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.
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. He is McCartney. Paul McCartney, a commander, a hero,
Speaker 1: a man of action.
Speaker 2: Everything you've ever loved in a Bond film, em calls
Speaker 2: in from the secret Intelligence Service with a mission.
Speaker 1: A commission to write a song before it's too late.
Speaker 2: Or thrilled, more exciteable, more chill.
Speaker 1: Agent McCartney receives his technical materials, a title, a novel
Speaker 1: for inspiration and more. At his piano in London, he
Speaker 1: embarks on his perilous journey.
Speaker 2: Live and Let Die.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul Moldon 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, I'm actually a performer, that.
Speaker 1: Is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a book
Speaker 1: looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours of
Speaker 1: our conversations.
Speaker 3: Oh actually I'm a songwriter. My god.
Speaker 4: Well that that.
Speaker 3: Crypt your 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 Live and Let Die.
Speaker 3: When you are in your heart?
Speaker 4: What an omen book.
Speaker 5: You used to say, little Lately.
Speaker 1: Live and Let Die, released in nineteen seventy three, is
Speaker 1: the eighth film in the James Bond franchise, the first
Speaker 1: the Roger Moore era. It had all the components of
Speaker 1: the classic spy thriller, dry martinis, clever gadgets, car chases.
Speaker 2: Roger More has James Bond. Double O seven didn't Live
Speaker 2: and Let Die.
Speaker 1: Poncartney may not have been an international secret agent, but
Speaker 1: he did have a fair amount in common with Double
Speaker 1: O seven.
Speaker 3: Did you still have the Aston Martin in nineteen seventy three?
Speaker 3: Or I moved through a couple of cars? It was
Speaker 3: the very first Bond film. Dr no Worth he had
Speaker 3: and asked, hiank you seven, you'll be using this Aston
Speaker 3: Martin dB five with modifications. Now pay attention please, It
Speaker 3: was only later and really I put it together. It
Speaker 3: was so obvious. You know why I got on Aston anyway.
Speaker 3: I've had a few nice cars sports cause I once
Speaker 3: had a Lamborghini, you know, just for the sort of
Speaker 3: thrill of having a sports car. George was the real
Speaker 3: car person. George ended up with a McLaren, which you
Speaker 3: couldn't use on Britain with his speed limits. You know,
Speaker 3: George was a very sports car orientated. In fact, he
Speaker 3: was horrified to hear that I still sometimes used the
Speaker 3: boss public transport. You will you go on the bus
Speaker 3: is still because he so left that behind.
Speaker 1: On top of owning an Aston, Martin McCartney always harbored
Speaker 1: a secret desire to write a Bond song.
Speaker 3: It was always a sneaky ambition to write a Bond
Speaker 3: song because in some ways I like to see myself
Speaker 3: one portion of myself as a jobbing writer. You know,
Speaker 3: you require a harm for the Queen's wedding. I'm your man,
Speaker 3: dear Elizabeth, Oh greatness, sunny running off the land. They've
Speaker 3: known that Philip will take your hand, so putting that aside,
Speaker 3: the equivalent of that for a lot of people was
Speaker 3: and still is actually the Bond song. It's it's you
Speaker 3: know you You've written the Bond song. It's a bit
Speaker 3: of an accolade.
Speaker 1: Since the early days, part of the allure of the
Speaker 1: Double O seven franchise had been the Bond song, a
Speaker 1: catchy had from the hottest pop star of the time, Godinger.
Speaker 1: Everyone from Shirley Bassi to Billie Eilish has made their contributions.
Speaker 3: Okay, So in this case, our record guy who was
Speaker 3: handling the Beatles Apple Records, he knew somebody connected with
Speaker 3: the Bond franchise, and so one day we were just
Speaker 3: chatting and he said, you don't have any interest in
Speaker 3: doing the Bond film, do you? Yeah, I'm probably interested.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not trying to look too enthusiastic. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 5: But if the seven changing world in which we're living
Speaker 5: makes you giving that crowd.
Speaker 6: The living Lida.
