Paul McCartney

When he left The Beatles, Paul McCartney retreated to a country house with his wife, kids and personal recording equipment to produce McCartney I—an album of odes to “home, family and love.” No longer a Beatle, Paul was free to indulge his sweet tooth, which he did with saccharine classics like “My Love,” and “Silly Love Songs.”

By the mid ’80s, Paul’s sugar had turned to sap. A string of lackluster albums eroded his fan base to the point that his recent output—including the Beatlesque Flaming Pie and a fine collection of 1950s standards—has largely been ignored. Undeterred, McCartney has continued to explore, embarking on his ambitious Standing Stone concerto and releasing ambient techno mixes under his Fireman moniker.

Though they may not be as groundbreaking as Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or have the same nostalgic appeal as Rubber Soul, McCartney insists these new records are all part of the same trip. “It’s like sort of stepping on a train,” he tells Paste. “I don’t worry about other trains I’ve been on, just this new train, and that’s exciting. You just have to realize that perhaps you can’t always have as great a journey as you had in the past.”

McCartney’s 20th post-Beatles release, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard feels like an extension of the Flaming Pie sessions. Although he plays most of the instruments himself, the record has a very tight, live feel—like Mac’s band has set up to jam in your living room. The music feels fresher than any recent McCartney release, especially the parts where this “one man band” loosens up for some unexpected freeform meandering—like on the coda of “How Kind of You” or the loose, instrumental rocker that closes the album.

When we caught up with Sir Paul, he was mixing a companion DVD to be included with the new Chaos and Creation release. “These days, the record company wants a DVD to go with the CD,” he says. “So we’ve got a little digital editing suite set up downstairs and are cutting away.”

PASTE: I’m hearing echoes of some of your earlier solo albums in a lot of bands now. Are you aware of some of the bands, like those in the Elephant Six Collective, who seem to have a bit of a Wings flair?

PAUL: Well… when we did Live 8 the other day, Bono was chatting with me in the trailer and he said [switching to a thick Irish accent] ‘you know, it’s the hippest thing this year, man. Wings. All your early stuff. That’s what the young bands are listening to.’

I am getting more and more feedback from people who I suspect were very young when those albums came out and remember them with the same sort of nostalgia I would remember an early Elvis record. It’s always kind of a cool thing to find a whole area that’s not picked over. We used to do that a lot when we would do covers. We’d look over every Bo Diddley b-side and find songs like “Crackin’ Up” and stuff.

And so I think it’s really gratifying to find that younger bands are looking back at those albums that weren’t supposed to be any good, but now have something. There is a style to them, which is sort of a hippie simplicity. I don’t know what you’d call it. But there is something that kind of resonates at this point in time, somehow.

Well, I think that vibe could be called lo-fi. There’s been a huge lo-fi movement, and it could be argued that your first post-Beatles album McCartney I—which was recorded and mixed at your house—was one of the first big lo-fi records of its day.

Yeah, I knew what I was doing there was exciting. It’s interesting now that people from this hi-tech perspective are looking back at something like that with some kind of respect. Now it’s even more exciting to say ‘you know… I plugged my mic straight into the back of the Studer 4-track machine to make that recording. And then I just put my mic somewhere near the drums and drummed. And if the hi hat was too loud I moved the mic away from the hi hat. And that’s how those things were made. Absolutely minimum fi.

One band you get compared to is XTC. “English Tea” from your new album, sounds almost like something Andy Partridge would’ve done. Do you listen to XTC, and are you influenced by their work?

Yeah, I listen to XTC and did a little bit of work with one of the guys once, but I wouldn’t see the connection. I don’t know anything of theirs that’s like “English Tea.” To me, it’s more like Noel Coward. Do you know Noel Coward?

No.

He’s a very British film star, sort of a famous gay gentleman from the 1930s—a very old, black-and-white-film star. Anyway, he’s who I was thinking of when I sort of wrote the song.

In England if we say ‘do you want a cup of tea?’ there’s one kind of tea that everyone will give you, and we don’t know what it is. We don’t know if it’s dodgy, it’s just a cup of tea. But when you go abroad, they say ‘what kind of tea do you want? Do you want Earl Grey tea? English Breakfast tea? Darjeeling tea? Lemon tea? Honey tea? Chamomile tea?’ You go ‘gosh… stop! I just want a cup of tea!’