Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Look, there's a beautiful bird.
Speaker 3: I loved bird watching when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: How can you tell one bird from another?
Speaker 4: So I like to be able to get out of
Speaker 4: the normal stream of life. We were about a mile
Speaker 4: away from quite deep countryside, so I used to just
Speaker 4: go on my own, just being away from the normal stuff, school,
Speaker 4: family life. Appearance is one way to identify birds.
Speaker 5: How does it look?
Speaker 4: I had a little bird book, the Observers Book of Birds.
Speaker 4: In yards or in pipes, wherever people are, you are
Speaker 4: likely to find another small bird with a beautiful song.
Speaker 4: The wren was a great favorite because you wouldn't see
Speaker 4: that often, just suddenly see it flit from one little
Speaker 4: push to another.
Speaker 2: This small brownish bird is a wren.
Speaker 3: And singing as it goes.
Speaker 5: We can learn to know ren's by their sounds.
Speaker 3: So I loved birds.
Speaker 4: Because of that, I started being able to recognize the birds.
Speaker 2: I'm Paul Monteaux and I've been fortunate to spend time
Speaker 2: with one of the greatest songwriters of the era.
Speaker 3: And will you look at me?
Speaker 5: I'm going on too.
Speaker 3: I'm actually a.
Speaker 2: Performer, that is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on
Speaker 2: a book Looking at the lyrics of more than one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many
Speaker 2: hours of our conversations.
Speaker 3: Songwriter, my God, well, that crypt homie.
Speaker 2: This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 2: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 2: figures in popular music. In this episode, Jenny Wren, The.
Speaker 6: Girls, Jenny Wren to King, she could See.
Speaker 5: And'sche Way.
Speaker 2: Paul McCartney has been a nature lover and birdwatcher since childhood.
Speaker 2: His song catalog is teeming with feathered friends. There's single
Speaker 2: Pigeon from nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 7: Single Pigeon through the railent did she throw you out?
Speaker 2: There's Bluebird from the same year.
Speaker 7: Night Window, WILLI p DoD blind.
Speaker 4: Your don't?
Speaker 5: And you know what love this?
Speaker 7: I'm a blue bed.
Speaker 2: And there are a couple from the Beatles era.
Speaker 1: I am a rabbit ornithologist. I like my birds say.
Speaker 2: When Paul McCartney went off bird watching as a kid,
Speaker 2: he was trying to escape the daily grind of school, errands,
Speaker 2: work and other people. Even though when he's looking for
Speaker 2: a location to buckle down and write songs, here's the
Speaker 2: same impulse.
Speaker 4: When you're writing something as embarrassing, as potentially embarrassing as
Speaker 4: a love song, it's best to hide away in the
Speaker 4: furthest corner cupboard you can find so that no one
Speaker 4: can hear you.
Speaker 1: Do this process.
Speaker 4: So I will often literally try and get away so
Speaker 4: that nobody can hear me do this, because this is
Speaker 4: like very private.
Speaker 1: It's got to just be me and this guitar.
Speaker 4: Then I can touch this sort of inner place where
Speaker 4: I am the troubado wandering around in the forest thinking
Speaker 4: of love, thinking of the beauty of it, the mystery
Speaker 4: of it, and the strength of it. You know.
Speaker 1: But I say it's potentially embarrassing because you know, someone.
Speaker 4: Could walk in and go, oh god, you know, and
Speaker 4: that would be the worst thing.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna be very hidden away.
Speaker 4: So but once I get on that trail, I really
Speaker 4: like it.
Speaker 8: Your impulse to get into that coboard. Yeah, to get
Speaker 8: into that little place to work. Yeah, it's a kind
Speaker 8: of nesting impulse.
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 8: Is it partly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe I think it's mainly privacy. I think it's
Speaker 3: mainly to not be overheard.
Speaker 2: For privacy, one can head either to the tiniest cupboard
Speaker 2: or to the great outdoors, as McCartney did when he
Speaker 2: wrote Jenny Wren.
