Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: When we first got Mary 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 back leave it.
Speaker 3: So no, no, no, you can't do that.
Speaker 2: For some reason, I believed in and what I advised
Speaker 2: to do is to buy something like he said, there's
Speaker 2: this little farm, let's come up in Scotland. I ended
Speaker 2: up taking advice and bought it a bit approachingly.
Speaker 4: That you lot beatle. Paul McCartney has bought a hill
Speaker 4: farm on the remote Mull of Kintyre in the west
Speaker 4: of Scotland. Farmer Brown said, last night I recognized mister
Speaker 4: McCartney immediate. We showed them through the farmhouse and they
Speaker 4: said they 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 Londo,
Speaker 2: she just said, you know, you're not fucking up in Scotland.
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, but I'm not sure you'll like it.
Speaker 3: She loved, Wow, we could fix it up.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul will do. And I've been fortunate to spend
Speaker 1: time with one of the greatest songwriters of our.
Speaker 5: Era, and will you look at me? I'm going on
Speaker 5: to it.
Speaker 3: I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is, sir Paul McCartney. We worked 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, we'll let that.
Speaker 5: Crept 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, when winter comes
Speaker 1: and mull of Kintar.
Speaker 6: Well, winter comes, Aloiscus, We'll wanta two.
Speaker 7: Twesday.
Speaker 1: In 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, And I'm listening to this one.
Speaker 8: I think, gosh, I mean it's good. I am actually
Speaker 8: thinking of releasing it. It's very sort of hippie, almost
Speaker 8: relates to living.
Speaker 3: On the farm.
Speaker 6: When summer's gone, We're gonna fly away.
Speaker 1: When winter Camas 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: Kntire 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 2: I was greeted by our ext door neighbor, Ian mcdrugal,
Speaker 2: whose very old doll course carry spoke with gallac and
Speaker 2: was very old farmer in.
Speaker 3: A really 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 he.
Speaker 3: Said, you'll be the new layered.
Speaker 5: What.
Speaker 2: I could never understand him, but I've worked out the
Speaker 2: system of having on to the last word in a sentence.
Speaker 2: He said, I go, hie the sheep, find hi the
Speaker 2: clipping I write.
Speaker 1: When McCartney bought the property, the old wooden farmhouse was
Speaker 1: falling apart, the fences crumbling.
Speaker 3: I will fight it out. This has stopped this place.
Speaker 3: 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 5: Sweet like.
Speaker 3: Gay.
Speaker 5: We're only really up there because of Linda's love of it.
Speaker 5: When we went up so.
Speaker 3: She said, oh, this is frying fantastic.
Speaker 5: I love it. So she made me love it through
Speaker 5: her eyes.
Speaker 2: I went, oh, well that is a fine mountain.
Speaker 5: Gosh, he's covered in the heap. That's very beautiful, you know.
Speaker 5: And so we brought up the kids.
Speaker 1: There in the early nineteen seventies. With the help of Linda,
Speaker 1: McCartney came to see the lush, rolling highlands as romantic
Speaker 1: and the dilapidated farm property as full of potential. After all,
Speaker 1: the thing beyond repair in his life at the time
Speaker 1: was not the Barns, but the Beatles, who were mired
Speaker 1: 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. And
Speaker 2: it was nothing that we did. It's nothing that we liked.
Speaker 2: We liked playing music, we like making music like and
Speaker 2: this was suddenly a deadly period where actually actually think
Speaker 2: about money and stuff that we'd not't really given much
Speaker 2: thought to. So I was going under kind of a bit
Speaker 2: depressed the whole thing. And suddenly Linda and I just,
Speaker 2: I don't know, we just sort of said, well, let's
Speaker 2: let's go to Scotland. We're literally taking ourselves out of
Speaker 2: the situation. So anyone needed me, they had to ring
Speaker 2: me come into the meeting today. Sorry I can'tum in Scotland.
Speaker 2: And so that freedom was just it's.
Speaker 1: Great 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 5: It allowed me to be a man.
Speaker 2: If a picture needed hanging, I'm your boy. If somebody
Speaker 2: needed doing on the farm, I'll do it. And so
Speaker 2: it was very nice. It was quite a difficult period
Speaker 2: because it was to do with the Beatles break up
Speaker 2: and everything, but it allowed me to see another side
Speaker 2: of myself because I'd grown up in Liverpool, not very
Speaker 2: much the handyman. I'd gone on the road with the
Speaker 2: Beatles around the world and round again, and now here
Speaker 2: I was just on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 5: It was sensational.
