THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.144 - PAUL McCARTNEY

Episode Date: December 11, 2020

Adam talks with British musician Paul McCartney about, among other things, his favourite snacks and British TV panel shows, what Bob Dylan is really like, whether the modern world is scarier than the 60s, how he and John Lennon really got on after the Beatles broke up, and why he no longer picks up hitch hikers.Recorded remotely on November 18th, 2020.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for conversation editing. Podcast artwork by Helen GreenPAUL LINKSDR BUCKLES' McCARTNEY FAVOURITES (SPOTIFY PLAYLIST)TWO OF US (Directed by Michael Lyndsay Hogg, 2000, YOUTUBE)Dramatisation of Paul McCartney visiting John Lennon at his NY apartment in 1976.PAUL McCARTNEY ON THE SODAJERKER PODCAST (2018)PAUL McCARTNEY IN CASUAL CONVERSATION WITH JARVIS COCKER AT LIPA (2018. YOUTUBE)PAUL McCARTNEY 20 BEST SONGS FOR THE BEATLES (FAROUT MAGAZINE)THE BEATLES - HEY BULLDOG (1969, YOUTUBE)I think this might be my favourite Beatles video.MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR MEMORIES (2008 DOCUMENTARY) (YOUTUBE)Documentary featuring anecdotes and reminiscences from some of the people who took part in the Magical Mystery Tour film.WHOOPI GOLDBERG RECALLS GOING TO SHEA STADIUM (FROM 'EIGHT DAYS A WEEK' DOC) (2016, YOUTUBE)A lovely story from Ron Howard's very good Beatles doc.ADAM LINKSADAM BUXTON'S RAMBLE BOOK (HARDBACK) (WATERSTONES)ADAM BUXTON'S RAMBLE BOOK (AUDIOBOOK) (2020, AUDIBLE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. And if this is the first time you've downloaded my podcast, thank you and welcome.

Hope you'll enjoy it. Then maybe you can explore my bulging back catalogue. But if you're already thinking, no, I don't think I like you. I just want to hear Paul McCartney talking. That's okay. No hard feelings. Simply skip forward to around the six minute mark where my conversation with Paul begins.

However, if you'd like to stick around with me and my dog friend Rosie as we take a walk through the Norfolk countryside on this cold December day in 2020, then great! I'm just going to read a few notes that I have here on my phone in order to tell you a little bit more about this podcast number 144 which features a rambling conversation with British magician no musician he's like a magician though of music

Sir Paul McCartney. Now in case you've never heard of him here's a few Paul facts for you. never heard of him, here's a few Paul facts for you. Paul was born in 1942 and grew up in Walton, Liverpool. He is best known for singing, playing bass and writing songs with the band The Beatles, whose final lineup also comprised John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison. Having formed in Liverpool in 1960, they started out playing rock and roll, whoa, nearly slipped in the mud, and R&B covers by artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, The Shirelles, and Elvis Presley.

But it was when John and Paul started writing their own material that their audience really began to grow. By 1964, the Beatles were enjoying huge success all over the world, despite having to play to increasingly rude crowds who talked, screamed and urinated during their performances, a fact that contributed to the band's decision to stop touring in late 1966. Thereafter, they concentrated on making a series of increasingly ambitious albums, including Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The White Album and Abbey Road. The Beatles split up in 1970, and fans still argue bitterly about exactly why. But given the large scale of their success and the pressures that came with it,

perhaps it's surprising that they lasted as long as they did, managing to make 12 studio albums and appearing in five films during their 10-year lifespan. Since then, Sir Paul, who was knighted for his services to music in 1997, has recorded, by my count, 26 studio albums, including those made with Wings, the band he played with throughout most of the 70s, that included his first wife, Linda. Paul, currently aged 78, was supposed to be headlining the Glastonbury Festival this year,

as well as promoting a documentary about the Beatles directed by Peter Jackson called Get Back. Instead, when the COVID pandemic hit, he locked down with his third wife, Nancy, in the Sussex countryside and set to work on McCartney Three, the third in a series of albums, the first two released in 1970 and 1980 featuring music written, played and recorded by McCartney on his own

McCartney 3 is due to be released a week from now as I speak on the 18th of December but I was able to listen to a preview copy and I can report without hyperbole it's a delight. I spoke with Paul remotely in mid-November of this year. I told a friend of mine that I was going to be talking to him, and they said, oh, I bet you'll have to submit the questions in advance for approval, won't you? Well, I've had to do that for a couple of previous guests on this podcast, but I didn't have to do that this time.

It was all very informal, just as well because with the exception of some questions provided by friends of the podcast, I didn't really have a formal interview planned. And instead, we had a nice rambling conversation about some obvious McCartney things and some maybe not so obvious McCartney things. Here we go. Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la Hello, Paul. I'm Adam. Hello, Adam. I'm Paul.

Nice to meet you, albeit via the internet. Yeah, virtually. Where are you now? I am in Norfolk, East Anglia. Norfolk. Lovely. Very nice. Have you ever spent some happy times in Norfolk, East Anglia. Norfolk, lovely. Very nice. Have you ever spent some happy times in Norfolk? Yeah, I've been there. You know, our Linda McCartney Foods factory is at Fakenham in Norfolk.

Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, or as our American owner used to call it, Fakingham. So, no, it's Fakenham. So, Paul, this is a, I don't know how much they told you about it, faking ham. So no, it's faking them. So Paul, this is a, I don't know how much they told you about it, but it's more of a kind of a conversation than a straightforward interview. Yeah, that's what I heard. I will also be including the odd question from some of my friends and previous guests on my podcast. Okay. All right, cool. I feel as if you are kind as an interviewee.

From the interviews that I've seen with you, it seems as if you're generous and thoughtful when it comes to the people interviewing you. But I want you to know that at any point, if you think what I'm saying is ludicrous or tedious, please don't feel I will be offended if you point it out ludicrous that's a hip-hop artist yeah ludicrous yeah are you listening to any hip-hop these days just when it's on the radio and stuff yeah i don't particularly seek it out i do always check

in see what kanye is doing after i worked, you know, so I like to hear his new stuff. Yeah, it's good. You know, it's, it's, it's the new beat. At the moment, you're in promo mode, more or less, right? Yeah. What do you do with your time when you are not in that mode? And when you're not working on music? How do you busy yourself and occupy yourself and entertain yourself? Well, some of the time, it really depends how much time I've got. You know, if I've kind of got nothing to do all afternoon kind of thing, I can write. I enjoy writing stuff that's, you know, my hobby as well as my job.

So I can do that. If I'm on my farm, I can go for a horse ride, which is exceptionally fantastic. And is that just you on your own riding or do you go with other people? Yeah, it depends. You know, I mean, one of my kids is down there. My daughter Mary is a good rider.

So sometimes we'll go out together and sometimes it's just me. I do actually like to get out on my own it's very peaceful and there's trails in the woods where i live so it's great and you know what it's a great balance to the hectic life i sometimes lead yeah i can believe it and when you're out there on your own do you talk to yourself do you make notes on your phone? Not really. I sometimes take photographs of something that's particularly kind of nice.