Speaker 4: I was in Los Angeles and there's a canyon that
Speaker 4: I particularly like to go walking in, and you have
Speaker 4: to drive there, so I'd gone on my own. I
Speaker 4: just found a little quiet parking space along the side
Speaker 4: of the road, and it was very rural area. I'd
Speaker 4: taken my guitar unusually, so I meant to go and
Speaker 4: write a song, but again, this was my outdoors cupboard.
Speaker 6: Like so many girls, Jenny Wren could sing bird.
Speaker 5: Talker so away, Like so many.
Speaker 6: Girls, Jenny Wren good sing bud.
Speaker 5: Talker, song away.
Speaker 4: I remember just sitting there thinking, yeah, just said. The
Speaker 4: idea of the story was she could sing. Well, something
Speaker 4: had happened, we don't know what.
Speaker 2: The protagonist of the song, Jenny Wren, is halfway between
Speaker 2: bird and human, singing and taking wing like the other.
Speaker 6: Girls, lightly the girls, Jenny Wren tooking.
Speaker 5: She could see the world.
Speaker 6: AND's nge way.
Speaker 2: In fact, McCartney may have derived the name from a
Speaker 2: character in Charles Dickens's eighteen sixty five novel Our Mutual Friend. Here.
Speaker 2: Jenny Wren is a dressmaker for dolls she's a teenage
Speaker 2: girl who was born with a crooked spine and underdeveloped legs.
Speaker 9: Something sparkled down among the fair hair, resting on the
Speaker 9: dark hair, and if it were not a star, which
Speaker 9: it couldn't be, it was an eye.
Speaker 2: Despite her struggles, Jenny Wren has a sunny outlook and
Speaker 2: keen powers of observation.
Speaker 9: And if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye,
Speaker 9: bright and watchful as the birds. Whose name she it taken.
Speaker 8: I mean, it's the name is has currency beyond that.
Speaker 8: Jenny Wren was a term we used, perhaps you used
Speaker 8: when you were not in the fields, outside the estate,
Speaker 8: just about the regular the little wren.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is often think it's probably my
Speaker 4: favorite bird.
Speaker 2: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 4: So it's very little, very private, very sweet little thing.
Speaker 3: So in other words, because she doesn't sing, but she
Speaker 3: can see the world in its foolish ways, how we
Speaker 3: spend our days. Cassin love society. You can see the
Speaker 3: reality of the situation.
Speaker 10: Spay, you can see all these sad things happening.
Speaker 5: Side of life.
Speaker 11: Dab No, that broken world is not unreminiscent of the
Speaker 11: broken wings of that other singer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Blackbirds singing in the dead.
Speaker 7: Nd take these broken wings and learn to fly. All
Speaker 7: your life you were only waiting for this moment to arrive.
Speaker 11: Which I think again.
Speaker 8: Songs being in conversation with songs from the tradition, but
Speaker 8: also within your own work.
Speaker 1: They're talking to each other. Yeah, and that's a good thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think.
Speaker 4: You know, when you're sitting down with an acoustic guitar,
Speaker 4: there's a few ways you can go. And with black
Speaker 4: Bet it's a little part. It's a guitar part that
Speaker 4: you sing against rather than strumming chords, and so I
Speaker 4: think this has the same kind of thing. This is
Speaker 4: a little part rather than just chords. So I mean,
Speaker 4: I think I was probably intentionally writing another blackbird.
Speaker 7: Black bird lie, black bird line.
Speaker 6: Into the line of a dark black line.
Speaker 2: If the guitar part of Jenny Wren echoes McCartney's Blackbird,
Speaker 2: then it carries within it another echo, one from the
Speaker 2: classical genre. Bach's Burret in e minor.
