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Released in 1973

Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)

Written by Paul McCartney • Linda Eastman / McCartney

Last updated on February 25, 2023

Album This song officially appears on the Band On The Run (UK version) Official album.

Timeline This song was officially released in 1973

Timeline This song was written, or began to be written, in 1973, when Paul McCartney was 31 years old)

Master album

Related sessions

This song was recorded during the following studio sessions:

Related interview

Related articles

From Wikipedia:

“Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” is a song by the British–American rock band Paul McCartney and Wings, released on their 1973 album Band on the Run. The longest track on the album, it was not released as a single. The song includes interpolations of “Jet” and “Mrs. Vandebilt,” the second and fourth tracks on the album, respectively. Wings band member Denny Laine covered “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” in 2007 on his album Performs the Hits of Wings. An abbreviated performance of the song appears on the live album Wings over America.

Writing

In an interview on British TV channel ITV1 for the program Wings: Band on the Run, to promote the November 2010 2xCD/2xDVD rerelease of the original album, McCartney says he was on vacation in Montego Bay, Jamaica where he “snuck” onto the set of the film Papillon where he met Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen. After a dinner with Hoffman, with McCartney playing around on guitar, Hoffman did not believe that McCartney could write a song “about anything”, so Hoffman pulled out a magazine where they saw the story of the death of Pablo Picasso and his famous last words, “Drink to me, drink to my health. You know I can’t drink anymore.” McCartney created a demo of the song and lyrics on the spot, prompting Hoffman to exclaim to his wife: “…look, he’s doing it… he’s doing it!”

Recording

While recording Band on the Run in Lagos, Nigeria, Wings were invited to former Cream drummer Ginger Baker’s ARC Studios in the nearby suburb of Ikeja. While Baker insisted to McCartney that they should record the entire album there, McCartney was reluctant and agreed he would spend one day there. “Picasso’s Last Words” was recorded during that time and Baker contributed by playing a tin can full of gravel. […]

Paul McCartney, From Wingspan:

On one of our Jamaican holidays we had heard that Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen were around, shooting the film Papillon. We were invited to visit the set and Dustin asked us back to his house for dinner. He was asking me how I write songs; I explained that I just make them up. He said, Can you make up a song about anything?’ I wasn’t sure, but he pulled out a copy of Time, pointed to an article and said, ‘Could you write a song about this? It was a quote from Picasso, from the last night of his life. Apparently, he had said to his friends, ‘Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore,’ and then gone to bed and died in his sleep. So I picked up a guitar, started to strum and sing ‘Drink to me, drink to my health…’, and Dustin was shouting to his wife, ‘He’s doing it! He’s doing it! Come and listen!’ It’s something that comes naturally to me but he was blown away by it. And that song became Picasso’s Last Words.

Paul McCartney, from Paul McCartney In His Own Words, Paul Gambaccini:

Then we went to Nigeria and we were working in Ginger’s studio, Ginger Baker/ARC Studio in Lagos, nice studio down there. We thought we’d do this Picasso number, and we started off doing it straight. Then we thought, Picasso was kind of far out in his pictures, he’d done all these different kinds of things, fragmented, cubism, and the whole bit. I thought it would be nice to get a track a bit like that, put it through different moods, cut it up, edit it, mess around with it – like he used to do with his pictures. You see the old films of him painting, he paints it once and if he doesn’t like it he paints it again, right on top of it, and by about twenty-five times he’s got this picture. So we tried to use this kind of idea, I don’t know much about it, to tell you the truth, but what we did know we tried to get in the song, sort of a Cubist thing.

So Ginger, he helped on a few little things of it. At the end, where we go ‘Ho, hey ho.’ We did the cutting up there. Then we got Ginger and a couple of people from around the studio and we got little tin cans and filled them with gravel from outside the studio, and used them as shakers, so at the end you hear this [makes shaking gravel noise], and that’s Ginger and a big mob of us going [gravel noise again]. So we just made it all up and then edited the tape. There were about four or five big edits in it, really.

We met Dustin Hoffman when we were in Jamaica – and went to have dinner with him one night. We were talking about songwriting… and he pulled out a copy of Time magazine. He said ‘Here’s a piece that I thought was really lyrical’. It was the story of how Picasso had toasted his friends one night saying how he couldn’t drink any more – and the next morning he was dead.

So I plonked a few chords and out came the song – Dustin was very excited about it. When we came to record it at Ginger Baker’s studio the idea was to fragment it, make it sort of cubist. It’s very disjointed, but that’s the way it’s meant to be, folks!

Paul McCartney – From interview with Disc Magazine, 1973

From YouTube:

Taken from a sound effects tape compiled by Theatre Projects Sound Limited of London for Paul McCartney and Wings’ album Band On The Run, in October 1973, we present for the very first time the full original French broadcast as used in the song “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink To Me).” This spoken word recording was originally made for the 1970s BBC French Language Service program, “Le Flash Touristique.”

Lyrics

The grand old painter died last night

His paintings on the wall

Before he went he bade us well

And said goodnight to us all.

Drink to me, drink to my health,

You know I can't drink any more

Drink to me, drink to my health,

You know I can't drink any more.

3 o'clock in the morning

I'm getting ready for bed

It came without a warning

But I'll be waiting for you baby

I'll be waiting for you there

So drink to me drink to my health

You know I can't drink any more

Drink to me drink to my health

You know I can't drink any more

FRENCH INTERLUDE

Tempo Change

JET . . . Drink to me

Drunken Chorus

FRENCH (tempo) Drink to me . . . Ho Hey Ho

Officially appears on

See all official recordings containing “Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)”

Bootlegs

See all bootlegs containing “Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)”

Live performances

“Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)” has been played in 61 concerts.

Latest concerts where “Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)” has been played

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Going further

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

"Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)" is one of the songs featured in the book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," published in 2021. The book explores Paul McCartney's early Liverpool days, his time with the Beatles, Wings, and his solo career. It pairs the lyrics of 154 of his songs with his first-person commentary on the circumstances of their creation, the inspirations behind them, and his current thoughts on them.

Buy on Amazon

Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 1) 1970-1989

With 25 albums of pop music, 5 of classical – a total of around 500 songs – released over the course of more than half a century, Paul McCartney's career, on his own and with Wings, boasts an incredible catalogue that's always striving to free itself from the shadow of The Beatles. The stories behind the songs, demos and studio recordings, unreleased tracks, recording dates, musicians, live performances and tours, covers, events: Music Is Ideas Volume 1 traces McCartney's post-Beatles output from 1970 to 1989 in the form of 346 song sheets, filled with details of the recordings and stories behind the sessions. Accompanied by photos, and drawing on interviews and contemporary reviews, this reference book draws the portrait of a musical craftsman who has elevated popular song to an art-form.

Buy on Amazon

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