Speaker 1: Pushkin. He is McCartney. Paul McCartney, a commander, a hero,
Speaker 1: a man of action, everything you've ever.
Speaker 2: Loved in a Bond film.
Speaker 1: Em calls in from the secret Intelligence Service with a mission.
Speaker 1: A commission to write a song before it's too late.
Speaker 1: More thrilled, more exciteable, more chill. Agent McCartney receives his
Speaker 1: technical materials, a title, a novel for inspiration and more.
Speaker 1: At his piano in London, he embarks on his perilous journey.
Speaker 3: Live and Let Die.
Speaker 1: I'm Paul muldoon and I've been fortunate to spend time
Speaker 1: with one of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2: And will you look at me?
Speaker 4: I'm going on to 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 4: Oh actually I'm a songwriter. My god, Well that that
Speaker 4: crypt 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 pop popular music. In this episode, Live and Let.
Speaker 3: Die when you are in your Heart was an open.
Speaker 5: Book 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: of the Roger Moore era. It had all the components
Speaker 1: of the classic spy thriller, dry Martini's clever gadgets, car chases.
Speaker 2: Roger Moore as James Bond.
Speaker 4: Double O seven can Live and Let Die.
Speaker 1: Paan McCartney may not have been an international secret agent,
Speaker 1: but he did have a fair amount in common with
Speaker 1: Double Oh seven.
Speaker 2: Did you still the Aston Martin in nineteen seventy three
Speaker 2: or I moved through a couple of cars? It was
Speaker 2: the very first Bond film. Dr no whether he had
Speaker 2: and asked, and you'll be using this Aston Martin dB
Speaker 2: five with modifications now pay attention please. It was only
Speaker 2: later and really I put it together.
Speaker 4: It was so obvious.
Speaker 2: You know why I got on Aston anyway. I've had
Speaker 2: a few nice cars, sports cars. I once had a
Speaker 2: Lamborghini just for the sort of thrill of having a
Speaker 2: sports car. George was the real car person. George ended
Speaker 2: up with a McLaren, which you couldn't use on Britain
Speaker 2: with his speed limits. You know, George was a very
Speaker 2: sports car orientated. In fact, he was horrified to hear that.
Speaker 2: I still sometimes used the boss public transport. You will
Speaker 2: you go on the buses 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 2: It was always a sneaky ambition to write a Bond
Speaker 2: song because in some ways I like to see myself
Speaker 2: one portion of myself as a jobbing writer. You know,
Speaker 2: you require a harm for the Queen's wedding. I'm your man,
Speaker 2: Dear Elizabeth, Oh greatness, run it off the land.
Speaker 4: They know they fill in, will take your hand. So
Speaker 4: putting that aside.
Speaker 2: The equivalent of that for a lot of people was
Speaker 2: and still is actually the Bond song. It's it's you
Speaker 2: know you you've written the Bond song. It's a bit
Speaker 2: of an accolade.
Speaker 1: Since the early days, part of the allure of the
Speaker 1: Double seven franchise had been the Bond song, a catchy
Speaker 1: hit from the hottest pop star of the.
Speaker 4: Time, Binger.
Speaker 1: Everyone from Shirley Bassie to Billie Eilish has made their contributions.
Speaker 3: Okay, So in this case, a record guy who was
Speaker 3: handling the Beatles Apple records.
Speaker 4: He knew somebody connected.
Speaker 2: With the Bond franchise, and so one day we were
Speaker 2: just chatting and he said, you don't have any interest
Speaker 2: in doing a Bond film? Yeah, I'm probably interested, you know,
Speaker 2: not trying to look too enthusiastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I said, yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: But did they even changing world in which were living?
Speaker 6: Makes you.
Speaker 2: Say living Linda.
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.
Speaker 2: And it's a real page turner. So I just spent
Speaker 2: the afternoon just sitting down and making myself know what
Speaker 2: the book is about. So then I knew when I
Speaker 2: sat down to write the song, I knew what the
Speaker 2: idea would be. Now you used to say living live.
Speaker 2: Now you say living a die, And I didn't want
Speaker 2: it to be. So you've got a gun and now
Speaker 2: you go killing people, So living and Die, I just
Speaker 2: wanted it to be. Let it go, don't worry about
Speaker 2: it when you've got problems and everything, just live and
Speaker 2: let die and live and just let it go. And
Speaker 2: so once I had that, it kind of almost wrote itself.
Speaker 2: When you were young in your heart was an open book.
Speaker 2: You used to stay living on it.
Speaker 4: Live. You know you did, you know you did it.
Speaker 2: But if this ever changing world in which we live
Speaker 2: in makes you give it a cry, stay living in
Speaker 2: a die, you know, to help with it very much,
Speaker 2: thinking how is this going to land? Well, we know
Speaker 2: in the Bond film he's going to come out and
Speaker 2: sort of shoot, he's gone at the screen and it's
Speaker 2: all going to go red and drippy, and there's going
Speaker 2: to be a beautiful girl in.
Speaker 4: A very scant costume.
Speaker 2: And so I see where I am.
Speaker 4: This is the world I'm in.
Speaker 1: Sitting at the piano in his London house, McCartney had
Speaker 1: a draft finished in a single afternoon. He brought it
Speaker 1: to his longtime collaborator George Martin, who was producing the
Speaker 1: soundtrack for the film, and together they finested into a bold,
Speaker 1: Bond worthy hit.
Speaker 6: And he said, yeah, we'll come over, and I said, okay,
Speaker 6: so go over, And then i'd go when you were
Speaker 6: young and you're open.
Speaker 4: And show him the chords.
Speaker 6: And then I'd say, and then I've got this da
Speaker 6: dam this is like the sort of central rift to it.
