Interview for Rave Magazine

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Paul’s frenetic self-education program was the subject of a revealing interview with radio disc jockey Alan Freeman that took place at Freeman’s apartment at Wellesley Court in Maida Vale. Paul arrived smartly dressed in gray trousers, a dark jacket, white shirt, and polka dot tie. The first thing he did on entering the apartment was to sit down at Freeman’s piano for ninety minutes, working on a new song idea (which Freeman didn’t identify). “That’s all I’ve got so far,” he said. “I must work on it a bit more.”

From “Beatles ’66: The Revolutionary Year” by Steve Turner

No doubt, pop-pickers, millions of you would flip at an opportunity to entertain Paul McCartney in your home for a few hours. Well, if you ever do, take my tip… move the piano out first. Because Paul makes straight for it the way other people head for a good-looking chick.

“You eat, sleep and dream on it, don’t you?” I said. Paul grinned and rippled out another string of tuneful thoughts, the melody just growing from his fingers. Then he tried it over again, this time adding a jumping bass pattern that suddenly brought the whole thing to life. He stopped halfway through.

“That’s all I’ve got so far,” he said. “I must work on that a bit more.”

It took me half an hour to get Paul away from the keyboard and sit down and relax. I could see why the Beatles rarely run short of great new numbers. If someone invented a way of composing in your sleep, McCartney would be on to it like a shot.

It was nearly a year since I’d had a Heart-to-Heart with Paul, here in the same room at my London apartment. We’d met often since then, of course, on shows and in TV studios. But now, with a rare day free just to laze around and sip a long drink and chat about whatever came into his mind, you could see a big change in him.

In the old days Paul, like a lot of genuinely sensitive and creative people, used to cover up a little under a dry, wise-cracking front. Today he’s fizzing like a firework with all sorts of thoughts and theories about music, films, books and art.

People used to ask, “What happens when the time comes that the Beatles break up and go their own ways?” I don’t think we need to worry. I reckon their individual talents are possibly even greater than their achievements as a group. Even if the Beatles had never made a single disc, the Lennon-McCartney songs would have been a glowing milestone in pop anyhow.

So, if you don’t mind, Beatle-diggers, this is Paul the person talking of his ideas, his discoveries as his mind matures and the mad, hurtling pace of the world’s idols steadies down to a saner rhythm.

The phone rang outside, but I wasn’t letting anybody cut in on this revealing session with Paul. “No calls for the next hour, no matter what,” I said to Carolina, my secretary.

And Paul began to talk.

“It’s hard to know whether the Beatles have changed much in the past year as the public sees them,” he said. “But I know we have. I know I have, as a personal, internal change. I don’t mean things like getting the M.B.E. I think after the first couple of weeks we forgot about that.

“I’d say the really big change is in our tastes, in finding out about things we didn’t know before. For instance, George spends all his time now, listening to Indian music. He’s joined the Asian Music Circle. He’s really serious about it, too. It started when he got a cithar [sic] — the Indian instrument we used on ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’.

“It’s the same with all of us. We’ve all got interested in things that just never used to occur to us. I’ve got thousands, millions, of new ideas myself. What I really want to do now is to see whether I could write all the music for a film. Not just to write tunes, but the music of the film itself.

“I want to read a lot more than I do. It annoys me that so many million books came out last year and I only read twenty of them. It’s a drag.

“What I’m reading at the moment is everything I can get on the assassination of President Kennedy… all the evidence, all the reports. I’m convinced that the real truth about that hasn’t come out. And I’m reading a French writer — Jarry. He’s great, weird.

“I’m reading plays like mad, too, I don’t know if I’ll ever want to write one. But there are so many things I’d like to have a try at.

“Painting. I’ve done quite a bit and I enjoy it. I’d like to do a lot more, find out if I might have a talent for that.”

Caroline brought in tea and passed the cups. “Paul,” I said, “how would you say all these new interests of yours might affect the Beatles’ music?”

He grinned, stirring his tea.

