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: One thing we used years later in the Sergeant Pepper
Speaker 2: album was something that I experienced I had as a kid.
Speaker 2: I would listen to some shows on the BBC, It's
Speaker 2: the Ken Dot Show, and there would often be a
Speaker 2: live show, whether it be a comedian. The comedian would
Speaker 2: come on, came dog, Hello, how are you doing all right?
Speaker 2: So it's on hey, and there'd be silence and the
Speaker 2: audience would go arah and laugh and to me that
Speaker 2: was like, oh my god, what did he just do?
Speaker 2: And I loved them laughing at the silence because my
Speaker 2: imagine was he's dropped his trousers. No he wasn't. On
Speaker 2: the BBC, He's done a funny face. No, well, what's
Speaker 2: he done? That to me was the start of a
Speaker 2: sort of fascination with art of all types. Why did
Speaker 2: they laugh at that silence? I needed to know and
Speaker 2: I was never going to find out, so I needed
Speaker 2: to speculate, and art would let me speculate. You do
Speaker 2: a comedy with well, don't? I did play around.
Speaker 3: I'm Paul will Doon for a while now, I have
Speaker 3: been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest
Speaker 3: songwriters of the era.
Speaker 2: And will you look at me? I'm going on to it.
Speaker 2: I'm actually a performer, that.
Speaker 1: Is Sir Paul McCartney.
Speaker 3: We worked together on a book looking at the lyrics
Speaker 3: of more than one hundred and fifty of his songs,
Speaker 3: and we recorded many hours 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 3: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a war,
Speaker 3: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 3: figures in popular music.
Speaker 2: In this episode, day in the Life was in my
Speaker 2: music room in London, at the top of my house.
Speaker 2: I had and still have a lotly little room with
Speaker 2: a daily painted piano, and I'd seen a thing of
Speaker 2: these guys who'd painted a Cadillac psychedelic. So I rang
Speaker 2: them up and said, we did do a piano for
Speaker 2: me in a little bit juribious at first, but anyway,
Speaker 2: they did it psychedelic painting, and John would come in
Speaker 2: and we would sort of sit there for a few
Speaker 2: hours and write things. And one of us nearly always
Speaker 2: had the starter. For instance, Ellen Rigby had been my
Speaker 2: starter and we finished it up together. Day in the
Speaker 2: life was his starter, which should start by reading the newspapers.
Speaker 4: Today a bad lucky man who made the grade, and
Speaker 4: the news was rather said, I just had to learn.
Speaker 2: When John would bring these things in. It's only these
Speaker 2: days that I would say, was he talking about himself some?
Speaker 2: It was there some sort of psychological aspect where he's
Speaker 2: a lucky man who made the grade, And John did
Speaker 2: round about this time, did get a little bit out
Speaker 2: in Waybridge doing drugs, and we're a little disillusion because
Speaker 2: we'd sort of given up playing live. So him bringing
Speaker 2: that in, I would just go with the picture that
Speaker 2: he was painting. He was mind, he didn't notice that changed,
Speaker 2: and then he blew his mine out in the car.
Speaker 2: Didn't know the lights of change. This was about a
Speaker 2: friend of mine particularly called Tara was a Guinness there.
Speaker 2: We kind of steered clear of heirs and aristocrats, whereas
Speaker 2: the Stones didn't Stones rather embraced them. A really nice guy,
Speaker 2: and I say, I used to hang out to go
Speaker 2: up to Liverpool with him. And yeah, so he died
Speaker 2: in a car crash and in Chelsea somewhere he'd run
Speaker 2: the lights. I think, you know, so he didn't notice
Speaker 2: the lights of change. So this was in our minds,
Speaker 2: this was about him. He blew his mind out in
Speaker 2: the car. So again with the drug references, he blew
Speaker 2: his mind out, and I think we did think he
Speaker 2: might have been stoned. But that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 2: You blow my mind. Of course I told him that
Speaker 2: kind of way.
Speaker 4: Crowd of people, students, they'd seen his face before, nobody
Speaker 4: was really.
Speaker 2: So that was Tara. He's at the lights and he changed.
Speaker 2: And then so we're now painting a picture a crowd
Speaker 2: of people stood in stard it's seen his face before,
Speaker 2: not really sure if he was from the House of Lords.
Speaker 2: So this is sort of aristocratic thing. But I think
Speaker 2: once we sort of started off with Tara, it doesn't
Speaker 2: have to stay with him. It can now be anyone
Speaker 2: in a car crowd of people looking at who is
Speaker 2: this guy? Or do I recognize him? Was he that?
Speaker 4: Just a crowd of people? Ten away?
Speaker 2: John was quite a World War Two buff. He had
Speaker 2: the works of Winston Churchill. He's a big Winston Churchill fan.
Speaker 2: I think till later. I think you read a lot
Speaker 2: about it. Was a good writer, he was brilliant. I've
Speaker 2: not read any of this stuff John had. They had,
Speaker 2: they had a complete set. I remember. It's like I said,
Speaker 2: of encyclopedia, I just had to do. They read so
Speaker 2: we had the film the War, and I just had
Speaker 2: to look. Having read the book, it's like a traffic accident,
Speaker 2: We have to look. That sort of ties back into that.
Speaker 2: People turned away this time because they were looking at
Speaker 2: the traffic accident, and now they've turned away because it's
Speaker 2: the war. But I just had to look. Love to
Speaker 2: Turn You On, And that was the conspiracy between the
Speaker 2: two of us, conspiratorial look between us. As we wrote
Speaker 2: that Love to Turn It, Oh well, okay, this is
Speaker 2: going to get people talking. We kind of knew exactly
Speaker 2: what we're doing and that it was being a bit cheapy.
Speaker 2: The other story about it was this this instrumental break
Speaker 2: musically where I at that time had been looking at
Speaker 2: a lot of listening to a lot of that. I
Speaker 2: forgot stuff that would be like Lucy Annaberio and his
Speaker 2: wife Kathy Beveron, and they did shows that like the
Speaker 2: wak Moore Hall and Stockhouse and dates to remember Kazang. Yes,
Speaker 2: so listen to a bunch of that stuff and not
Speaker 2: so much listening to it, just has just been interested
Speaker 2: in the concept of it. So I was intrigued by that.
Speaker 2: So in the middle of the day in the light,
Speaker 2: because it was sort of a trippy piece, I wanted
Speaker 2: to have this extraordinary instrumental moment. So I talked to
Speaker 2: Jeorge Martin. I said, okay, the instruction. The instruction here
Speaker 2: is for everybody in the orchestra to start on the
Speaker 2: lowest note on their instruments and proceed to their highest
Speaker 2: note on their instrument over the course of a certain
Speaker 2: amount of barbs. They can proceed at their own pace.
Speaker 2: However they wished to go because I want the kind
Speaker 2: of cacophony of sound. So came the session and George
Speaker 2: is a bit dubious about shooting a full symphony orcauses
Speaker 2: is very expensive. We said, that's the Beatles come on,
Speaker 2: let's go crazy. So and then we started to get
Speaker 2: fun of the things where he said, what if you're
Speaker 2: playing all that money? He said, you know, do you
Speaker 2: want them to dress? Because they will? We said, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: He said what do you want? Well, you know, dinner
Speaker 2: suits want the sort of black tie and we said,
Speaker 2: well they do funny noses. They did actually, But anyway,
Speaker 2: so we got to the session and I sort of
Speaker 2: went around sort of saying to them all, okay, right,
Speaker 2: thing is crazy starting your bart and I said you
Speaker 2: can go anyway we want. But they were a bit
Speaker 2: so George did have to go and rationalize it a bit.
Speaker 2: So he said to them go from here and be
Speaker 2: around about there after ten bars, and we round about
Speaker 2: there after fifteen, so he sort of so they did
Speaker 2: it anyway, and it was a great sound. We reside
Speaker 2: with Berton the Oskar plan, not the Beatles. It encouraged
Speaker 2: you to think like that, and we were at that
Speaker 2: period in our growth and we liked the idea that
Speaker 2: he should be an extension rather than just a continuation.
Speaker 5: Woke up, fell out of bed, dragged the comb across
Speaker 5: my head.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then me I then go back into Fourthland Road,
Speaker 2: and this is me going to school in the morning.
Speaker 2: This is my routine. Woke up, fell out of bed,
Speaker 2: dragged a corm across my head.
Speaker 5: Found the way downstairs and drank a cup, and looking up,
Speaker 5: I noticed that I was late.
Speaker 2: That would sort of happen every morning to me, and
Speaker 2: I would just run to the end of my street
Speaker 2: where the bus stop was barely catch the bus.
Speaker 5: Find my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus
Speaker 5: and seconds flans.
Speaker 2: It was always a rush, and I knew there was
Speaker 2: a prefect at the other end at the school with
Speaker 2: the book and he was going to bust me if
Speaker 2: I was one minute past night.
Speaker 5: We upstairs and had a smoke, and somebody spoke, and
Speaker 5: I went.
Speaker 2: Into a dream. You smoked on the upper deck of buses.
Speaker 2: So if I'm talking about going on the bus and
Speaker 2: going upstairs, I'm immediately thinking I'm smoking. And the minute
Speaker 2: I've said the words smoke in the sixties, I'm now
Speaker 2: talking about cannabis, and the whole upper deck would just
Speaker 2: be full of cloud of smoke. You know, you would
Speaker 2: enter that zone.