And yeah, I've been known to take notes, but not really. You know, I'm trying to avoid all of that. I'm trying to escape. I'm just communing with nature. Hugging the odd tree. No, I'll tell you what, though. You know, everyone used to make fun of Prince Charles. But now science is finding out that trees communicate with each other. That's right, down through the roots.

You know, so I don't know, he's hugging something that's communicating. So it's looking better for Prince Charles, I think. I think you're right. Will you have a Christmas tree in your house this Christmas? Hopefully. But do you feel bad for those Christmas trees? I live right next to a big Christmas tree farm and I feel more guilty every Christmas season at seeing the slaughter of the trees. Well, yeah, I know what you mean, but you've got to balance up the sort of, you know, the demise of the tree with the

excitement of the kids and yourself because i like a christmas tree uh yeah so i do do christmas trees and uh i enjoy it yeah how about tv someone told me in fact it was stewart your pr person i hope he wasn't being indiscreet when he told me that you are into the TV show Homes Under the Hammer. Yeah. What happens is I go to the gym most mornings and there's always a TV program on. And that's normally what's on at the time I go. So I watch that.

But I'm now moving around. Big favorite at the moment is American Pickers. What's American Pickers? Oh, it's great. It's two guys, Mike and Frank, who go around America collecting for their, they've got an antique shop. And they go to all these places, all these barns where there's all this old, as they call it, rusty gold. And it's great you know they just they find it they bargain it's just a good show they're fun guys and some of the stuff they find is quite amazing you know so i like that and storage hunters you ever seen that i know the show you mean yeah so they go and they unlock big storage crates and yeah see's inside, right? Exactly, yeah. And that's quite funny.

There's an American version, which is funny, and then an English version. You know, there's great characters on it. Yeah. And, you know, it is interesting to see whether they found something good in the bin or whether it's a complete washout. But, you know, this shows my mental age. But I like that sort of stuff it's not too challenging

and i think it's interesting how about comedy shows because george of course george harrison was always a big comedy fan and a champion of so many comedians but how about you what's your relationship to comedy been over the years well i love I love it. Like George loved it. He just happened to hook up with the Pythons. And so that was really great because he was able to make films with them. In fact, I think it was Life for Brian. No one wanted to make it because it was, you know, the religious problems. But, you know, he was brave enough to do that. So my comedy, I watch it on TV.

You know, they have live from the Apollo over here in England. You sometimes see wonderful people. Then the shows like, you know, Mock the Week and Have I Got News for You. I like those shows. And I like Would I Lie to You. I think there's some very, very funny people on that. Yeah, Lee Mack is extraordinary. Lee Mack is a very talented boy. Yeah. And I mean, obviously, you sit at home, you know,

with your friends or family, and saying he's lying. He's lying. So you know, that's the kind of thing I like. Would you ever go on a show like that? You know, you think about it and then you think no you know you've you've got to be i would think you've got to be in that business you know sharpening your skills like lemac is obviously just bang bang bang bang bang and i think it looks a bit daft when you've got someone who's not so funny looks a bit out of his depth or her depth. So I think I probably wouldn't risk it. Mind you, I haven't been asked. So that's a factor. Yeah.

I mean, I would imagine you haven't been asked because they would imagine that you would say, no thanks. But I wonder if you'd be a good liar. Do you think you're a good liar? Well, that's an interesting question. I don't know. I think probably most of the people who watch that show think,

could I just lie with a straight face i don't know it'd be fun to try actually because i think you'd get the lie and then what the ones i like is like the double bluff and you think this is just so ridiculous the guy's lying and he looks like he's lying and he's almost giving away that he's lying and then in the end it was true yeah bob mortimer is amazing on that show i love bob yeah talking about comedy him and vic reeves were huge favorites yeah so i love them yeah i was listening to your new record congratulations by the way thank you good. Good record. Oh, thanks. Do you ever feel like, do they all seem good to you

once you've finished working with them and you've been through that process? Or are you sometimes aware like, eh, that wasn't such a good one? I think when you've made the record, you've tried your best. And I think at that time, you think, this is good.

This is a good record. So I'll put it out. Looking back on them, sometimes you think, that time you think, this is good. This is a good record, so I'll put it out. Looking back on them, sometimes you think, that wasn't too good. I must have been in a bit of a daze or something when I did that one. So there are some favourites, some ones where I think I really nailed it.

And then there are some that are not so good. But the interesting thing that happens is, as the years go by, someone will go, oh, you know the one I love of yours. And it'll be one you didn't think was particularly spectacular. And they go, I love that McCartney, too. I love that McCartney, too. You know, it was just a little experiment.

And at the time, I wasn't sure whether it was any good. But people talk about it and remind me of their favorites. That's a good one to bring up because I think it's aged very well and now seems so forward-looking. And actually, it was my first exposure to you as a solo artist. I was sitting on a plane, aged, I don't know, well, I guess I would have been nine. You weren't flying it yourself, were you?

I was not. I was not allowed to fly the plane. And I was listening to the program of music they used to have in those days with those plastic earphones that you had to shove in your ear on the plane. Oh, yeah. They were kind of painful. And the program of music would roll around every hour. So there was no question of you selecting what you wanted to listen to. You had a choice of five channels or whatever it was. Yeah.

And one of the songs they were playing was waterfalls right your new record yeah that is one that people keep coming back to yeah when i did it i always thought well it's okay kind of thing i like it like the vocal like the tune but the backing was just a little synth strings and i did think since then a great george martin arrangement wouldn't have hurt it. But that does get mentioned. I'll tell you one I like is Check My Machine,

which is just a crazy little track. But that was intended to be just a crazy little record. Sometimes you make records and you think, well, this may not sell, but I'm enjoying myself, so I'll do it. And then, as you say, the interesting thing is

after times elapsed, people sometimes say, oh, I love that. I mean, Temporary Secretary off that album got mentioned a lot. And someone came to me and said, there's this guy in a club in Brighton who's playing the hell out of it. I said, what?

Temporary Secretary? He said, yeah. So I gave it another listen. I go, oh, I could see that. And then we started doing it in our show. That was another one that really stood out to me because at the time I was really into all the synth bands coming up and Gary Newman and the Human League and people like that. So I loved the sound of temporary secretary and also the fact that there was something weird going on because a lot of those bands, the synth bands were good, but maybe they didn't have the songwriting chops. You know what I mean?

So they were very rudimentary songs. Whereas you, you're introducing these much more complex melodic ideas into these other environments when you do a song like that. Well, on Temporary Secretary, it was just because I'd just discovered the sequencer, you know, where you can put a little sequencer arpeggio in there, and I was loving the sound of it. So I wrote that song off the back of that. And it's about Mr. Marx in the lyrics.