Speaker 4: And then we just we talked.
Speaker 2: And he said it'd be good to go off into
Speaker 2: Bondian arrangements, and so I left that completely to him.
Speaker 4: All the sort of.
Speaker 2: After the riff was played, there's a central middle instrumental
Speaker 2: bit which was pure George, and.
Speaker 4: I was very happy with that. So it was a
Speaker 4: 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 2: In those days, you'd have an ascetate a little pressing
Speaker 2: of the record, and George went out to the Bahamas
Speaker 2: or somewhere where they were filming it, and they were
Speaker 2: on the beach somewhere, so he organized to bring a
Speaker 2: little record player and this disc and he played it
Speaker 2: to Kobe Broccoli, who said, he said, that's nice, George,
Speaker 2: that's a nice demo. When are you going to make
Speaker 2: the finished record? George said, that is it.
Speaker 1: Apparently the producers had imagined that McCartney 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 Ar not.
Speaker 4: Changing.
Speaker 1: Instead, McCartney's rock vocals were a breath of fresh air
Speaker 1: to the franchise's songwriting tradition.
Speaker 5: Now you know, there might be some who would have
Speaker 5: questions about the idea of writing a song to order,
Speaker 5: as a song to fulfill a particular task. That's obviously
Speaker 5: not a no.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 2: Well, I like it because I do the other way
Speaker 2: as well. I wouldn't like to just write toward it,
Speaker 2: but I like saying, as I say, I'm a troubadour
Speaker 2: and I've got my little guitar and I'm in a
Speaker 2: field and I'm writing about the stream and daffodils and
Speaker 2: the sunshine, whatever's occurring to me. I like that very much,
Speaker 2: and I think that's mainly what I do. But then
Speaker 2: occasionally something will come along, Well, some would you like
Speaker 2: to write for thinking a film on film, for instance,
Speaker 2: And I will be yeah, just kind of. I'm an enthusiast,
Speaker 2: so it'll just kind of excite me.
Speaker 4: Oh, could I do that?
Speaker 2: I'll go And I nearly always agree to these things
Speaker 2: before I've really thought them out, because.
Speaker 4: Our enthusiast is. Yeah. I enjoy the process.
Speaker 2: We're trying to come up with something that will fit
Speaker 2: the brief.
Speaker 4: Some people, you say, don't like to do that. It
Speaker 4: can be a very big challenge.
Speaker 5: I mean it's really just an extension of some notion
Speaker 5: of the songwriter as having a place.
Speaker 7: In our in our culture, you know, in which there
Speaker 7: is a job to be done and it's a job
Speaker 7: of work, and that's perfectly reasonable way for a song
Speaker 7: to come into existence.
Speaker 4: I like to think a bit like that sometimes.
Speaker 3: Then you got a job to do, you got to
Speaker 3: do it well, you got to give.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: Whilst I didn't rate it too much alongside like from
Speaker 2: Russia with Love Goldfinger, Yeah, which were very Bondie, I
Speaker 2: wasn't sure where the mine was, but a lot of
Speaker 2: people put it on their lists and put it top
Speaker 2: of the lists.
Speaker 4: Actually a Bond song, so.
Speaker 2: It was the first rock and roll Bond 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 2: I thought it was pretty good, actually, I was more
Speaker 2: amazed that they would do it.
Speaker 4: It's a young.
Speaker 2: American group and the interesting thing was that my kids
Speaker 2: went to school and they would say, my dad wrote
Speaker 2: that this is no they didn't it's gone sinn Roses,
Speaker 2: so nobody would ever believe them. But yeah, for a
Speaker 2: while it was just gone sin Roses. But I was
Speaker 2: very happy that they'd done it. I always like people
Speaker 2: doing my songs. I don't know about you, but if
Speaker 2: someone decides to recite one of your poems, it's.
Speaker 4: A great compliment.
Speaker 2: You know, of course it is. In my case, it pays.
Speaker 2: How do you know it doesn't play in my kids don't?
Speaker 4: No, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Paul mccartny, his own version of the song had been
Speaker 1: an instant hit. It went to number nine on the
Speaker 1: British charts, number one on the American Until then, the
Speaker 1: highest numbers reached by a Bond theme.
Speaker 4: Well, it's a big show for us.
Speaker 2: It's extremely exciting. We have pyrotechnics, extremely dangerous. It can
Speaker 2: get a little hot up there, yeah, I must say.
Speaker 2: But our pyrotechnics guy, who in whom we trust, is
Speaker 2: called shaky.
Speaker 4: There's a clue.
Speaker 2: And the thing I think I like most about it
Speaker 2: is that, as we know the explosions about to happen,
Speaker 2: the big first explosion. So we often look at the people,
Speaker 2: particularly in the front row, who are like blithely going
Speaker 2: along and live and and you just it's great to
Speaker 2: just watch them. They look at each other and oh
Speaker 2: my god, they're shocked.
Speaker 5: No, this is emty d world in withs we live
Speaker 5: in makes it.
Speaker 4: R so living the little we did it in early
Speaker 4: days and there.
Speaker 2: Was the explosion, and I suddenly noticed as we started
Speaker 2: it it was like a ninety year old woman, very
Speaker 2: old in the front row. I suddenly got both ship
Speaker 2: we're going to kill her. There's no book stopping. I
Speaker 2: can't stop the song saying cover your ears love. So
Speaker 2: it comes to itis and I kind of like, I
Speaker 2: kind of look away living and boom, and I look
Speaker 2: back to her thinking court and she is loving it.
Speaker 2: So yeah, when you got a job, well.
Speaker 4: You've got to give me.
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.