Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Paul muldoon. 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.
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Speaker 2: We had guitars, we played, We did the occasional gigs.
Speaker 2: But one of the things you used to do was
Speaker 2: you would you would go to a party and you
Speaker 2: would take your guitar with you. Now, John, being older
Speaker 2: and at art school, would go to art school parties
Speaker 2: which men George normally wouldn't have an entree into. But
Speaker 2: I remember going to one and I took my guitar.
Speaker 2: So I'm sitting enigmatically in the corner with my black
Speaker 2: pole and neck sweater on, trying to look French, trying
Speaker 2: to look interesting to this older crowd. And so one
Speaker 2: of the weapons that I used was to play this
Speaker 2: sort of frenchy sounding song and sort of make gottural noises,
Speaker 2: kind of half thinking that someone will think, well, he's French.
Speaker 2: Probably intellectual. It's probably intellectual. It wasn't necessary. Once the
Speaker 2: Beatles were going to try and look enigmatic, it just
Speaker 2: was no longer necessary.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul muldoone for a while now. I've been fortunate
Speaker 1: to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
Speaker 1: the era, and.
Speaker 2: Will you look at me? I'm going on too. I'm
Speaker 2: 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 2: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 2: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
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, Michelle, when Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney was trying to look French at art school parties,
Speaker 1: he would have been playing a guitar he bought from
Speaker 1: Hesse's Guitar Shop, the main music store in Liverpool.
Speaker 2: We would go in the shop and to us it
Speaker 2: was like Valhalla, just all these guitars. There's no finer
Speaker 2: shop than a guitar shop. And I still find that today.
Speaker 2: Still there's just the beauty, it's magic of all this
Speaker 2: potential music surrounding, you know, all this rock and roll
Speaker 2: suggested by these shops, and everything gleaming and looking beautiful
Speaker 2: and shiny. And we used to love going in the shop,
Speaker 2: just to go in the shop, and we would pay
Speaker 2: our dues with our little books at a counter, and
Speaker 2: I still actually have my book, my little payment book.
Speaker 1: Hessis was manned by the shopkeeper Jim Gretti, who let
Speaker 1: customers pay for their instruments in monthly installments. With the purchases,
Speaker 1: he also offered some free instruction.
Speaker 2: He would often stand there with his guitar. He was
Speaker 2: a bit of a jazz guitarist and he would often
Speaker 2: be sort of playing a bit of guitar like guys
Speaker 2: in music shops too. We liked him, We admired his
Speaker 2: skills on the guitar because he was far in advance
Speaker 2: of us. And there was this one chord that we
Speaker 2: heard in play, was a particularly lush chord. We said,
Speaker 2: what's that? What chorde is that? And so he took
Speaker 2: the trouble to point it out to us. It was
Speaker 2: what we knew as an F chord, simple F shape
Speaker 2: down at the first position, down at the nut. But
Speaker 2: he used one of his fingers to cover the first
Speaker 2: two strings up on the fourth fret, which would be
Speaker 2: an A flat and an E flat, and those gave
Speaker 2: a very jazzy cord. You got your F cord, your
Speaker 2: normal F code, but with these it just very lush
Speaker 2: and very exotic. So the good thing was when he
Speaker 2: showed it to two of us, we were bound to remember,
Speaker 2: because you know, George forgot it, I'd remember similarly vice versa. Anyway,
Speaker 2: we knew this cord and we worked it into quite
Speaker 2: a few things.
Speaker 3: There were bound on a hill, but I never heard
Speaker 3: them ringing.
Speaker 2: We wrote it into the Beatles' version of Till There.
Speaker 4: Was You, Till there was You.
Speaker 2: There were because we just thought it was juicy and
Speaker 2: it showed that we knew a bit. It showed us
Speaker 2: this F demented or whatever it was called. And I
Speaker 2: was making this song in c It was trying out
Speaker 2: to be the French song that I would do at
Speaker 2: the party. And to the second chord, I use this
Speaker 2: Jim Gretti chord, this F chord with the added notes
Speaker 2: we'll have an official title. It will be f Augmented
Speaker 2: ninth or something. But we didn't deal in such luxuriousous
Speaker 2: titles and names. Of course. It was just that one.
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney was constantly collecting a chord here, a progression there.
Speaker 1: It was all part of an attempt to be a
Speaker 1: cool French intellectual, to impress John's friends. Everything he took
Speaker 1: in was inspiration for his party piece.
Speaker 2: Then I progressed through put in another nice little chord
Speaker 2: we knew, which again I don't know the name of,
Speaker 2: but we got this chord off the coasters record called
Speaker 2: along came Jones.
Speaker 5: I dropped down in my either tear and turned on
Speaker 5: channel to a bad gun sling of gom over the
Speaker 5: taste and posty. Soon he trapped her in the old
Speaker 5: mal and failed with an eagle lab.