Mr. Marx, it'll do it. Yeah, that was a sort of secretarial. It was Alfred Marxs Secretarial Bureau. And he was a comedian when I was growing up. He was a famous comedian, Alfred Marks. But he, you know, he sort of gave it up and got into this business. It was always a fun thing

when I thought of Alfred Marks Bureau. It was a bit like having the Ken Dodd office bureau you know just like mildly amusing there's a track on the new record called when winter comes in fact it's the last track I think isn't it that's right yeah really beautiful with that opening guitar figure that reminded me of Robin Hitchcock oh you know some of his lovely playing? Little, yeah, acoustic stuff. Yeah. I mean, he's very influenced by a lot of your stuff, I imagine. Anyway, the song is in the form of a kind of to-do list for your farm.

Yeah. And it's very much a portrait of a simple life in tune with the seasons. But it made me think about how fast, I mean, i'm very aware now of how fast the seasons are coming round again do you know what i mean yeah it's funny this year particularly seems to have gone fast when you think with lockdown it would go slowly yeah but everyone says no it's going really fast you know but yeah i love the seasons That's one thing I love about living in Britain. The changes are great. I found that when I had children,

so I've got three children and the eldest is 18 now and the youngest is 12, especially when they were a bit younger, watching how quickly they were growing up made me very aware of how fast time was passing and it made me feel quite panicky sometimes do you know what i'm talking about yeah yeah it's uh i mean that's life it's called life adam you know but uh you get over it you just go oh my god oh my god oh my god

it's okay breathe and then think about how wonderful your children are. And that makes it all okay. That's good advice. Thanks, man. I'm going to ask you one of the first questions I got from my friends. I'm going to sprinkle some of these questions throughout our conversation. Okay. This is from a writer called Nina Stibbe. She's a great writer. And she was a guest on my podcast.

And she was wondering about your favorite food. I read in an interview with you once that you were a big fan of bagels with hummus and marmite. Is that still a thing? Yeah, that is true. It's funny. That is what I do if I'm in the studio or if I'm having a day at the office. I sometimes will go into the office just to make sure everyone can ask me all the questions they need answered. But it's mainly in the studio. And yeah, I love it. It's just my midday break. And I will have it with a cup of tea.

And I don't really drink that much tea, but it just seems like the ultimate little meal for me. You toast the bagels, you put some marmite on them. And then on top of that, you put some hummus. You know, the funny thing is I'm always disappointed when it finishes it's crazy i'm like a little kid oh where's my bag it's ridiculous really but i love it that much so that's a big favorite but that's like my lunchtime snack how about your favorite meal what's the meal you most look forward to? I like a number of things. I like quesadilla, spelled quesadilla.

Yeah. And that's, I look forward to that. And I have that with some steamed veg. I like, what else do I like? I like quiche that real men don't eat. That was a thing in the 80s, wasn't it? I know. I mean, can you believe that? It was like, oh, don't say that. I really like it. But yeah, I like quiche anyway. And you know, you're lucky if you've got a great cook, because then you can get these things

homemade. You know, I'm lucky I have someone who can cook for me who's brilliant. And then during lockdown, I was locked down with my daughter Mary and her family. And she's a brilliant cook. You know, she's got cookbooks and she's doing a series for the Food Network. So I was very lucky to have her there just whipping up meals. Yeah, that's great, man. Especially when the routine is so fixed and predictable predictable to have a great meal is a wonderful gift yeah and you know making this album mccartney three i would come home from the studio which is about 20 minutes away and sitting down getting ready for the dinner and i'd have a drink and we'd

sit around and mary or her husband said what did you do today in the studio? So I say, oh, well, actually, I've got it with me. It's on the phone. So I pull out my little Wonderboom speaker and I play back what I'd done that day. So it became a great routine, actually. And I'd done that and then we'd eat. So, you know, that made lockdown much easier to take, I must say. Yeah. Here's a question from a comedian friend of mine, Ramesh Ranganathan, very funny man. Oh, yeah. And Ramesh is also a vegan.

And he says, I went to a vegan junk food place and they did veggie chicken wings. The wings came and they had pegs inside to simulate bones. I'm not a militant veggie, but I think that's weird. I guess the question I'm asking Paul is how does he feel about the proliferation of fake meat?

Yeah, I know a lot of people don't like that. I mean, it was definitely with pegs inside. Yeah. I don't think I could handle that. But there's some fake meat i think is good i like burgers i like veggie burgers so that's kind of often fake meat and i like sausages veggie sausages so those kind of things there's some fake meat that is pretty rough but most of it's made out of tofu anyway yeah so you could call it fake meat or you could call it tofu.

But I like the burgers and the sausages because when we first became vegetarian, I don't know, about 40 years ago, I think, my thing, I had a young family and I liked the idea of doing certain dad roles, inverted commas. You know, dad will carve the turkey, you know, the traditional, so dad will do the barbecue. So that was how I got into burgers and sausages, mainly for the barbie and to allow me to continue these roles, you know. It's all very stereotypical. And I'm sure a lot of people these days say well it's not just a man's role and of course it isn't but in a family like that it is often dad who gets the fire going for the barbie and just the bit so that i love and i must say we do a fine veggie

burger and sausage at linda mccartney foods i know i've had many of them myself all right they're delightful right and tell your mate that i love his show oh yeah cool there you go romesh yeah come on romesh paul mccartney likes your show terrific and here's another comedian alex horn this time from uh taskmaster alex says what do you think about to fall asleep i think about my little dog curled up downstairs oh that's very nice um i read a book until the page starts to blur i go oh good this is it's sleep time but so i just read various books all my reading now i'd never read remembrance of things past okay how's that it's good took me a little while to get into it because it's very specific world of sort of french privilege but i'm into it now and it's just a great writer and then like i say as soon as the words start to

blur i'll just turn the lights off and go to sleep. What's the name of the guy that wrote La Rochelle de Temps Perdu? You know, I can never pronounce his name. Proust? Proust? There you go. Marcel Proust, I think. Yeah.

Proust. I'll do. All right. That's been on my list. It's one of those books you're supposed to read, but it's one of those books that people struggle with and a lot of people don't finish. Yeah, I know. I say when I started it, it was like, i'm gonna have to struggle and i don't like to do

that you know i prefer a book that likes me as well as i like it but i thought well i'll persevere and then bits that what i was struggling with i thought well i'll just miss them i hope i haven't missed anything really important it turned out i hadn't so So it's good. I'm into it now. Yeah, you don't want to miss one of the sexy scenes. Oh, I haven't got to them yet. Good. of the things you said which i noticed a lot of people picked up on was that you said that you were sort of envious of bob dylan in some ways you said i like i always like what he does sometimes i wish i was a bit more like bob he's legendary and he doesn't give a shit i think that's yeah true yeah yeah the way that i interpreted that was that you feel as if you do give a shit. Yeah. And you care about what people

say and people's opinions. Well, I was referring to it's more audiences. You know, you always got a choice with your audience to be cool or to give them what they want. So I try and mix it. You know, I try and give them what they want and at the same time do some stuff for myself that i think is cool so with bob you know i went to see him last year in new york and tell you the truth i couldn't recognize the songs yeah and and they were there were songs i knew well when i suddenly hear ah a bit of lyric i go oh it's that's that one, like a rolling stone. I knew that one, but it just changes the melody.

