Paul McCartney

I was playing with this idea, which is kind of amusing for someone British, that there is such a thing as English tea, and it just made me think of English country gardens and people I know who are sort of upper class and who have a completely different vocabulary. Instead of saying ‘do you want a cup of tea?’ they’d say ‘would you care to take a cup of tea?’ It’s a parody of upper class speech. Instead of saying ‘usually the church bells chime,’ I’d use a phrase like ‘as a rule the church bells chime.’

And that’s got to be the only song that anyone has ever worked in the word ‘paraventure.’ Nobody knows what that word means. I do because I’ve read a lot of Charles Dickens. I still read a lot of Dickens, actually. His language is very old-fashioned. ‘Paraventure’ means ‘perhaps.’ But it’s a really fruity word that is not in usage any more. So I was sort of proud of myself for working that one in. There’s got to be a Guinness book record in that. The award for the man with the most unknown word. Ever.

I saw a recent interview on AOL where you cited the influence Bob Dylan and some of The Beatles’ contemporaries had on you in the early days… how they pushed you ahead to try new things. What artists fill that role for you today?

There are certain people I kind of listen to, and I think I’m going to kind of move in that direction. What happened on the new album is the producer, Nigel Godrich, persuaded me not to do it. I was talking to him about people like Nitin Sawhney, who is kind of a British Asian guy with Indian family heritage, but he’s bought up in Britain and influenced by hip-hop. So it’s a great fusion thing that I’m influenced by. I like that sort of dance-groove thing. I like Indian music and vocalizing, but I also like soul and stuff. He kind of mixes it all. I did send one of those CDs to Nigel saying ‘I think this stuff is really cool,’ not knowing at the time quite who Nigel was, or what kind of person he was. And he resisted it. But it’s a subliminal influence in my own mind. It doesn’t actually find its way onto the record really, except maybe one or two tracks, but they’re not actually on the album, except maybe as special b-sides.

In the end, Nigel had a fairly clear direction as to where he wanted to go. He wanted to keep it really simple, really straight, really direct and very me instead of ‘let’s get modern, let’s get gimmicky’ or ‘let’s do this because it’s the latest groove.’ He tended to resist all of that while he was producing and I went along with that, and I’m glad we did, in the end.

Well, I’m glad. In the ’80s it seemed like you maybe went too far tracking the hot trends, working with Michael Jackson and things like that, when what people really wanted to hear was you. They wanted less-slick production and more focus on songcraft.

Yeah, that’s right. That’s exactly what Nigel said in the beginning before we even started working together and I said ‘you know what? That could be true.’

I told him I wanted to make a great record and I then said ‘scratch that. I’m going to make a great record,’ and Nigel said ‘that’s exactly what I want to make.' I want to make an album that’s you—that’s what people want to hear.’ That became the focus. So much so that I was actually considering recording this with my live band, whom I love, but Nigel felt that might get a bit safe. So he said ‘no, I’d like to hear you play some drums on this, I’d like to hear you play a bit of little electric guitar here…’ jobs that would normally go to Abe and Rusty. So I said ‘OK, OK. Let’s try it.’ I talked to the band and said, ‘look, this is the way he wants to go guys,’ and they were very understanding. They said ‘whatever it takes to make the record, go make it. We’ll play it live with you.’ So that’s how it turned out. It was really back to basics.

This record takes almost the same approach you took with McCartney I and McCartney II. Why not just call it McCartney III?

This was a surprise direction for us. None of us intended to go that way, I don’t think even Nigel did. The first week we worked with the band, second week he said, “you try the drums, you try the tambourine.” Halfway through that week he said “this is the way I want to go.” And so it was, outside of a couple of other fine musicians like James Gadson on drums and Joey Waronker and Jason Falkner, it’s pretty much all me. Except for the strings and specialized instruments.

We wanted to take an organic approach. On McCartney I and McCartney II, I knew exactly that I was going to play all the instruments because I just didn’t ring anyone. This [new album] developed into that, so there was a slightly different approach. So it’s an extension of that idea. It is interesting because it’s always a different feel when I play drums and bass. I sort of know where the musicians are going because they’re me!