Speaker 4: If you don't give it a d to your ranch,
Speaker 4: I'll thaw you all it had.
Speaker 2: And then he grabbed her good, and then he tied
Speaker 2: it down, and then he had a good and then
Speaker 2: along came Joan has been alone. But there's this Jeff
Speaker 2: Lynn calls them naughty chords, which were a slightly naughty
Speaker 2: chord that's out of our normal realm. So I used
Speaker 2: these two little chords and had this melody which I say,
Speaker 2: I used to make French grunts too, and it was
Speaker 2: kind of half a joke really. Then years later, when
Speaker 2: the Beatles were starting to become popular and I was
Speaker 2: looking for ideas songs to do, Edith Piaff had a
Speaker 2: big hit with a song called Milord, which was interesting.
Speaker 2: It was a big here because it was out of
Speaker 2: left field. Whereas all the other songs you sort of
Speaker 2: knew what genre they were, this one was French and
Speaker 2: had this interesting.
Speaker 6: Lord as well.
Speaker 4: Wood easy second thought, blessing.
Speaker 2: The idea of a girl sort of talking to a
Speaker 2: guy about mill Lord. We didn't quite get it, but
Speaker 2: it was nice. And then she slows down, do well,
Speaker 2: Lord does that trick? I took all of this in.
Speaker 2: All of this was like just I just fill in
Speaker 2: my tank, all this stuff.
Speaker 1: As the band brainstormed for the album that would become
Speaker 1: Rubber's Soul, John Lennon remembered Paul's French party piece from
Speaker 1: more than five years earlier and encouraged him to pick
Speaker 1: it back up.
Speaker 7: So I went away and thought something bomb bomb me Lord.
Speaker 7: So I've bought Michel that's nice French, nice sound. Michellell mabel.
Speaker 3: These arm words that go to gather, well, my Michelle.
Speaker 6: Be these shell mabel, these.
Speaker 4: Arm words that go together.
Speaker 6: Well. My mission.
Speaker 1: In his quest to be a believable Frenchman and to
Speaker 1: write a song like Edith Piaf's, McCartney would need help
Speaker 1: to overcome the language barrier.
Speaker 2: I never took French in school. I did Spanish, German
Speaker 2: and Latin. Strangely, you get most English people talk French. Yes,
Speaker 2: British people.
Speaker 8: No, that's it is odd. It wasn't offered at the school.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it seemed like everyone else took it. John
Speaker 2: took it, but he couldn't remember any of it.
Speaker 4: I love you, and love you and love you.
Speaker 3: That's all I wanted to say.
Speaker 6: Until that bad I will say.
Speaker 4: That you understand.
Speaker 2: I had a friend called Ivan for probably my best
Speaker 2: friend in school, even though he wasn't in my class.
Speaker 2: He was born on the same day as I was,
Speaker 2: exactly in Liverpool, eighteenth of June forty two, so we
Speaker 2: had that in common sense of humor. Was crazy guy.
Speaker 2: Turned out he was the guy to introduced me to
Speaker 2: John Lennon. It was a conduit put us together. So
Speaker 2: I was still very good friends with Ivan, who by
Speaker 2: then had been a Cambrig scholar classics, and he and
Speaker 2: his wife lived in Islington. Jan his wife and I
Speaker 2: used to visit them, just go to dinner, we go
Speaker 2: out the pub whatever. And so I was talking to her.
Speaker 2: I knew she talked French, so I said, Jan, what
Speaker 2: rhymes with Michelle? Two syllables? Do you think of anything?
Speaker 2: She said? Matt Bell said, I love it. What's that
Speaker 2: meaning with my beauty? Okay, mis Ma Bell, I think
Speaker 2: that's lovely. I said, we're going together. They're going together
Speaker 2: where they fit, don't they nicely? They rhyme something like that.
Speaker 2: She said, Son, demo givonne trepan ensean bleu. You must
Speaker 2: sounds on blur. I would have said on some So
Speaker 2: I said, that's brilliant. I wrote it down, went back
Speaker 2: and started working on the song with the idea. Now
Speaker 2: that I talking to a girl called Michelle, she's my
Speaker 2: bell and oh, by the way these words goes it wegether? Well,
Speaker 2: look at me, I'm speaking French.
Speaker 6: Won't ansome slab your ansome?
Speaker 4: I need you and need you an need.
Speaker 6: I need to make you see.
Speaker 2: And so that gave me the idea for the song,
Speaker 2: which was going to be I love you, I need you,
Speaker 2: I need you, and until we get together and get
Speaker 2: it on, I'll say these words and this is all
Speaker 2: you need to know, just for now and the rest
Speaker 2: of us In English, I love you, I need you.
Speaker 2: You know I want you, I.