And so I kind of have to admire that there's something brave about that. He's got a room full of people who love him and are coming to hear him do that song he loves. But he just goes, like a rolling stone, like a rolling stone. And it's like like that's not it pop

you know if he's on a talent contest you get booed off but i love him i love his uncompromising stance yeah a little flourish there for the uncompromising stance i've got my flourish machine here here you go give us a flourish for neil young then for neil young that's neil's i love neil he's pretty uncompromising too yeah you know i've known him a long time i don't really know bob too much i'd run into him and i'd say, you know, I just admire who he is, what he is. He's a poet. You know, I like that. I love his songs. But Neil, it's the same. He's so, so Neil Young. And he's influenced a lot of people. I'll often hear a record on the radio say, and I'll just go, oh, is that Neil's new one? And then, no, it's another band. And he's a great bloke too i mean i do know him

quite well i've known him since the 60s he's a cool guy with bob dylan though there was a moment with bob dylan that captured a lot of people's imaginations when you first met in the del monaco hotel oh yeah new york 1964 i believe and that's one of those meetings that's kind of gone down in pop cultural music history. Do you have a sort of firsthand memory of it now? Or is your memory of that informed by just what people have written and said about it? No, I remember it pretty well. You know, we were staying in that hotel and I i think we were on tour so we were all together in the hotel suite and we're having a drink and then bob arrived and we said hi and he vanished into a back room one of the rooms off the suite so we just carried on thought i don't know he must be

doing something whatever well ringo went back to see. And then after a couple of minutes, Ringo came back in, looking a little bit dazed and confused. And we said, what's up? He said, oh, Bob's smoking pot back there. And we said, oh, because we never had it. And we said, oh, so what's it like? And Ringo said, well, the ceiling feels like it's sort of coming down a bit. And we go, whoa.

And we all just dashed in the back room to partake of the evil substance. And that was quite an evening, you know. It was crazy. It was great fun. I'm not sure Bob is keen on being labeled as the guy who turned the Beatles on. I've heard that he sort of was trying to play it down a bit. But whatever, that's the truth. And we met him on other occasions.

Under those kind of circumstances, you know. But it was very nice. So I hung out with Bob a few times. He came to see us for dinner when we were in the hotel and stuff so we had some good times together he's a great bloke because in the documentary footage from around that time he seems such a angular figure in some ways and sort of suspicious and a bit contrary and a bit perverse when people are around him so i guess he wasn't like that one-to-one no he wasn't but uh that's the thing that happens easily with famous people because you don't know

if someone's being genuine and you don't know you suspect they might want something from you and so it's much better to hang out with friends who you know aren't going to be like that, and you can relax. So you do get, I can understand why he would get a little bit cautious of meeting other people. But he's not like that in person, no. He's fun.

I remember one time, I was just saying to him, you know, I said, this is just friendly conversation. I said, guy, I had some weird dreams last night. Boy, that's amazing. Very vivid. He said, well, that's probably you had too much cheese before you went to bed.

I thought it could be true. I don't know. But, you know, he's that ordinary. Yeah. So you didn't start writing songs about cheese. Instead, you wrote Got to Get You Into My Life, which presumably was about smoking doobies. That was a veiled reference. Yeah.

You know, that was what that was about. And it's always good when you're writing a song to have something in your mind to lean on. And on that occasion, yeah, I was i was thinking you know this is pretty cool stuff you know now you know having said that these days yeah it's so much more potent and you do have to warn kids you know just take it easy whatever you, because it's become much stronger and therefore, I think, more dangerous. Yeah. Talking of the 60s, there is a track on the new record called Find My Way, track two, I think. Yeah.

Really good. That's a massive earworm for me. That's been in my head for weeks. It's got a great up-tempo beat. It skips along. It reminds me a little bit of Beck, some of his stuff. And there's a lyric in there that says, you never used to be afraid of days like these,

but now you're overwhelmed by your anxieties. And I read that that was a little bit inspired by the beginning of lockdown and the scary changes that we all felt at the beginning of the year we didn't know how the pandemic was going to pan out is that right and we still don't yeah that's the thing it's because we're almost talking like it's over it looks like it's very much not um yeah that was written at that time but i think i was i was thinking of people who worry more than

i do and i know one or two people who just kind of worry about life. And, you know, it's not that I don't. It's just that I deal with those worries and think, no, it's okay. There's a way out of this. And I can generally find some optimistic exit from a bad situation. But there are some people who do get overwhelmed with it. So I think I was addressing those people and thinking, you know, you never used to be so anxious,

but now you are. So I don't know, let me be your guide. Let me help you to find the love that's inside you. It just felt like a natural thing to say, but that's what that's about the rest of the song is me saying i can find my way i know my left from right that's right i think you could tell a lot of people seem to feel obliged almost this year i noticed when i was getting emails from people people perhaps that i didn't know that well they seem to feel obliged to say things like oh i hope you're doing well despite the end times kind of thing yeah but it occurred to me when

listening to your song that the 60s must have felt even more apocalyptic quite frequently with stuff that was going on i mean there wasn't the same awareness of climate change perhaps that was an existential threat that perhaps you weren't thinking about that much but you had vietnam and you had the race riots and assassinations of jfk and malcolm x martin luther king bobby kennedy and then the manson family killings at the end of the 60s i mean that is stuff that would have made a lot of people feel like well it's all ending yeah do you feel like that when one of those episodes occurred you felt like that but they didn't occur every day of the week so you'd be going along making your music developing the beatles enjoying the development from a little

cover band through to writing simple songs, through to writing more complex songs. So that was the main thing that was going on and touring, which generally made you feel good. Touring could get a bit tiring, but generally the general climate was that this was good. This was a good time, the 60s. But as you say, then there'd be spikes. I mean, I remember we were backstage on tour up north when the news came through that JFK had been assassinated. So like everyone else, it was just a horror, horrible thing to hear about, as well as to have happened. And know at times like those i think you just

think god you know the world's crazy there's these crazy people out there and there's nothing much you can do about it and then you know then you started to find out about vietnam which at first we didn't know about because it was mainly an american affair but i was lucky i met bertrand russell in the 60s and that was when i talk about the good sort of backdrop of the 60s it was very free that way i just happened to know somebody who said oh you do you know bertrand russell i said oh yeah you mean the philosopher said yeah he said well he's living living in Chelsea. And they gave me an address. He said, go and knock on his door. So I did, you know.

Hello? And a kid came who I now figure must have been like an intern. And I said, could I meet with Bertrand Russell? Anyway, I did. He let me in and I feel very privileged to this day, you know, to sort of sit and talk to this great mind. And he said to me, do you know about Vietnam? I said, not really.