Speaker 4: A little guitar part which is so much a part
Speaker 4: of it was something that George and I it was
Speaker 4: a party piece of us when we were kids, and
Speaker 4: it's it's box, it's do do do do do do
Speaker 4: do do do do do do do do do do
Speaker 4: do do do do.
Speaker 1: Do do do do.
Speaker 4: And we knew the tune, liked the tune, and but
Speaker 4: particularly liked the counterpart, because well do do.
Speaker 3: Do do do do do do do.
Speaker 1: Do do do there's a bassline h.
Speaker 5: Mm hmmm.
Speaker 1: So with this bark piece, George and I learned.
Speaker 4: Do do do do do do do you do do
Speaker 4: do do as the melody, and then do you do
Speaker 4: do do do do do do do do do do,
Speaker 4: And then we kind of ran out. We didn't know
Speaker 4: how it went, so we made up the rest of
Speaker 4: the door. So so we have our own little version
Speaker 4: of this backgo which become a party piece. And I
Speaker 4: know that I've been fascinated with it and its structure.
Speaker 3: Do you do do do do do do.
Speaker 4: Do do do do that little bit, do do do
Speaker 4: do that little thing. I just switched it around a bit,
Speaker 4: made it my own, but I knew where I was
Speaker 4: coming from.
Speaker 1: Handy with that became the blackbird singing in the dad
Speaker 1: of night.
Speaker 5: Black bird singing in the dead n.
Speaker 7: Take these broken wings and learn to fly.
Speaker 5: All your life.
Speaker 4: So I had that, and then I just I don't
Speaker 4: know really, I think it was in Scotland the time
Speaker 4: or the break I got this idea of a blackbird
Speaker 4: singing the dead and eyes and so it's just an
Speaker 4: image of a silhouette of a blackbird silhouetted in the
Speaker 4: dead of night in a sort of forest somewhere as
Speaker 4: being this lonely sort of image blackbird line.
Speaker 5: Into the light of a dull black light.
Speaker 2: The loneliness of the blackbird is reflected in the simple
Speaker 2: instrumentation of that famous song no orchestration, justin McCartney and
Speaker 2: his guitar and the terps of the bird. He's singing about.
Speaker 7: Blackbird singing in the Dendam take the broken Wings and
Speaker 7: learned fly.
Speaker 5: On your line.
Speaker 4: And I there's such an all encompassing record company of
Speaker 4: the old variety that they had a sound like. So
Speaker 4: if I wanted the sound of blackbirds singing, I could
Speaker 4: just sort of look it up on a large most
Speaker 4: birds blackbird and you would get you know, you can
Speaker 4: look it up and get someone will go up and
Speaker 4: get the lack.
Speaker 7: You were only waiting for this moment do a rise.
Speaker 7: You were only waiting for this moment to ride.
Speaker 4: You were only waiting for.
Speaker 5: This moment, do a ride.
Speaker 2: The song may have started out as a simple image
Speaker 2: of nature, the silhouette of a lonely bird crying out
Speaker 2: into the dark, but when McCartney wrote the song in
Speaker 2: the spring of nineteen sixty eight, he was also speaking
Speaker 2: to the turbulence of the American civil rights movement, including
Speaker 2: the enforced desegregation of schools.
Speaker 4: Then it started to be about arising. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: black said to take these broken wings.
Speaker 12: So in others I was writing about the civil rights
Speaker 12: disturbances in the Little Rock, particularly that we've been hearing
Speaker 12: about segregation and stuff that shocked us so.
Speaker 13: Much, the right of color children to attend, that all
Speaker 13: white schools have been upheld by the United States, have
Speaker 13: been caught city and state police had cordened off the school,
Speaker 13: and many table makers were taken it a custody.
Speaker 4: You know, your broken wings, sunken eyes, seeing broken wings flying,
Speaker 4: you know, this is your moment to arise and be free.
Speaker 1: And yeah, then I realized I was sending.
Speaker 4: It in that direction. Who now wasn't just ornithological piece.