Speaker 1: Love you, as was often the kiss for the Beatles
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen sixty is. The recording session for
Speaker 1: Michelle was extremely fast. They put the whole thing together
Speaker 1: in an hour and a half.
Speaker 2: Luckily we came in prepared, we knew it all. So
Speaker 2: I played the guitar, did that, George made a lovely
Speaker 2: solo on electric guitar, and the rest of the guys
Speaker 2: that have filled.
Speaker 4: In, woo, I think you know mine now.
Speaker 2: And then it came time for me to play the
Speaker 2: bass on it. And again these little tricks that had
Speaker 2: sort of got loaded in my sort of consciousness, like
Speaker 2: all my life, just musical ideas that i'd heard that
Speaker 2: I could pull from my subconscious and reuse them what
Speaker 2: I like, particularly on that is where the chords are
Speaker 2: descending in the C minor things that it is now
Speaker 2: the verse until I don't know what I'm saying no, no, no,
Speaker 2: no no. It goes bom boom boom boom boom doom.
Speaker 2: While that's happening, don't you don't you turn? I go
Speaker 2: doom doom, doom, doom doom. Instead of kind of going
Speaker 2: boom boom or boom boom boom, the going with it,
Speaker 2: I go against it with the bass, which I was
Speaker 2: very satisfied with.
Speaker 4: I'll get to use somehow.
Speaker 6: Until I do. I'm telling you so you.
Speaker 8: The basse was coming to the fore and a number
Speaker 8: of psalms in that era wasn't.
Speaker 2: I'd been very inspired by James Jamieson, the hometown bass player,
Speaker 2: who was very melodic. It encouraged me and millions of
Speaker 2: others to move away from the root notes traditionally, in
Speaker 2: contrary wessons, have you just played boom boom boom boom
Speaker 2: boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. Those
Speaker 2: two notes are all the way that's your base part basically,
Speaker 2: and that's why they had no glamor attached to it
Speaker 2: at all. But James Jamison then started playing around with it,
Speaker 2: and I was massively inspired by him, and so I
Speaker 2: started thinking, ah, there room for movement here and I
Speaker 2: started to experiment a little.
Speaker 1: In the beginning. Before the Beatles were the Beatles, Paul
Speaker 1: had gravitated toward playing lead guitar. He had learned chords,
Speaker 1: some from that music store proprietor Jim Gretty, and then
Speaker 1: passed them on to John Lennon.
Speaker 2: It could have been one of the guitar players, but
Speaker 2: there were two already, right. And what had happened with
Speaker 2: my guitar playing was I was good at it at
Speaker 2: home and John Jant. Mimi used to say, oh, it
Speaker 2: was much better than John, mind you. When I first
Speaker 2: met John, he played banjo coats. He didn't play guitar
Speaker 2: because I had to show him guitar coats because he'd
Speaker 2: been taught by his mom and he only knew banjo coats.
Speaker 2: What happened to me was we played a place called
Speaker 2: the Conservative Club, which was above a shop in Broadway, Liverpool.
Speaker 2: We had this gig in it was like what the
Speaker 2: first thing I ever played and I was lead guitar player.
Speaker 2: John was rhythm and I had a solo and I
Speaker 2: totally froze. I could not move my fingers, let's go.
Speaker 2: It was like just so embarrassing my lead guitar playing
Speaker 2: career melted at that moment, and I said, well, I'm
Speaker 2: not doing this again. This, I'm not cut out for this.
Speaker 2: I'm not good.
Speaker 1: McCartney still played guitar, he just avoided the solos, but
Speaker 1: when the Beatles trained for more than two years in Hamburg,
Speaker 1: it was the guitar that wasn't cut out for him.
Speaker 2: I had from Hess's and Jim Gretti. What I was
Speaker 2: paying awful was a little guitar called a Rosetti Lucky seven,
Speaker 2: which is quite the cheapest thing you could buy. But
Speaker 2: it looked pretty. It was red and it was a
Speaker 2: sort of electric guitar, but it was really just a
Speaker 2: plank of forward, very badly made. But it kind of
Speaker 2: looked all right, so I thought it look good in
Speaker 2: the photoson on stage. But I took it to Hamburg
Speaker 2: and the stress of Hamburg was just too much forward it.
Speaker 2: Then it fell apart, basically, just part of it. Wasn't
Speaker 2: well made. Guitars have this trust rod going through. This didn't.
Speaker 2: This was just a neck attached to a body and
Speaker 2: it was a terrible little thing. Anyway, it fell apart,
Speaker 2: so there was no retrieving it. It was we didn't
Speaker 2: know someone who could fix it, and we couldn't fix it,
Speaker 2: so that was dumped and I became the pianist because
Speaker 2: there was a piano on stage.