And so he told me all about it. So that was how I discovered that. And it was something that was happening to our American mates. You know, they were having to go in the army or they were having to go to Canada to escape going in the army or whatever. to go in the army or they were having to go to Canada to escape going in the army or whatever. So all these things that you mentioned were horrific moments, but for me, through a time which was good. And for example, after you had spoken about Vietnam with Bertrand Russell, did that make you go back and have a conversation with the rest of the band and say,

was there ever a conversation about, like, we should be talking about these things in the songs. We should be being political the way that Bob Dylan is political in some ways, even though Dylan was never sort of, he never spelled it out. No, he never said Vietnam. Yeah. No, I did go back.

Actually, we had a session right after that and i went back and said to the guys wow you know i've met this person and he's telling me about vietnam god you know it sounds like it's a bad war and so that was when we all got aware of that situation but really it didn't affect us personally too much till we went to america and then our pr guy our publicity guy would say whatever you do don't talk about vietnam so of course we did and uh that was good to be able to say you know it's not a great war it's uh you know we're not quite sure what america's doing over there and it looked like they were going to lose. And obviously it was killing a lot of people.

That was around, when was that then? Mid 60s? End of 60s, I think. Okay. I mean, don't ask me about dates. I'm terrible. I only know Sergeant Pepper was 67. Right.

The rest of it, I haven't got a clue. Good. Same here. But of course you were caught up in the whole furore that came after John was quoted as saying the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. There was also towards the very end of the 60s, the whole weird Paul is dead episode. Did that stuff get to you though? Did that make you despair a little bit? The Johns thing got to us and mainly got to him because it was taken out of context. He was actually saying some quite positive, optimistic stuff. He was talking to a journalist called Maureen Cleave, who we knew, and he was doing an interview for the Evening Standard.

And he was just talking about our popularity with the Beatles. And he was saying, you know, the thing is, all the churches these days are empty. No one's going to church. Like when we were kids, people went to church. But at this point, no one was really going to church. And he said, you know, we get more people at our concerts than ever go to church.

He said, you know, in fact, you know, we're more people at our concerts than ever go to church he said you know in fact you know we're more popular than jesus and it was just a throwaway remark referring to the fact that it was a pity that people weren't going to church and you're losing that social aspect and then obviously when that reached america and the Belt. That did not go down well. And we had many a moment where I remember once on the tour bus, where like when you see footballers arriving for a match, we're all there at the windows looking out the crowd. And I remember this young, couldn't have been much more than 12 or something, young boy, blonde hair, banging on the windows, you know, like furious at what we'd said. And you can't really say, well, no, I mean, what we meant was,

you know, you just have to put up with it. So, yeah, that was pretty worrying, actually, particularly because that wasn't what John had meant to say so I was like one of the only times I saw John nervous when he had to answer that question at a press conference you know he had an answer for it which was he was actually being positive about religion but he had to play the game and he had to sort of be very serious about it and i think that made him a bit nervous did you guys stick together in those moments or were there ever times backstage when one of you would say why do you have to say that no no not really we all read the article so we

knew how it had happened so on that occasion definitely not no we stuck together and you mentioned the paul is dead thing. I mean, that was ridiculous because I hadn't actually done anything except showed up for the Abbey Road cover shot. And it was a very hot day in midsummer. And I'd arrived at the shoot in sandals. And so I did a few photographs going across the crossing with the sandals on,

but it was so hot. I just kicked him off for a couple of shots. And that was one of the ones they used. So then in America, it became, you know, talk about the land of conspiracy theories. Right. They love them. You know, so this was, oh, this is a mafia sign that Paul is dead. I mean, none of it made any sense at all.

And there was like a Volkswagen Beetle there with the license plate 281F, which they said, no, that's 28 if he had lived. And I'm going, I don't know. Somebody said, what do you want to do about this? What do you want to do about this? And I said, just leave it. It's actually great publicity for the album.

I've got nothing to do with it. All I can do is say, well, I'm not dead and leave it at that. But it didn't sort of exasperate you and frustrate you too badly. No, not really. No, I just thought that's the madness that goes on. And sometimes you just ride it. I mean, I got a statement out saying no i'm not dead it's ridiculous it was just some american dj started it and it's got out of hand but beyond

that i didn't bother yeah you know i just thought well i've said my bit and the album's selling well was there ever a time when you as a band discussed the possibility of pulling back a little bit because you felt that things were getting a bit too massive and a bit too out of control and I guess maybe that was the thing that led up to the decision to stop touring yeah I mean touring can be pretty exhausting you know as anyone who's done it at a high level will tell you it's great fun the audiences are great but they're better nowadays because you can hear yourself in those days the PA systems were so weak that if all these girls decided to scream at once which they often did at first it was like yeah I love it and I sometimes now at my shows I

will say to the girls, you know, I've been talking about this, they say, come on, girls, give us a Beatles scream. And they do it. And it's exactly the same, you know. But then, as I say, because we couldn't hear ourselves, it got a bit whirring. And so we would come off stage saying, oh, bloody hell, I don't know, I'm not doing that again.

But then we'd go and finish the tour. But the last gig was Candlestick Park in California. And it was wet. It was raining. We were stuck on some little tin pot stage in the middle of this great big baseball arena. We couldn't hear ourselves. We weren't having any fun.

And then to add to the indignity of it all, we weren't having any fun and then to add to the indignity of it all we were driven away in the back of a steel lined meat wagon which like there was nothing to even hold on to as it went around the corner it's like a paddy wagon and it was like oh bloody hell no no no no no we've had enough so we came back and started to think well well, what can we do, you know? We don't want a tour again. And what happened was we'd heard that Elvis, I don't know if you know this story, we'd heard that Elvis Presley

had sent his gold-plated Cadillac out on tour. He didn't go with it. He just sent it out. And people would flock to see elvis's cadillac and then it would go to the next town and those people would flock so we thought that is brilliant only elvis could have thought of that we said well what we should do is we should make a killer record and that can do the touring for us so that's what sergeant pepper was all about but it didn't solve the problem maybe you didn't see it as a problem of being quite so massive of being the object of such an intense

level of scrutiny and attention and well you know that's true it didn't but the thing is you know you've asked for it yeah and you know if you're sensible you just sort of think well this is what i wanted and so what am i going to do now like hate it or am i just going to try and embrace it and you know in the early days it was like oh i just wish we could get famous and i mean we were kind of from relatively poor families in liverpool so as i wish we could get some money, could maybe get a guitar, a car, or even a house. Who knows, you know. So that was our thinking going into it.

So we got fame. We got the screaming. We got the autographs. And at first, of course, autographs are fantastic. You want my autograph? Oh, certainly. And you spend hours over it.

What's your name? To Carol. with the very best wishes from paul mccartney you know but after about a year of that you don't ask for the name you just scribble your name and uh it gets wearing you know like so those elements of fame weren't too good but as i say it's what we'd asked for it's what we'd planned for and we'd made this happen maybe it happened a bit more than we'd expected but it was still of our own making excuse me i'll get edited out maybe i'll keep it in okay keep that in yeah let's do some throat clearance a little bit of coffee now as well as being part of a band,

you have also ended up being associated with one of the more well-known musical creative partnerships in history, Lennon and McCartney. And I want to ask you a couple of questions about that, if that's okay. Did you argue about whose name went first? Yeah, definitely. went first yeah definitely what happened was i went to a meeting where brian epstein our manager had a little office in the west end of london and we were going to have a meeting about this and that and i went to the meeting and brian and john were there john had got there a little earlier and they were chatting and it came up okay next thing is we're going to credit things

with Lennon McCartney and I said uh well what about McCartney Lennon they said well yeah we can do that sometimes and we'll switch it around so I thought okay that sounds all right and there are a couple of early records where it did get switched around. But pretty soon it just became Leonard McCartney. And I realized, you know what? It sounds good. And so I was happy to go with it. What happened, though, later was we were doing the anthology, the Beatles anthology, which was us putting together all our memories and records and everything. And there was a booklet that came in the CD.

And now they were crediting everybody, all the songs with, by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. So I thought, that's okay. I'd rather have Lennon-McCartney because that's the sort of, you know, the brand. But what happened was I was leafing through the booklet and then there's the song, Yesterday, The lyrics of Now that was a song that I wrote Totally on my own I actually recorded

I'm the only person on the record Besides the string quartet So I felt Here's a time when we should put Yesterday by Paul McCartney and John Lennon I said I think that's fair enough You know because

We did agree to it in the early days, but it never happened, but I didn't mind that. But if you're going to separate the words off. So I asked if that was possible, and I was voted down. It was like, no. So I said, it's actually crazy, because you've got a song like Blackbird that is like just totally me,

and it's credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. And even I did a poetry book, and there was the lyrics to Blackbird as a poem, credited to John Lennon and Paul McCartney. So anyway, I've asked on a number of occasions if the songs that are clearly John's, if you're going to separate the names up to be John Lennon and Paul McCartney,

if the ones that are clearly mine, like yesterday, Long and Winding Road, Blackbird, etc. And that John admitted are mine, it might be a good idea just to put my name first. But the reasoning was proved to me because I was in a hotel late one night and I noticed a musician's songbook and what was happening was they'd copied them these things and put them all in copied them off the internet or something and so this song would be like Blackbird by John Lennon and there was no room for my name so it was by John Lennon and I was going going, well, you know what? That's a good argument for sticking my name first on those songs. Yeah.

No, I can understand. I mean, it's a strange thing to, you know, you want to protect that body of work. You want to have credit assigned where it's due, especially that's your legacy. You know, I think that's totally understandable. Did you see a film directed by Michaelael lindsey hogg who directed the videos for paperback writer and rain and hey jude revolution called the two of us or just two of us around about 2000 oh yeah yeah where there's a john and a paul played by actors yeah aiden quinn played me i remember yeah yeah and jared harris yeah he played john and it's a

fictionalized account of one of the visits that you made around 1976 to john's new york apartment i did see it actually yeah and what was okay about that was that at the beginning of the film it said you know john and paul met on such and such a date in New York. And this is us imagining what might have happened. It's pure fiction. They did it like a disclaimer at the front. So I thought, well, that's OK, because I can get into this. And I mean, I must say, I enjoyed it. I thought, I wish that had happened.

Yeah. It didn't happen quite like that. Right. Well, for people who haven't seen it, here's the synopsis. McCartney, on the New York leg of his world tour with his post-Beatles group Wings, arrives unannounced at Lennon's Dakota apartment at the time. Yoko is away. They exchange small talk and biting insults. They consume some marijuana and eventually end up noodling around on the piano. As the evening wears down, they watch Saturday Night Live together, and by chance, witness producer Lorne Michaels offering the Beatles a laughably low sum, $3,000 to reunite on his show. Impulsively, they toy with the idea of speeding to Rockefeller Center to perform a few songs that very night. So what aspects of that vague synopsis ring true? So what aspects of that vague synopsis ring true? Yeah, well, I mean, as with all of these stories, it's kind of true, but it's not.

So I did visit John and Lorne didn't come on the telly. Lorne had come on the telly the week before and John told me about it. He said, oh, Saturday Night Live, I love this, you know. He said, oh, did you hear that Lorne Michaels, da-da-da-da-da, and he explained the thing to me and john said we should go down there now he said it's live he said we should go down this was the week after so it wasn't as if lauren was just asking and we went down and so for five minutes we were like yeah let's go down there'd be great what a hoot and then we went no no, let's not. And we didn't. So it was kind of true. But the facts have been mangled to protect the innocent. I guess one of the intriguing things, though, for fans was the idea that you guys were still on good terms around that time after the breakup of the Beatles.

Yeah, that was one of my great blessings out of the whole thing. Because during the Beatles breakup breakup it was very difficult and i was getting blamed for it all and i knew i wasn't to blame but the more you protest you know me thinks the lady protests too much and it's like i see i'm in a trap here you know it was it was kind of difficult but over the years like i I see I'm in a trap here. You know, it was kind of difficult. But over the years, like I say, I would drop in at John's place. I mean, then I was the kind of person that didn't know that, like, particularly in places like New York, you call ahead.

Because I'm from Liverpool. I don't know. You just show up. All right, John, how are you doing? You know. But he did say to me, you know, do us a favor next time. You know time you know let us know you're coming anyway so i would go and see him a few times and we would talk on the phone if i was in england he was in america and we had some great ordinary conversations that were very sort of endearing there was a bread strike over here and so i'd gone around to the local bakers and catched

some yeast off him so i was baking bread at home and i'm on a phone call to john he said what are you up to i've been baking some bread he said oh yeah i'm getting into breaking bread so we exchanged our recipes and our methods for making bread so it was lovely you know this was how it had been when we met with just a couple of guys just chundering on about insignificant stuff. So I was very happy to have got back our friendship, which the Beatles' breakup had nearly ruined. But in actual fact, it all calmed down

and in the end, I was friends with all the guys. Yeah, the film the two of us which i recommend actually to people who haven't seen it if they're fans but it uses your relationship with john to illustrate these two very opposing ways of looking at the world and it casts you as the light-hearted optimist who sees the value in bringing joy into people's lives with music and john as someone who sees pain and suffering everywhere and thinks it's the duty of an artist to tell the truth about that to sort of wake people up how much truth is there in that characterization i think you know it's it's very general but i think i think there's a lot of truth

in it and i think looking back on it i think that was one of the great strengths of our writing partnership and of the beatles each of us had a very strong character that was different from the others so as you say you know if john and i are writing a song i mean i'm actually in the room now where we wrote this song i'm going to mention which is called getting better a beatle song and it was like i was singing it's getting better all the time and john's going it couldn't get much worse so you know he would provide the sort of darkness to my sort of optimistic song. And it worked. It wasn't always like that. But there was this thing that was balance was created by his attitude. And you know, the other thing is I grew up in Liverpool with an amazing family. My dad had had seven kids in his

family. His mother and father had had seven kids. He was one of seven kids. So when they married, that was 14. And then when they had kids, that was 28 or whatever, you know. So it was a big family. And when we would get together, it was very joyous. And we'd sing songs and it was really great. Looking back on it, it was like, oh, God. I mean, if you ask me what I miss about those things, that would be a big one. You know, just everyone just having a great time, basically getting pissed, but having a great time singing all the old songs.

And us kids kind of just bathing in the happiness, you know. So I grew up thinking, everyone must have these lovely families. Isn't it nice, you know? And then I started talking to John and this was quite the opposite, you know. His mother had been deemed not the right kind of person to bring him up.

So he was sent to his Aunt Mimi's. So that is a traumatic thing for a kid right there and his dad had left home when john was three there's another traumatic thing and so you know i realized and then his his uncle mimi's husband died i remember john saying to me you know i can't you know i don't know i thought i had a jinx on the male line of the family and i had to kind of talk him down off the ledge and say no no no it's not your fault when your dad left it's not your fault that the family decided this and then and then to top it all when we knew each other teenagers his mom is run over in a terrible accident and killed right outside mimi's house

so you know it made me realize not everyone has this great upbringing yeah so i was very lucky and i think that is where my optimism came from right and where it remains in that sort of basically life can be really good because I've seen it. And I think John's pain was literally all that pain we've just discussed. But when the two of us came together, we brought that into a mix. And I think that was very important for the strength of the songwriting team. Yeah. Speaking of John,

I have a question from Louis Theroux. All right. And he wants to know what your favorite Lennon song was from the Beatles era. From the Beatles era. There's a few, you know, they always ask you what's your favorite song, but there's a few.

Strawberry Fields, Forever. I loved. There's a few, you know, they always ask you what's your favorite song, but there's a few. Strawberry Fields, Forever, I loved. Across the Universe, I loved. Julia, which is about the mom he couldn't live with. Yeah. So I loved the poignancy of that because I'd been with him round to Julia's house to visit her. And I knew how deeply he loved her so um julia i would go with and then later from his post beatles work beautiful boy about sean was i think a really great song yes with the life is what happens to you while you're busy making other

plans line you know is the boy's no slouch yeah i mean you know now i can look back on it and think god what a lovely guy how privileged was i to run into him in liverpool and i think we've both felt the same about each other just really quite chance meeting it was through a mate of mine that i met john but it was it was by chance it was no setup we didn't go to the same school but i went to the same school as the guy who introduced us so you know i thinking back on it i do think oh god well we were very lucky i was thinking the other day actually i thought i wish i just sat and hugged him all the time we were together but as you know adam that probably would be slightly out of line but it's the kind of thing you think you know what about that but guys didn't do that kind of thing yeah where i'm from maybe

that's what alcohol's for though what hugging a lot yeah well enabling you to hug and be hugged yeah well you know i know what you mean it shouldn't just be alcohol i know what you mean and i say you know what what happens in later years now looking back on it all you just think of little things you think ah that's why that happened or whatever or you may, oh, I'll just sit around and hug him forever because that's the depth of my feeling for him. But for instance, I used to ask the guys, John and George particularly, to go hitchhiking. I would say, you know, it'd be brilliant

because we didn't have much money to go on a real holiday. So we said, we should just hitchhike. And I was like the instigator. So I would say, you know, if we take the ferry over the Mersey and we start on the Wirral side, apparently the lorries all go start from there. So I'm working it all out. And George is going, yeah, okay, great.

So we went on, me and George went on a couple of hitchhiking things. We went on one. We ended up in Wales. And then we went on one. We ended up in Wales. And then we went on another where we ended up in Exeter. And then, so that brings you together. You know, when you're thumbing lifts and someone goes past you, you go, ah, rich bastard. We were saying, if ever we get a car, we'll give everyone lifts.

You know, so those kind of things really brought us together have you picked up many hitchhikers over the years uh yeah i used to till it got dangerous okay i picked up one guy and it got dangerous i was coming down from liverpool and i was having a great drive i was in aston martin so i was having a lovely drive and very pleased with myself and uh i see a guy hitching so i go yeah yeah we're always going to give everyone lifts so i pull over and he says where are you going i said i'm just going down the motorway here so on so on so on so he said okay great you know i said get in so we in. He's talking and he's talking. He's like his army. And he's talking about he's on leave from the army and stuff.

And he seems okay. And then I reach a point where he says, turn off left here. You know, I'm going here. Get off the motorway. Turn left here. I said, well, I'll get off the motorway, but I'm going to drop you because I'm carrying straight on. He says, no, turn left. And his voice sort of got nice and threatening.

He said, no, turn left here. So I thought, oh shit, the guy's army. What am I going to do? So I said, okay. And I took him to where he lived, but I thought I'm never giving anyone a freaking lift after that because it can get

dangerous and it did it got dangerous yeah for lots of people uh so much so that you'd advise your kids just don't bother don't hitchhike that's a shame you know that's why everyone got a mobile phone right so that was the original idea is you give one to your kids in case they get stuck you know in a situation like that at least they can phone yeah exactly in case they meet scary army guy yeah anyway no so from then i'm afraid that very uh philanthropic idea went out the window with the guy paul i'm aware that we are at the end of our time really but is it okay just to ask you one or two more questions yeah let's go on let's do another five minutes thank you so much i really appreciate it talking

about music i'm interested to know some of the artists and the songs that you have continued to return to throughout your life that have just hung in there as songs that you always know are going to lift your spirits yeah well i've got a jukebox i've got an old jukebox so all shook up by elvis is that takes me back and lifts my spirits little richard happens to also be on this jukebox lucille and good golly miss molly are serious recordings yeah i love them someone said that little richard had actually given you some instructions for how to hit that extremely high wail that you do um on some of the beatles tracks well i mean i don't think he actually sat down and instructed me i just copied him sure i

just copied him and i just admitted and he always used to say oh you know i taught paul everything he knew okay i said yes you did richard but uh those records bebop alula by gene vincent just because it's the first record i bought ever i remember going into curry's going around the back with their little record department and buying it taking it home and just you know just being so thrilled with it and then you know through the years maybe uh bob dylan stuff like a rolling stone those kind of records are fantastic yeah pet sounds i guess would be up there pet sounds is definitely right up there god only knows i just think is a supreme creation and i had the privilege of doing a charity gig where Brian was on it and we sang it together I'll tell you in rehearsal I couldn't hold it together I started

crying oh really I was standing at the mic with Brian yeah and you know it's and the lyrics were just life could show nothing to me so So what good would living do me? It's like, but I was supposed to be singing with him. So I had to kind of burst through it, you know. But I think that one is an incredible song. I think that whole album is incredible. There's so much stuff. Bob Marley.

Yeah. You know. What about these days? What are you listening to? What's the last album you really got into? Or do you just tend to find that you go back to the older stuff? I go back to the old stuff readily, but I listen to new stuff and admire a lot of what the kids are doing. But it's not my favorite stuff, you know. But I say worked with Kanye, and I thought his Dark Twisted Fantasy album was a very good album. He's quite a talent. Working with him, you don't know if you're working

with him. My view of working with him, you sit down with two guitars, and you go, if there's anything that you want, and the other guy goes, if there's anything that you need, you go, yeah, here we go. This is a song. But it wasn't like that at all. So I came with my guitar and sat around going doodly-doo, doodly-doo. And Keanu didn't really say anything. We were just chatting about this and that and we'd just talk. And then I started doing a sort of, on the guitar, just doing like a... Doing a little sort of riffy thing thought nothing of it and when we finished working together i thought did we do anything i don't think we did so it was only months later when

he sent me four or five seconds with rihanna singing it and i thought bloody hell and i had to ring up and say, am I on this? But the engineer who I knew quite well, he said, yeah. He said, that's your guitar. But that was in A. So we sped it up for Rihanna. So it's now. I think I've had enough.

So it was a buzz to work with the guy and to see that method of working so you know i will listen to stuff like that and occasionally there's some real good stuff i think stormzy does some good stuff yeah people say oh it's not like it was in the old days is it paul i said well no it isn't but people are still making good music but it's changed that you can't expect the kids to still be playing now there's some that do but you can't expect them to be playing you know old rock and roll records that's for us that's right final question this is from the son of dougie paine who plays bass in travis his son freddie would like to know who's the coolest person you ever met coolest person i ever met um my wife

now i hope she's gonna listen to this um she is very cool but however speaking like that i have met elvis presley right who was darn cool because this was pre his las vegas and the rhinestone suit this was just when he's sort of in beverly hills so he was really cool bob dylan was really cool person to meet david bowie was another fantastic person to meet. If I had to choose, I'd have to go with my wife, Nancy. And then if I had to give a second, I think I'd have to do Elvis. Yeah. Not bad. Not bad. Wife and Elvis. That's the way it should be. Yeah. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success.

Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop and I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop these are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain.

So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Continue. No one will be watching me. Why don't I do it in the road? Come on, Rosie. Come on, Rosie.

Come on, let's head back. Oh, she's galloping. She's galloping. Fly past. From the hairy bullet. Hey, welcome back, listeners. I really hope you enjoyed that conversation with Sir Paul. I really did. You know, if I'd had hours,

I would have talked to him much more about writing music and recording music, and I could have handled going quite deep level nerdy with it but anyway I'm very grateful indeed that he agreed to do it but I'm aware that the main person I have to thank is Stuart Bell who handles Paul's PR who basically sorted the whole thing and convinced Paul that it was a good thing to do. So thank you so much, Stuart. There are, of course, many interviews with Sir Paul flying around on the internet. He's done quite a bit of press this year for the McCartney 3 album. But as far as him talking about songwriting goes, one that springs to mind is from a couple of years back when I think he was promoting Egypt Station,

the album, and he appeared on the Soda Jerker podcast, which I've mentioned before here and recommended. If you're into music and you like hearing musicians talk about their process, then I really recommend Soda Jerker, hosted by two other songwriters from liverpool simon barber and brian o'connor they've got loads of great interviews with people there i think they're a similar sort of age to me maybe a bit younger anyway a lot of 80s people turn up on that podcast. The last one I listened to was with Midge Ure talking about his stuff with Ultravox and Band-Aid and talking really interestingly. It's great. I really recommend it. Anyway, they interviewed Paul McCartney back in 2018. And that was fascinating. He talked about how he gathers ideas for his songs and he went through his phone and played them a couple of voice notes of song ideas that he'd recorded. Really good. I've included a link to that episode in the description of the podcast, along with some other bits and pieces that I enjoyed seeing as I was preparing to talk to Paul.

There's a link to that film, Two of Us, and if you're a Beatles fan, I really recommend it. It's on YouTube at the moment, at least. Link in the description. There's a link to a very good conversation between Paul and Jarvis Cocker that took place in 2018. A live conversation at the Liverpool Institute of Performing Arts. There is a link to a really nice bit from Ron Howard's documentary, Eight Days a Week, from 2016, which I really recommend. I mean, I don't think you'll learn anything new if you're a mega fan but it's well put together and maybe it's a good place to start if you don't know that much about the Beatles and if you haven't watched that many docs it's a good overview of their

touring years actually it's a good overview of their whole career really but it concentrates on the touring years and there's some amazing restored footage of them playing in the mid 60s some sort of rock and rolly stuff which is phenomenal oh man it's good i'm just thinking about it but there's also a lovely bit in that doc when whoopi goldberg the comedian and actor talks about the time that she went to see the beatles at shea stadium and it's really a very lovely story so that's a short clip and uh there is a link to the spotify playlist that i put together featuring a few songs written by paul mccartney or at least primarily written by paul mccartney in the case of some of those beatles songs which i really like and other bits and pieces also in the description are links to ramble book by adam buxton which is me and i don't know if you've read this book or listened to the audio book but it's extraordinary it's a kind of memoir

a lot of reminiscences about growing up in the 1980s meeting friends like joe cornish and Louis Theroux and my pop cultural influences during that decade and then it's the story of my relationship with my dad and him coming to live with us in the last months of his life and other little bits and pieces essays about confrontations on trains and the stresses of having teenage children that kind of thing as well as how me and Joe got into TV and working with my dad on our TV show. It's a fun, hilarious and sometimes incredibly moving trip down memory lane, which would make the perfect gift for anyone this Christmas, whether they have heard of me or not, because

it's an incredible story about being human. You might think, looking at the cover, a garish pink thing with my big goofy face on the front, which I love, by the way. I'm not putting down the cover at all, thanks to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. But to some people, it might look like a kind of crazy, ridiculous thing. Wrong. It's an incredible moving thing, which is sure to win some major literary awards next year, probably. Why not get both the physical book and the audio book? I narrate the audio book, and there is a bonus one-hour conversation

with my old friend Joe Cornish at the end of it, in which he grills me about various parts of the book, and we tie up a few loose ends from our friendship. Well, that's it for this podcast, and more or less for the series this year. However, of course, I will be back on Christmas Day 2020 with Joe Cornish, albeit via the Zoom. But we've got lots of enjoyable, ridiculous, festive waffle lined up for you. So I hope you can lined up for you.

So I hope you can join us for that. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his always excellent production support. Thank you, Seamus. Thanks to Matt Lamont for his brilliant conversation editing. Thanks to Helen Green for creating the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to Acast for their continued help and support. And thanks most of all to you, podcats,

without whom there really wouldn't be any point in me doing this. I mean, I'd probably do it anyway, but still, it makes it much better that you actually listen to it and that you listen right to the end as you have. Wow, you're nice. Thanks. Let's have a hug.

I hope you're doing OK wherever you are, not getting too stressed out and overwhelmed at this time of year. I hope I'll see you on Christmas Day. Until then, take care. I love you. Bye! Please like and subscribe. Give me a big smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a plant with me, thumbs up. Give me a big smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a plant with me, thumbs up. Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me a big smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a plant with me, thumbs up. Give me a big smile and a thumbs up. Nice, take a plant with me, thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Bye. Thank you.