FEATURE:
Paul McCartney at Eighty
IN THIS PHOTO: Paul McCartney in 1964/PHOTO CREDIT: RA/Lebrecht Music & Arts
Paul McCartney and Me: The Interviews: Robert Lane
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I am almost at the end...
PHOTO CREDIT: Richard Shakespeare
of my forty-feature run ahead of Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday next month. In fact, this is the thirty-seventh piece. I have a final one planned for the week before his birthday, so there might be a bit of a gap after the next feature before the final two! This is an interview with musician and Macca fan Robert Lane. An incredible musician that I have following for years, he has provided his experiences and words about what Paul McCartney’s music means to him. It has been fascinating discovery the impact McCartney’s music has made on Robert. It is clear that the icon is...
PHOTO CREDIT: Alamy
A musician that the world adores.
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Hi Robert. In the lead-up to Paul McCartney’s eightieth birthday on 18th June, I am interviewing different people about their love of his music and when they first discovered the work of a genius. When did you first discover Paul McCartney’s music? Was it a Beatles, Wings or solo album that lit that fuse?
When I was very small, I was cast as Sgt Pepper in the school Christmas show, The Christmas Postman. So my first exposure to McCartney was singing and marching along to the title track, with a moustache painted on my face, and some other less enthusiastic children behind me as ‘my band’.
In order to practice for the play, Mum bought the album on cassette, and I remember the first sound that came out of the tape deck was the weird backwards-party noise at the end of the album.
We also had some Beatles ‘learn keyboard’ books in the house, and I can remember looking at the titles and wondering what the songs like You Won’t See Me might be about…
“It confirmed my suspicions about Paul: amazing musician, songs pouring out of him, but also micromanaging to the extreme”.
Like me, you must have been engrossed by The Beatles: Get Back on Disney+. How did it change your impression of The Beatles at that time, and specifically Paul McCartney’s role and influence on the rest of the band? Did you have any favourite moments from the three-part documentary?
I absorbed it like it was air!
It was fascinating (and sort of reassuring) to see that, like most people trying to make creative things happen, they often just bashed away at a fragment until it went somewhere. It’s easy to imagine their songs just fell out fully-formed and everyone knew what they were going to do next; as if they were as familiar with the songs then as we are now.
It confirmed my suspicions about Paul: amazing musician, songs pouring out of him, but also micromanaging to the extreme. My biggest takeaway was why didn’t they just have some time off after The White Album (The Beatles, 1968) and hang out together for a bit, rather than decide to do a T.V. show featuring all new songs!
That’s the beauty of The Beatles of course - always pushing on to the next thing.
If you had to select your favourite Beatles, Wings and McCartney albums (one each), which would they be and why?
Revolver
Wonderful experimentation, great mix of styles. Most importantly, fantastic songs.
McCartney
A couple of the best solo Macca tunes. Love the homemade vibe.
Wings Over America
Mainly for the vocal on Call Me Back Again.
“What must that have felt like to an artist who, up until then, had been met with complete success in his recording career? His response: keep making music. Keep writing songs. Very inspiring”.
As a songwriter yourself, how important has Paul McCartney been? What is it about his talent and innovation that resonates with you?
This is a hard question to answer, because it would be like trying to explain how important cellular respiration has been in my life. I’ll try and give a less obvious example I was thinking about recently. After The Beatles split, the first several albums Paul put out were not massively successful, with one even being restructured after rejection by the record label. What must that have felt like to an artist who, up until then, had been met with complete success in his recording career? His response: keep making music. Keep writing songs. Very inspiring.
Have you covered one of McCartney’s songs before? Is there one from him, Wings or his Beatles cannon that you are keen to interpret?
I’ve played loads of Paul songs. Almost all of them have something about that them that makes them challenging to play or sing…but it’s always rewarding getting into the nitty-gritty of how they work. During lockdown, I was asked to cover a Beatles song for a project and I chose Things We Said Today. It was a lot of fun getting very obsessed about things, like when the vocal was a double-tracked melody or doing a harmony etc.
I feel that McCartney is a celebrated songwriter, but he remains undervalued in ways. A few of his albums do not get proper acclaim. What do you feel about this?
With such a large and groundbreaking back catalogue, it would be impossible for everything to get equal attention. Take the song For No One on Revolver. If that was by anybody else it would be a their most famous song, but as a Beatles tune it’s ‘just’ an album track. Then there’s albums like Ram, which I understand was met with a bit of a whimper when it was released, but it has gone on to become a very influential record.
Do you have a lyric or line of his that means more than the rest or is particularly personal?
Hundreds! Possibly She’s Leaving Home is the best.
There will be a lot of eyes on him when he headlines Saturday night at Glastonbury on 25th June. What do you think we might get from that set in terms of the energy and songs choices?
It’s not always easy being a McCartney fan, and familiarity breeds contempt. So I guess he’ll do Hey Jude and split the audience into boys and girls to sing “Na na na nananana”.
I’m sure there will be a lot of love flowing from the crowd to Paul and back again. And, whatever he plays, it’s a privilege to exist at the same time as him.
”... there’s a small group that go beyond music into something approaching a way of life…”
Maybe an impossible question, but what does Paul McCartney, as a human and songwriting icon, personally mean to you?
I like…no, love, a lot of music and musicians. Amongst that, there’s a small group that go beyond music into something approaching a way of life. And at the top of the pile is McCartney and his friends from Liverpool.
If you could get a single gift for McCartney for his eightieth birthday, what would you get him?
I’d give him the original Beatles bass: the Hofner that was stolen at some point in 1969. The one he still owns and plays on stage today is a Beatles bass: a ’63 model he ordered as a replacement for the original ’61 he bought in Hamburg. Both can be seen in the Get Back doc, but the older one went missing just after that.
The man can buy himself almost anything. But not that, because no-one knows where it is!
Were you to have the chance to interview Paul McCartney, what is the one question you would ask him?
I genuinely think I would be unable to speak. Trying to think of something interesting that he hasn’t heard a million times before would probably make me very stressed…
Should I try and tell you that I would ask something worthy and deep about the creative process, or be a fanboy and ask something silly about The Beatles?
“Paul, where can I get a woolly jumper like the ones you wear in the Magical Mystery Tour film and the video for Waterfalls?”
To end, I will round off the interview with a Macca song. It can be anything he has written or contributed to. Which song should I end with?
Every Night.