good shade for some poor soul.
Speaker 2: In the meadow where the river flows in time to
Speaker 2: come they'll make good shade for some poor soul. That
Speaker 2: was a sort of rather wistful image that I liked.
Speaker 2: I'd never planted trees before. In fact, after that, I
Speaker 2: was remembering that time and talking to my roady, my
Speaker 2: long time roady, and I sort of said about a tree.
Speaker 2: You know, I said, well, you know, you could buy
Speaker 2: a tree.
Speaker 7: And what he said, you can buy trees, And the
Speaker 7: concept of buying a tree was fabulous. Just to see
Speaker 7: his his mind be blown by the idea because he thought, no,
Speaker 7: trees are just trees and they just grow. And by
Speaker 7: this time in my life, when I'm writing this song,
Speaker 7: I knew that these little little one foot things I'd
Speaker 7: planted in Scotland, and I planted them very badly. I
Speaker 7: just lifted a sod stock them underneath it and plunked
Speaker 7: the sod back down. By now they were bloody thirty
Speaker 7: foot giants. I fell into the trap that most people
Speaker 7: fall into. If you're going to buy a plant a tree,
Speaker 7: it's gotta be a good six foot. But then you
Speaker 7: start talking.
Speaker 2: To our boialists and you start talking to tree people
Speaker 2: and they will say it's best to plant and little.
Speaker 2: But to me it was like, I'll never see it grow,
Speaker 2: But of course you do.
Speaker 3: Do you still have the in Scotland?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: Oh you still have it?
Speaker 2: I do? Yeah, Robert Cantar, Yeah.
Speaker 6: Mull of Gins mistra in from Percy b desiziwais be
Speaker 6: of Gins.
Speaker 1: As McCartney was renovating his Scottish property throughout the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: he was also renovating his songwriting. With Linda by his side,
Speaker 1: working with their band Wings, He often drew inspiration from
Speaker 1: the Highlands, as in Mull of Kintarre, a surprise hit
Speaker 1: on the peak of the punk era. Mull of Kintar
Speaker 1: was one of the UK's best selling singles of all time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was in Scotland a lot, and it just
Speaker 2: suddenly occurred to me that there were no new Scottish songs.
Speaker 2: There were, there were lots of great old songs that
Speaker 2: the bagpipe fans played, but there was nothing new. So
Speaker 2: I thought, that's an opportunity to see if I fancy
Speaker 2: it or if I can, and then it would began
Speaker 2: a nice because the new Scottish song would have been
Speaker 2: written by assassinak. I thought that that would be fun.
Speaker 2: So long story short, I had the local pipe major
Speaker 2: come up with his pipes to the house, to the house,
Speaker 2: which was a very little house, and he played and
Speaker 2: it was so loud that we I said, let's go
Speaker 2: out into the garden, which again was a very little garden,
Speaker 2: and we just sort of he played, and I got
Speaker 2: some ideas. I got what chords would work with what
Speaker 2: he was playing, what key was in because they can't
Speaker 2: change key. So yeah, so I made the song and
Speaker 2: enjoyed it, and they had a session up there and
Speaker 2: it was funny evening and they loved it. Oh it's
Speaker 2: a number one here, you know. And the big memory
Speaker 2: for me that was so cool was talking about sophistication
Speaker 2: and this love of not non sophistication. Was if you
Speaker 2: were in an orchestral session, the musicians will count one,
Speaker 2: two three for two to three three to the count
Speaker 2: and the bars, but the Scottish pipeman doesn't. It goes one, two, three, four,
Speaker 2: five six.
Speaker 3: And then the.
Speaker 2: Four.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, Mullfkantarm was released during the punk era,
Speaker 1: when a rising Scottish melody might have seemed an unlikely hit,
Speaker 1: a significant departure from the convention of the day. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, what is more punk than departing from convention.
Speaker 2: There's this little story where Lindr and I were in
Speaker 2: traffic in London, in the West End somewhere, and there's
Speaker 2: a big gang of punks look very aggressive, you know,
Speaker 2: the look was a gross and they comes sort of
Speaker 2: stomping through in the sort of bobber boots and they
Speaker 2: come with the car and we're kind of crouching a
Speaker 2: little bit trying to not get noticed, thinking Jesus, what
Speaker 2: they're going to do you know they're going to think
Speaker 2: we're the enemy kind of thing. And then they noticed
Speaker 2: that one of them comes to the car, so I
Speaker 2: wound down the window a little bit.
Speaker 7: He goes, I got pull pull that Moniching Gars fucking right.
Speaker 2: Oh.
Speaker 1: Through these songs, High Park took on a sort of
Speaker 1: mythic quality in the public imagination, but for the most part,
Speaker 1: the farm itself remained for the McCartneys alone, allowing them
Speaker 1: to get away from public life.
Speaker 3: Do people follow you there? Remote? A couple of people did,
Speaker 3: and people would just shot out of the blue.
Speaker 2: They probably came to Campbelltown and asked, and someone would
Speaker 2: tell them up that road.
Speaker 3: But it was really hard. It wasn't just easy yet
Speaker 3: to go that road and of that road, then up
Speaker 3: that track and then over that track. It was very remote.
Speaker 2: And then the photographer from Life magazine found us, and
Speaker 2: I think I threw a boocket of water on him,
Speaker 2: and then he said he was going to use that photo,
Speaker 2: so fuck. So I sort of followed him out in
Speaker 2: my landroad and said, look, we'll do a pose one.
Speaker 2: So we did a post one that got on the
Speaker 2: cover of Life. I think yes. But we loved it
Speaker 2: because we were totally making it up, and you think
Speaker 2: about it. We had a young baby.
Speaker 3: There were doctors in the town.
Speaker 2: So we were ten minutes from a doctor, but as
Speaker 2: far as we were concerning, we could be completely cost
Speaker 2: if we all had and it was pretty cool.
Speaker 6: Well Winter comes, all foiscuss We'll wanta two.
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney reworked When Winter Comes in twenty twenty, twenty
Speaker 1: eight years after it was originally recorded. It was a
Speaker 1: time when most of the world was cut off from
Speaker 1: public life in a very different way at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the COVID nineteen pandemic. When his archivists brought him
Speaker 1: the song as a possible bonus extra for the reissue
Speaker 1: of Flaming Pie. The sentiment of the song reconnecting with
Speaker 1: the natural world hunkering down for a season of isolation
Speaker 1: resonated enough with McCartney that he decided to unabashedly release
Speaker 1: it on his next original solo album.
Speaker 6: To Stay Indos where Summer's Gone. We're gonna fly away.
Speaker 8: And find the sun when Winter cone, and find the
Speaker 8: sun when Winter Come.
Speaker 1: When Winter Comes from McCartney three, released in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: and Mull of Kintyre, released in nineteen seventy eight. In
Speaker 1: the next episode, Under Milk would by Dylan Thomas behind
Speaker 1: the shelter in the middle, listening to the radio. Todd
Speaker 1: Young McCartney The art of creating sound images ges Penny Lean,
Speaker 1: next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A
Speaker 1: Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, n
Speaker 1: p L and Pushkin Industries.