Speaker 1: This was nineteen sixty one and at the time the
Speaker 1: band consisted of Paul John, George Harrison, drummer Pete Bez,
Speaker 1: and Stuart Sutcliffe, a bass player whom John had met
Speaker 1: at art school.
Speaker 2: Well, he wasn't very musical. Stuart. He loved his music,
Speaker 2: but he just wasn't. All of us had played guitar,
Speaker 2: so the transition to go to bass wasn't too hot.
Speaker 2: Stuart hadn't, so he had to learn from the ground up,
Speaker 2: and we showed him to the things, but we actually
Speaker 2: used to have to ask him to turn his back
Speaker 2: to the camera if there were any photos being taken,
Speaker 2: because we knew that people could see. He wasn't necessarily
Speaker 2: playing in the same key as us. But he's a
Speaker 2: lovely guy and he fell in love with a photographer
Speaker 2: called Astroude Kirshner in Hamburg, and Stuart told us one
Speaker 2: that he was going to stay. So now we didn't
Speaker 2: have a bass player. Now. The rumor since has been
Speaker 2: that I edged him out of the band, because we
Speaker 2: certainly did have our difficulties. For me, it was mainly
Speaker 2: because I didn't think he was a very good musician,
Speaker 2: which he wasn't and he admitted it. So for me
Speaker 2: that caused problems because being a I mean, you could
Speaker 2: say being a perfectionist, but actually asking the bass player
Speaker 2: to play in the same key as us isn't really
Speaker 2: looking for perfection. It's quite a mild request.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been rumored that McCartney wanted Stuart Sutcliffe gone
Speaker 1: so he could play the bass. He remembers there not
Speaker 1: being much competition for the role.
Speaker 2: When Stuart left. We said who wants to be BASSI
Speaker 2: and Johnson will not me? George were not me, Ringo,
Speaker 2: or maybe it wasn't Ringo at that point I think
Speaker 2: it was still pe Pest said not me, and that
Speaker 2: left me the guy who didn't have a guitar and
Speaker 2: was now playing piano. So I had to switch to bass.
Speaker 2: So I bought myself the Hoffner bass, which is a
Speaker 2: lovely instrument. It fulfilled all my requirements. It was cheap,
Speaker 2: available and light light.
Speaker 8: I think it's important.
Speaker 2: It's life weeight. I didn't realize till later how important
Speaker 2: it was, but it's actually really affects your style of playing.
Speaker 2: So I got that for thirty quid or thirty marks
Speaker 2: something thirty something in Hamburg, down by the Ulster where
Speaker 2: there was some instrument shops.
Speaker 1: By the time he wrote the lyrics too, Michelle, several
Speaker 1: years after Hamburg, McCartney had become a venerable bass player,
Speaker 1: creating bass lines that did much more than back up
Speaker 1: the other instrumentation.
Speaker 2: The end which came off on the Beatles Road. It
Speaker 2: seeming like a bit of a mistake. We sort of
Speaker 2: tried to slow down, but our hearts weren't in it.
Speaker 2: Like the French people liked that trick. I don't think
Speaker 2: the guys like that trick to us. So you'll hear
Speaker 2: it sounds like the record just slows down, Miche slows
Speaker 2: down a little bit. Well, but it doesn't go me
Speaker 2: show no. Well, it don't rapidly accelerates.
Speaker 8: So had that been part of the thinking at some
Speaker 8: point that it would bear more of the French tradition.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So you will hear at the end of
Speaker 2: the record of the sell just slows down a little bit.
Speaker 2: But it sounds just like there's something wrong with the record.
Speaker 2: We didn't use it a great traumatic effect.
Speaker 1: As the Beatles rose to fame, there was no longer
Speaker 1: a need for McCartney to pretend he was French in
Speaker 1: order to impress. In twenty ten, however, he played the
Speaker 1: song to impress at a very different engagement when he
Speaker 1: was receiving an honor from President Barack Obama. The First
Speaker 1: Lady Michelle Obama was there as well.
Speaker 2: The Next Time We Like to Do is a song
Speaker 2: I have been itching to do at the White House,
Speaker 2: and I hope the President will forgive me. Have I
Speaker 2: seen this one?
Speaker 4: What Marbles words go.
Speaker 1: To Get Michelle, released in nineteen sixty five on the
Speaker 1: Beatles Rubber So In the next episode, once There was away.
Speaker 6: To get back Home.
Speaker 1: Longing for the way things used to be, and knowing
Speaker 1: you can never truly re turn home.
Speaker 3: Get back home, Sleep pretty darn, do not cry, and
Speaker 3: I will sing another by.
Speaker 4: The snub must be.
Speaker 9: Small way you way rise, Sleep pretty dark, do not Cry.
Speaker 1: In the season finale of McCartney A Life in Lyrics,
Speaker 1: Golden Slumbers carry that with and the end. McCartney A
Speaker 1: Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL
Speaker 1: and Pushkin industries,