“Well, if you mean are people frightened that we might suddenly go all sober or play stuff like Mantovani, they needn’t worry about that. We’ve got no intention of trying to rehash old things. The whole point is that we’re learning about new things all the time.

“Like doing ‘Yesterday’ with the string quartet instead of the big sweeping orchestra, which was the old way. But it would be a pity if we change the way which we think is better but everybody else doesn’t. It’d be a pity — but that’s the only way we’ve ever worked.

“We’ve only made the records which we think are good, and that’s the only standard we’ve ever gone by. Eventually we may get a bit too way out. I hope not, but I don’t know.”

I pointed to the stack of newly released discs standing by the record player and said, “But if you go through those, for example, everyone can see that pop music is getting more and more way out. People are going for it, all the same.”

Paul nodded.

“Yes, to some extent it is. But there are still too many groups who are trying just to keep up. That’s no good. That’s what makes the whole pop thing dull in the end. You ought to be able to move on a bit further with every record, like The Who.

“And what’s more, they’ve got every chance. The equipment in most British recording studios is much better than it is in the States. But there’s some extra bit they get to the sound over there that we haven’t quite got. I don’t know what it is yet, but you get the sensation of that little bit more. The Stones always tell us we’d be better if we recorded in the States, but we never have. We probably will eventually.

“You put a record of ours with an American record and don’t alter the volume, and you’ll find the American record is always that fraction louder. And it has a lucid something I can’t explain. Funny, because as I say, I believe we’re technically better in Britain.”

Paul shrugged. But he had the contented look of a young man who has just come up with something else to investigate and find out about.

There must be many a group starting out now who are spurred along by visions of what life at the top must be like when you finally get up there in the Beatles class. But Paul said that although you obviously pick up the luxuries, you also discover that you’re going short of a lot of things that less successful people have more time to enjoy.

“I suddenly realised that because of the Beatles, as far as my own life was concerned, I’d got in a very severe sort of rut. And we all had, because we all just seemed to be working only towards trying to get pop things done. And we saw that obviously we must have missed out on quite a few things.”

He grinned and nodded towards the piano in the corner.

“Only the other day I was working out a number and I stopped and thought, ‘What a drag. I’m twenty-three and I’ve never learned to read music.’ And I found I was thinking to myself as if I was finished. So I said, ‘Why don’t I?’ And now I’m doing it.

“Sooner or later it hits you that the average span of the British male is seventy-five years and you’ve had more than twenty of them, so you better make the most of what’s left. Then the brain starts working, and John and I rush out and buy loads of books.

“I’m lazy, but I don’t like myself being lazy. So the only way out is to do something about it. Like I made myself listen to classical records, though nobody in our house ever liked them. When one came on they’d just turn it off. But I thought, ‘I’d better sort this out for myself and see whether I like it or not.’

“And in fact, I don’t like a lot of it. It’s too fruity and sentimental. But from that, you get on to what the modern composers are doing. And it’s suddenly great because you discover that there are all these things going on.

“Then I play them to John and he says, ‘What a drag — all these millions of records coming out all the time and we’ve not been getting on to them.’ Then we rush out and buy loads of modern compositions.

“The only thing to do is to listen to everything and then make up your mind about it.”

And that’s the best advice you’ll ever get on this planet, friends. Because it works, not just in the world of music, but in every profession they ever invented. I know people with no special gifts who’ve made fortunes just by listening. Not eavesdropping… listening. And when you know, then you can really start moving.

Paul shares with Pete Townshend of The Who a taste for the music of Stockhausen, one of the modern German composers.

“His ideas are fantastic. It’s the farthest-out music yet. He uses electronic stuff that nobody else has got round to. And his records are listed under the classical section in the catalogues. So if you’ve got it in your head that you don’t dig classical music, look what you’re shutting out.”

He shook his head.

“You can’t go putting music into little categories like serious and Merseybeat and so on. The great thing is that it’s music, whatever label they try to stick on it.”

Paul said with quiet intensity,

“You see, you’re going to have trouble getting but unless you have fairly solid opinions on things. You live in a muddle, as soon as I noticed myself saying ‘I don’t know’ I thought, ‘Well, you’ll have to try. Why don’t I know?’ Unless you get at it, by the time you do find out you’ll be ready to die.”

The Beatles have obviously been the single influence on pop for decades. But Paul admitted that this influence would never have come about if he, John, George and Ringo hadn’t been excited and stimulated by other people’s thoughts and ideas.

“The whole thing is about trying to contact people all the time. And with everything… plays, books, music. Even cooking. Anything that breaks down any kind of barrier and lets you get through to another human being… that’s it, that’s what’s valuable, that’s what matters.

“I think that’s why the whole being-English explosion has been such a success in America and everywhere else. It’s a genuine effort, and it’s working. Everybody in England has suddenly got just a little bit more interested in everything and everyone else. Britain has just climbed up on to another level, and it’s a wonderful thing.

“You ought to hear the people who come over here, the ones we talk to. They’re knocked out, because the idea they had of England before was just ridiculous. They believe the whole bowler-hat thing, thought the English were very reserved and very cold. When they go to a few parties and see what we’re really like, they’re amazed.

“Oh, sure, there’s been a change in us, all of us. But there’s a lot of people who’re still apathetic, who’ve got one fixed opinion. You know, the kind who say ‘I just like pop music or rhythm-and-blues or Edmundo Ros and don’t ever tell me about anything else because I don’t want to know’. They’re still scared to lay themselves open to any new influence. And they stay in the don’t-know rut for ever.

“As far as the Beatles are concerned, we can’t just stop where we are or there’s nothing left to do. We can go on trying to make popular records and it can get dead dull if we’re not trying to expand at all and move on into other things. Unless you’re careful you can be successful and unsuccessful at the same time.”

The next the Beatles do a television film, Paul said, they want to use many more of their own ideas instead of leaving it to the network’s camera crews.

“The one they did while we were in America could have been so much better. It needed just that little extra bit of imagination.

“Instead of getting someone in to do the music and the sounds, we’d like to do it ourselves. Spend a long time on it and really work at it.

“We’re getting something that’ll really give us some experience with mixing up sound and film in that sort of way. It’s a gift Capitol Records gave us in the States, and it’s the greatest little present event.

“It’s a television recorder. You just plug it into your set and you record the programme straight off, just like on to a tape. You can record the BBC while you’re watching ITV and show the film on your telly at one o’clock in the morning if you want to. They said we’ll be the first people in England to have them.

“So what we’re going to do when they come is go out and shoot film, weird shapes and patterns and light, and record special weird music to go with it and then come back and play it at home on the television. And we’ll be able to find out what works and what doesn’t, so that when we do a proper full-scale film we’ll know exactly what to put in it.”

The telephone shrilled in the other room. I looked at my watch. Our quiet hour had ended. “It’s Brian Epstein’s office for Paul,” said Caroline.

If you’re a Beatle, the world doesn’t leave you alone for long. While Paul was on the phone, the chauffeur arrived to pick him up for another business meeting. And for another while at least, all the schemes would have to wait while Paul the person made way for Paul the star.

As we shook hands on his way out, I wondered how far he would have carried his plans, what new excitements would be gripping him, the next time we have the chance of a Heart-to-Heart. More than likely, he would have come in from the bachelor cold by then and followed the other Beatles into marriage.

One thing for sure, I thought. No kid of Paul McCartney’s will turn out to be a don’t-know.

I looked at the piano guiltily as the lift hummed down to the ground floor. After all this time, I should be able to play that machine with the best of them. Why can’t I? I sat down and got a little chord shape going.

“Alan,” said Caroline around the door. “Fred Thing wants to know if you can come over.”

One note out in the bass somewhere — that’s got it.

“Tell him I’d love to,” I said. “But I can’t now. I’m working on an idea.”

Till next month — stay bright!

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