Speaker 1: In contrast to their busy life in London. The Highlands
Speaker 1: permitted the McCartneys to live at a slower piece.
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 virile 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 liberating. So I
Speaker 2: would fix fences, I would dig a drain. I would
Speaker 2: keep some chickens. I would plant a vegetable garden.
Speaker 6: Fix the fence by the acre plot.
Speaker 7: Two young foxes have been nosing around the lambs and
Speaker 7: the chigains. You'll safe until it's done. I musty a
Speaker 7: drain by the carrot patch.
Speaker 3: The whole crop spiles if it gets too down.
Speaker 6: And where will we be with an empty store when
Speaker 6: winter comes.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of young people dream about that today.
Speaker 5: Still I sense a lot of people want that freedom.
Speaker 5: Escaping 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'd painted. I talked
Speaker 2: to them about how you paint the roof, it's all
Speaker 2: you needed. So get the system. But we listened to
Speaker 2: tighten up records. The two so it was reggae and
Speaker 2: freedom and you know, Linda cooking, planting a little vege garden.
Speaker 2: I was just it's pretty amazing. It was fus and
Speaker 2: it 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 Kern,
Speaker 1: who would look after the property when the family was away.
Speaker 2: I said, and I learned to share the sheep with
Speaker 2: hand clippers.
Speaker 3: No one, 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.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 2: Just getting a sheep on its back is cool. And
Speaker 2: that ended up as a cover of ram. But that
Speaker 2: was real cheering time. And we did crazy things like
Speaker 2: Linda took a portrait of every one of our flock, so.
Speaker 3: We have this, let's make it into something one day.
Speaker 3: It's it's huge. It's just all these different sheep. But
Speaker 3: we were doing stuff like that, you know, because because
Speaker 3: we wanted to. It's genuine, you know, this is how
Speaker 3: 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 somewhere,
Speaker 2: and he's looking after things. So I must fix a
Speaker 2: fence by the acre plot. Two young foxes have been
Speaker 2: nosing around the lambs, and the chickens won't feel safe
Speaker 2: until it's done.
Speaker 5: I must dig a drain by the carrot patch.
Speaker 2: Whole crop spoils if it gets too damp, and where
Speaker 2: will we be with an empty store and winter comes?
Speaker 5: So these are things I'd learned. You've got to put
Speaker 5: a fence up or the fox.
Speaker 2: Will have your chickens, and you've got to dig a
Speaker 2: drain because patch gets too wet, nothing will grow there.
Speaker 5: So this was me remembering.
Speaker 6: That when summer we're gonna fly away and find the
Speaker 6: sun when winter comes.
Speaker 5: 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 5: That's right.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. I mean I don't think it
Speaker 2: diminishes it at all.
Speaker 5: I think.
Speaker 2: It's memories of actual, actual things.
Speaker 5: And each one makes up a nice little scene.
Speaker 2: Fixing the fence for boxes that are a next one,
Speaker 2: digging the trench a little planting trees.
Speaker 7: I must find the time to plant some trees in the.
Speaker 6: Meadow where the river flows, in time to come down,
Speaker 6: make good shade for some poor song.
Speaker 2: In a matter where the river flows in time to come,
Speaker 2: they'll make good shade for some poor soul. That was
Speaker 2: a sort of rather wistful image that I liked.
Speaker 5: I'd never planted trees before.
Speaker 2: In fact, after that time, was remembering that time and
Speaker 2: talking to my roady, my long time roady, and I
Speaker 2: sort of said about a tree. You know, I said, well,
Speaker 2: you know, you could buy a tree, and.
Speaker 5: What he said, you can buy trees.
Speaker 2: And the concept of buying a tree was fabulous, just
Speaker 2: to see his his mine be blown by the idea
Speaker 2: because he thought, no, trees are just trees.
Speaker 5: And they just grow.
Speaker 2: And by this time in my life, when I'm writing
Speaker 2: this song, I knew that these little one foot things
Speaker 2: I'd planted in Scotland, and I planted them very badly.
Speaker 2: I just lifted a sod, stuck them underneath it, and
Speaker 2: plunked the sod back down. By now they were bloody
Speaker 2: thirty foot giants. I fell into the trap that most
Speaker 2: people fall into. If you're going to buy a plant
Speaker 2: a tree, it's got to be a good six foot.
Speaker 2: But then you start talking to our boialists and you
Speaker 2: start talking to three people and they will say it's
Speaker 2: best to plant and little mm hmm. But to me
Speaker 2: it was like, I'll never see it grow, but of
Speaker 2: course you do.