Speaker 1: When the producers approached McCartney, the script for the film
Speaker 1: had not yet been finished. So McCartney got a hold
Speaker 1: of a copy of Ian Fleming's nineteen fifty four novel
Speaker 1: Live and Let Die, and it's.
Speaker 3: A real page turner. So I just spent the afternoon
Speaker 3: just sitting down and making myself know what the book
Speaker 3: is about. So then I knew when I sat down
Speaker 3: to write the song, I knew what the idea would be.
Speaker 3: Now you used to say live and let live. Now
Speaker 3: you say living and die. And I didn't want it
Speaker 3: to be so you've got a gun and now you
Speaker 3: go killing people, So living and die. I just wanted
Speaker 3: it to be let it go, don't worry about it
Speaker 3: when you've got problems and everything, just live and let die,
Speaker 3: live and just let it go. And so once I
Speaker 3: had that, it kind of almost wrote itself. When you
Speaker 3: were young, in your heart was an open book, you
Speaker 3: used to say living and it live. You know you did,
Speaker 3: you know you did it. But if this ever changing
Speaker 3: world in which were live in, you give it a
Speaker 3: crying the time, you know, to help with it very much,
Speaker 3: thinking how is this going to land? Well, we know
Speaker 3: in a Bond film, he's going to come out and
Speaker 3: sort of shoot, he's gone at the screen and it's
Speaker 3: all going to go red and drippy, and there's going
Speaker 3: to be a beautiful girl in a very scant costume.
Speaker 3: And so I see where I am. This is the
Speaker 3: world I'm.
Speaker 1: In, sitting at the piano in his London house, McCartney
Speaker 1: had a draft finished in a single afternoon. He brought
Speaker 1: it to his longtime collaborator George Martin, who was producing
Speaker 1: the soundtrack for the film, and together they finested into
Speaker 1: a bold, bond worthy hit and he.
Speaker 3: Said, yeah, we'll come over, and I said, okay, so
Speaker 3: go over and then i'd go when you were young
Speaker 3: in your open and show him the chords, and then
Speaker 3: I'd say, and then I've got this da da dada,
Speaker 3: this is like the sort of central rift to it.
Speaker 3: And then we just we talked and he said it'd
Speaker 3: be good to go off into BONDI and arrangements, and
Speaker 3: so I left that completely to him. All the sort
Speaker 3: of after the riff was played, there's a central middle
Speaker 3: instrumental bit which was pure George, and I was very
Speaker 3: happy with that. So it was it was a good experience.
Speaker 1: They recorded it in George Martin's studio above Oxford Circus,
Speaker 1: and then George jetted off to the Caribbean with a
Speaker 1: demo stashed in his briefcase.
Speaker 3: In those days, you'd have an ascetate, a little pressing
Speaker 3: of the record, and George went out to the Bahamas
Speaker 3: or somewhere where they were filming it, and they were
Speaker 3: on the beach somewhere. So he organized to bring a
Speaker 3: little record player and this disc and he played it
Speaker 3: to Kobe Broccoli who said, he said, that's nice, George,
Speaker 3: that's a nice demo. When are you going to make
Speaker 3: the finished record? George said, that is it.
Speaker 1: Apparently the producers had imagined that McCarty would write the
Speaker 1: song for someone else to perform. In fact, there's a
Speaker 1: scene in the film where the song is covered by
Speaker 1: the soul singer bj Arnot.
Speaker 5: But this is ever changing world in which we live in.
Speaker 5: Make you give it a cru.
Speaker 1: Instead. McCartney's rock vocals were a breath of fresh air
Speaker 1: to the franchise's songwriting tradition.
Speaker 4: Now you know, there might be some who would have
Speaker 4: questions about the idea.
Speaker 1: Of writing a song to order, a song to fulfill
Speaker 1: a particular task.
Speaker 4: That's obviously not a.
Speaker 3: I like that, well, I like it because I do
Speaker 3: the other way as well. I wouldn't like to just
Speaker 3: write to order, but I like seeing as I say,
Speaker 3: I'm as Troubadour and I've got my little guitar and
Speaker 3: I'm in a field and I'm writing about the stream
Speaker 3: and daffodils and the sunshine and whatever's the caring to me.