Speaker 6: Did you think of Sorg and Pepper as a big
Speaker 6: radio program.
Speaker 2: In someways kind of kind of you know its scope
Speaker 2: and its imagination was that and we did use sound
Speaker 2: effects we found out during during the making of an
Speaker 2: album like that, you're extending your repertoire and you're imagination,
Speaker 2: so you're asking for things like a full symphony orchestra.
Speaker 2: You're asking for things like the sound of elephants running
Speaker 2: through the jungle. It's interesting.
Speaker 6: I mean, we talked about this before, the extent which
Speaker 6: the radio shows were part of the band in your mind,
Speaker 6: on the front of your mind, but that that actually
Speaker 6: might have been quite a strong.
Speaker 2: It was a start influence on us all because you know,
Speaker 2: we'd all listen to radio and you have to use
Speaker 2: your imagination, whereas in TV it's okay, it's wonderful, and
Speaker 2: movies the thing, but it's laid out for you. You
Speaker 2: can see how Henrietta Gibbs looks, whereas in radio Henrietta Gibbs.
Speaker 2: But that's I live and breathe, and you make your
Speaker 2: own Henrietta Gibbs. Yes, and that was a great thing.
Speaker 2: That was why no one could ever visualize Sergeant Beverly.
Speaker 2: They tried to make a movie of it, did they.
Speaker 2: It's like, oh, don't do that, because everyone's already got
Speaker 2: their own picture, Sergeant Napper.
Speaker 3: And as long the Heart Club.
Speaker 2: Then the joy of this kind of audio approach was
Speaker 2: that you made your own pictures. If you heard elephants
Speaker 2: trampling through the jungle, you saw your own set of elephants.
Speaker 2: You heard an audience laughing for no apparent reason, you
Speaker 2: made up the reason. And I think that's a very
Speaker 2: enriching thing that probably all of us from that generation
Speaker 2: were helped by sort of synapses that were fired as
Speaker 2: we sort of, you know, lay on the carpet listening to.
Speaker 5: Read news.
Speaker 4: Four thousand holes in Blackburn, lankashees.
Speaker 2: And then we go back to read the news today,
Speaker 2: Oh boy, to top and tailored. And now we have
Speaker 2: to have another verse. We can't have a lucky man
Speaker 2: and made the grace we have the four thousand holes,
Speaker 2: which is from the newspaper.
Speaker 7: Reported in the Daily Mail, January seventeenth, nineteen sixty seven
Speaker 7: thousand holes in the road in Blackburn, Lancashire, one twenty
Speaker 7: sixth of a hole per person. According to a council survey,
Speaker 7: there were.
Speaker 2: Holes in the streets in Like I said, there's four
Speaker 2: thousand holes in Blackburn.
Speaker 7: If Blackburn is typical then there are over two million
Speaker 7: holes in Britain's roads and three hundred thousand in London.
Speaker 4: Oh, the holes were rather small, kinds of comfortable.
Speaker 5: Now, I don't know how many.
Speaker 2: Older jacks to feel around, So you know, the holes
Speaker 2: became instead of holes in the road, it became a
Speaker 2: sort of synonym for people absence, kind of just glassholes.
Speaker 1: The inventiveness of A Day in the Life wasn't confined
Speaker 1: only to the song, but permeated the Beatles approach to
Speaker 1: the entire album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band.
Speaker 2: I was with our roady Mal. We had a big
Speaker 2: bear of a man was called Mal Evans was our roady,
Speaker 2: and that's coming back on the plane and he said,
Speaker 2: will you pass the Sultan Pepper and I misheard him.
Speaker 2: I said what Sergeant Pepper said, No, Sultan. And I
Speaker 2: always maintain that one of the things about the Beatles
Speaker 2: and me and John was that we noticed accidents. Here's
Speaker 2: the idea we are these four space Cadets, were just
Speaker 2: these four people in this slightly weird band. But what
Speaker 2: it's going to do is going to free us up.
Speaker 2: So we're not going to be the Beatles, which we
Speaker 2: are now getting a little bit sort of inhibited by
Speaker 2: having to be those boys. Will now just chuckle that
Speaker 2: away and we'll be these guys. So I said to everyone, Okay, now,
Speaker 2: so I want each of us to come up with
Speaker 2: a list of favorite people because it so I want,
Speaker 2: you know, I want us all to know you because
Speaker 2: we'll have pictures of them.
Speaker 8: One of the things that strikes me, and I wonder
Speaker 8: if you'd like to comment on it, is that being
Speaker 8: an artist really involves having a sense of the whole,
Speaker 8: the totality of the project and even the product.
Speaker 2: You mean visual artists, any kind of any kind of artists.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean you had a sense of not only
Speaker 8: playing the music, writing the lyrics, but you know how
Speaker 8: those things should look when it gets sided into the world.
Speaker 2: I think if you, if you've got a passion for something,
Speaker 2: you want to be thorough, and I think that's the thing.
Speaker 2: Sticking with it means that you're actually thinking about it
Speaker 2: and thinking, well, if we're going to call it's Harder
Speaker 2: Pepperson House combat, what do they look like? Oh? Okay, well,
Speaker 2: I've got an idea in my brain. It's just jumped
Speaker 2: in my brain. But I'll shribble it down, and so
Speaker 2: that that album was very much like that. But I
Speaker 2: do think, yeah, you know that that. I I've always
Speaker 2: had that totality thing where music, theater performances are concerned.
Speaker 2: As a kid, I would always do that. Was sitting
Speaker 2: with my dad just watching TV and a presenter would
Speaker 2: come on at the stage to a variety shot or something,
Speaker 2: and I would go, he shouldn't have worn that like gracefuoit.
Speaker 2: I should have just worn a dark suit. He would
Speaker 2: have stood out a bit better. I mean, it was
Speaker 2: like the Nixon JFK thing. The JFK wore the dark
Speaker 2: suit and Nixon and it was like, well, he just
Speaker 2: looked better. So I've always been very involved in that.
Speaker 2: The Beatles thing, the idea that we had a uniform
Speaker 2: was sort of one of the original ideas.
Speaker 8: I had some very of this uniform existed already or
Speaker 8: were you designing that there too?
Speaker 2: I suppose that are you designing it, yeah, because I
Speaker 2: don't think you'd used this look you haven't haven't this
Speaker 2: frock coat? Yeah? With the books, little epaulets and things.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's it's very beatly. It was an instant.
Speaker 2: So when the Beatles were going to Hamburg. We had
Speaker 2: a tailor next door to us, mister Richards. So when
Speaker 2: I was living in twenty fourth Land Road, like kind
Speaker 2: of went next door, mister Richards, and you've got some
Speaker 2: materials chose. She gave us a few nice sholdren to
Speaker 2: the guys. We chose a purple sort of wool, the
Speaker 2: best material for stade, scratchy, little scratchy little wool anyway,
Speaker 2: so we got purple jacks. And this had come from
Speaker 2: a very definite experience I'd had when I was eleven
Speaker 2: in Botlan's seeing this group wear identical clothes and they
Speaker 2: won the talent contest. And I still have this really
Speaker 2: crystal clear image of them walking out of that building
Speaker 2: to go to the pool, and they were all in
Speaker 2: gray crew next quarters, Tartan flat caps, twat hats as
Speaker 2: we call them, and Tartan shorts and each with a
Speaker 2: row towel and anything else. Five of them. It was
Speaker 2: like ah, and it was like well mc jay would
Speaker 2: later called us the foreheaded monster. That all came from that,
Speaker 2: that whole sense of wow, if you do that, people
Speaker 2: are really going to notice you, And I bet it
Speaker 2: makes you feel homotenous. Yeah, both from with it and
Speaker 2: from within. So that's sort of what happened with the Beatles.
Speaker 2: And it would probably be me pushing that. If you're
Speaker 2: going to pretend you are Sergeant Papers, only has to
Speaker 2: be to think, oh, weare this and this is in
Speaker 2: Sergeant Papers learning sergeant military epaulets, tasitly things buttons, and
Speaker 2: to me it's what it's what you do to get
Speaker 2: into character. It's somewhat really And we went down to
Speaker 2: Less Square where Berman's the costume he lived and who
Speaker 2: did theatrical and movie stuff, and we all went down there.
Speaker 2: I arrange a visit for us. We chose our chatterings
Speaker 2: and got measured which sort we did. We carried it through.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm being thorough. It's actually it's a it's
Speaker 2: a lot of what it's about, but it is at
Speaker 2: the is that going right through all the way. Day
Speaker 2: in the life, full symphony orchestra, not just messing around here.
Speaker 9: I read the news today.
Speaker 5: A battle lucky man who made.
Speaker 2: The great.
Speaker 4: And though the news was rob said, well, I just
Speaker 4: had to learn.
Speaker 5: I saw the ponograph.
Speaker 3: A Day in the Life from the Beatles nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: seven album Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts club Band.
Speaker 2: Did that?
Speaker 5: Lines changed.
Speaker 3: In the next episode, The healing power of music.
Speaker 9: Take a sad sound and make it banner. Remember to Lettereal,
Speaker 9: then you can start to make a banner.
Speaker 3: Hey, that's next time on McCartney A Life in Lyrics.
Speaker 3: McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 3: NPL and Pushkin Industries.