Speaker 4: It was now to do with sort of politics and
Speaker 4: to do with freedom.
Speaker 6: Really, she saw pity breaking up Home Wooded Warriors Took
Speaker 6: a Song Away.
Speaker 2: The Blackbird, McCartney writes about is singing and protest and
Speaker 2: Jenny Wren. However, the bird's protest comes in the form
Speaker 2: of silence. Instead of selecting a chirping bird to accompany
Speaker 2: this song, McCartney included a du duc An Armenian woodwind
Speaker 2: instrument with a haunting sound.
Speaker 4: The minute I'm talking about Jenny Wren, I'm seeing the bird,
Speaker 4: and then I'm seeing a person. And then in this story,
Speaker 4: for no apparent reason, she just doesn't sing anymore. But
Speaker 4: she could sing. She's a great singer, and she doesn't
Speaker 4: sing anymore. And it turns out that it's because of
Speaker 4: all our foolish ways, like a protest, and so then
Speaker 4: it just becomes a bit reflective about our society, how
Speaker 4: we screw things up and everything, and so now we
Speaker 4: sympathize with the person new protests. Oh, she's even lost
Speaker 4: her voice over this, like the.
Speaker 6: Other girls Jenny Wren took Queen.
Speaker 5: She could see.
Speaker 6: And it's ways.
Speaker 3: What did Jenny Wren see?
Speaker 11: You saw who we are?
Speaker 3: Yeah? What did she see? Who are we?
Speaker 4: She saw our foolish ways and the way we cast
Speaker 4: love aside the way we lose sight of life. So
Speaker 4: we are we have poverty, breaks.
Speaker 3: Up homes regular and we wounded warriors.
Speaker 5: Took a song away.
Speaker 3: She saw, sure the screw up that society is. And
Speaker 3: you know, like everyone, we're just looking for that better way.
Speaker 4: So it's kind of nice that someone spotted the change
Speaker 4: needs to happen. I think, you know, it's it's a
Speaker 4: good old.
Speaker 3: World, really, and I do think we screw it up.
Speaker 4: You know, that's it's it's highly obvious with the ocean
Speaker 4: filled with plastic, it didn't get there by itself, and
Speaker 4: so you could say we screwed that up.
Speaker 2: In typical McCartney fashion, he ends the song on a
Speaker 2: note of hope rather than despair. By taking the protests
Speaker 2: of Jenny Wren as a warning sign, he builds a
Speaker 2: world in which she may sing again, but.
Speaker 4: The day will come. There you go, it's going to
Speaker 4: be a great day. Jenny Wren will sing, but.
Speaker 6: It will come.
Speaker 5: Jenny will sing when the spoken word, when's it's foolish.
Speaker 6: Ways we spend.
Speaker 5: Ca uh couser, Jenny?
Speaker 8: Where can you hear a little bird singing? At the moment?
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a rain? Is it really yes it is.
Speaker 1: It's a house rain. Wow.
Speaker 8: The Indian name for it, I happen to know is
Speaker 8: a little bird with a big voice and that's it.
Speaker 3: Wow. Well that is pretty cool. Oh I love that
Speaker 3: little Journy Wren. J Yeah, it's so beautiful. Now now
Speaker 3: why is that so beautiful?
Speaker 8: But also, you know what that gives one faith that
Speaker 8: everything comes together is connected?
Speaker 4: I think so.
Speaker 14: Too, Jenny Wren from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,
Speaker 14: released in two thousand and five.
Speaker 2: In the next episode, an argument through song.
Speaker 3: Now again.
Speaker 4: It was at a time when John was firing missiles
Speaker 4: at me with his songs. I don't know what he
Speaker 4: hoped again, other than punching me in the face. And
Speaker 4: this kind of annoyed me. Obviously, I suddenly decided I
Speaker 4: did to turn my missiles on him.
Speaker 2: McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 2: n p L and Pushkin Industries