Speaker 3: I like that very much, and I think that's mainly
Speaker 3: what I do. But then occasionally something will come along, well,
Speaker 3: someone would you like to write for thinking a film,
Speaker 3: Bond film, for instance, and I will be yeah, just
Speaker 3: kind of I'm an enthusiast, so it'll just kind of
Speaker 3: excite me. Oh could I do that? I'll would go.
Speaker 3: And I nearly always agree to these things before I've
Speaker 3: really thought them out, because our enthusiast he is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I enjoy the process of trying to come up with
Speaker 3: something that will fit the brief. Some people, you say,
Speaker 3: don't like to do that. It can be a very
Speaker 3: big challenge.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's really just an extension of some notion
Speaker 1: of the songwriter as having a.
Speaker 4: Place in our in our culture, you know, in which
Speaker 4: there is a job to be done and it's a
Speaker 4: job of work, and that's perfectly reasonable way for a
Speaker 4: song to come into existence.
Speaker 3: I like to think of it like that.
Speaker 6: Sometimes when you got a job to do, you got
Speaker 6: to do it well, you.
Speaker 3: Go, you know. Whilst I didn't rate it too much
Speaker 3: alongside like from Russia with Love Goldfinger, yeah, which I know,
Speaker 3: very Bondian. I wasn't sure where the mine was, but
Speaker 3: a lot of people put it on their lists and
Speaker 3: put it top of the lists. Actually a Bond song,
Speaker 3: so it was the first rock and roll Bond song,
Speaker 3: that's right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Living Let Die is likely the only Bond song
Speaker 1: to be covered by Guns N' Roses, who released their
Speaker 1: own version in nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 3: What did I thought it was pretty good. Actually, I
Speaker 3: was more amazed than they would do it so a
Speaker 3: young American group. And the interesting thing was that my
Speaker 3: kids went to school and they would say, my dad
Speaker 3: wrote that this is no they didn't it's gone and Roses.
Speaker 3: Nobody would ever believe them. But yeah, for a while
Speaker 3: it was just gons ross. But I was very happy
Speaker 3: that they've done it. I always like people doing my songs.
Speaker 3: I don't know about you, but if someone decides to
Speaker 3: recite one of your poems, it's a great compliment. You know,
Speaker 3: of course it is. In my case, it pays. How
Speaker 3: do you know it doesn't play in my kiss? I
Speaker 3: don't know. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney's own version of the song had been an
Speaker 1: instant hit. It went to number nine on the British charts,
Speaker 1: number one on the American Until then, the highest numbers
Speaker 1: reached by a Bond theme.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a big show for us. It's extremely exciting.
Speaker 3: We have pyrotechnics, extremely dangerous. It can get a little
Speaker 3: hot up there, yeah, I must say. But pyrotechnics guy
Speaker 3: who in whom we trust is called shaky. There's a clue.
Speaker 3: And the thing I think I like most about it
Speaker 3: is that as as we know the explosions about to happen,
Speaker 3: the big first explosion, So we often look at the people,
Speaker 3: particularly in the front row, who are like blithely going
Speaker 3: along and live and and you just it's great to
Speaker 3: just watch them. They look at each other and oh
Speaker 3: my god, they're shocked.
Speaker 5: You deserved well in words, we live in its being
Speaker 5: and so living letter.
Speaker 3: We did it nearly and there was the explosion, and
Speaker 3: I suddenly noticed as we started it it was like
Speaker 3: a ninety year old woman, very old in the front row.
Speaker 3: I've suddenly got both shit, we're going to kill her.
Speaker 3: There's no book stopping I can't stop the song saying
Speaker 3: cover your ears love. So it comes to its and
Speaker 3: I kind of like, I kind of look away living boom,
Speaker 3: and I look back to her thinking God, and she
Speaker 3: is loving it.
Speaker 5: So yeah, when you got to you gotta do it well.
Speaker 3: You've got to give you.
Speaker 1: Live and let Die from the single released by Wings
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three. In the next episode, mystery tours
Speaker 1: were cheap one day bus trips out of the city
Speaker 1: for working class families. Some of them were magical McCartney
Speaker 1: A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: NPL and Pushkin Industries.