Speaker 3: Do you still have the house in Scotland? Oh you
Speaker 3: still have it?
Speaker 5: I do? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Of gin.
Speaker 2: In from Percy Bys.
Speaker 3: These as.
Speaker 2: Of gins.
Speaker 1: As McCary 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 Kintire, a surprise hit
Speaker 1: on the peak of the punk era. Mull of Cantarre
Speaker 1: was one of the UK's best selling singles of all time.
Speaker 2: I was in Scotland a lot and it just suddenly
Speaker 2: occurred to me that there were no new Scottish songs.
Speaker 5: There were lots of great old.
Speaker 2: Songs the bagpipe fance played, but there was nothing new.
Speaker 2: So I thought, that's an opportunity to see if I
Speaker 2: fancy it or if I can, and then it'd began
Speaker 2: a nice because the new Scottish song would have been
Speaker 2: written by assassinak.
Speaker 5: 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 cords 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.
Speaker 3: Oh it's a number one, you know.
Speaker 2: And the big memory for me that was so cool
Speaker 2: was talking about a sophistication and this love of not
Speaker 2: non sophistication was if you were in an orchestral session,
Speaker 2: the musicians will.
Speaker 9: Count one, two three for two to three three to
Speaker 9: the counting the bars, but the Scottish pipeline doesn't. It
Speaker 9: goes one, two, three, four, five, six, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
Speaker 9: twenty three twenty four twenty.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, Mull of Kintarn was released during the
Speaker 1: punk era, when a rising Scottish melody might have seemed
Speaker 1: an unlikely hit, a significant departure from the convention of
Speaker 1: the day. On the other hand, what is more punk
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 2: was a big gang of punks who look very aggressive,
Speaker 2: you know, the look was a grossure. And they comes
Speaker 2: sort of stomping through in the sort of bobber boots
Speaker 2: and they come with the car and we're kind of
Speaker 2: crouching a little bit, trying to not get noticed, thinking Jesus,
Speaker 2: what they're going to do. You know, they're going to
Speaker 2: think we're the enemy kind of thing. And then they
Speaker 2: noticed that one of them comes to the college. I
Speaker 2: wound down the window a little bit.
Speaker 3: He goes, I got that monarching jars fucking right.
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 McCartney's alone, allowing them
Speaker 1: to get away from public life. Did people follow you there?
Speaker 3: Cell remote? Nobody could get there. 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.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just easy to go that road, of that
Speaker 2: road and of that track and then over that track.
Speaker 3: It was very remote. And then the photographer from Life.
Speaker 2: Magazine found us, and I think I threw a boocket
Speaker 2: of water on him, and then he said he was
Speaker 2: going to use that photo, so fuck. So I sort
Speaker 2: of followed him out in my landlord and said, look,
Speaker 2: we'll do a pose for So we did a posal.
Speaker 3: They got all the cover of Life. I think yes.
Speaker 2: But we loved it because we were totally making it up,
Speaker 2: and you think about it.
Speaker 3: We had a young baby. There were doctors in.
Speaker 2: The town, so we were ten minutes from a doctor,
Speaker 2: but as far as we were concerned, we could be
Speaker 2: completely cut off if we wanted, and it was pretty cool.
Speaker 6: When Winter Comes.
Speaker 7: Focuss we want.
Speaker 1: To Paul McCartney reworked When Winter Comes in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: twenty eight years after it was originally recorded. It was
Speaker 1: a time when most of the were world was cut
Speaker 1: off from public life in a very different way at
Speaker 1: the beginning of the COVID nineteen pandemic, when his archivists
Speaker 1: brought him the song as a possible bonus extra for
Speaker 1: the reissue of Flaming Pie. The sentiment of the song
Speaker 1: reconnecting with the natural world hunkering down for a season
Speaker 1: of isolation resonated enough with McCartney that he decided to
Speaker 1: unabashedly release it on his next original solo.
Speaker 7: Album, to stains.
Speaker 6: Whensum's Gone.
Speaker 5: We're gonna fly away.
Speaker 6: And find the Sun when winds are Gone, And find
Speaker 6: the Sun.
Speaker 1: When winds are gone, When Winter Comes from McCartney three,
Speaker 1: released in twenty twenty and mull Offkin Tyre released in
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight. In the next episode.
Speaker 2: Under Milk would by Dylan Thomas.
Speaker 1: Senter Paul Listening to the radio taught young McCartney the
Speaker 1: art of creating sound images. Geez Penny Lean next time
Speaker 1: on McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in
Speaker 1: Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries.