JANUARY 14, 2009
I’ve never been more excited for an interview than I was for Paul McCartney. As my listeners know, the Beatles were everything to me when I was growing up. It wasn’t just the Beatles albums. I loved McCartney’s solo stuff, his time with Wings. I’ll never get the chance to interview John or George. I’d interviewed Ringo, and that was incredible. But this is Paul McCartney we’re talking about, maybe the greatest songwriter who’s ever lived.
With a guy like Paul, there’s too much material, too much ground to cover. I’d need a hundred thousand hours to get through his whole life, and I’ve only got an hour or so. In a case like that, I can’t have too much of an agenda. I can’t be rigid in my questions. I have to just let the conversation flow naturally.
I’ve been asked, “Was it fun to interview Paul McCartney, your childhood hero?” No. There is no enjoyment in it whatsoever. The pressure is so intense, the sense of responsibility so enormous. I want to please the audience and I desperately want to please Paul. I’d love to please myself, but I know that’s not going to happen. No matter what I ask him, no matter how well the interview goes, he’s going to walk out of that studio and I’m going to obsess over all the questions I did not ask.
That’s how I feel after every interview, no matter who it is. Honestly, it’s never fun. But it’s not about fun. It’s about having a job to do, and trying to do it well. Reading this interview back over, I think I did that.
Just because it’s not “fun” doesn’t mean I’m not able to appreciate it. Are you kidding? It’s mind-blowing. If someone had told me when I was a little boy that one day I’d get to sit in the same room with Paul McCartney and talk to him, I don’t know what I would have said. It would have just seemed impossible.
Howard: You’ve got to answer some Beatle-type questions first.
Paul: That’s okay. I like the Beatles. Very good band.
Howard: Just tell me something about Abbey Road for one second, because we were having a discussion and everyone was throwing out that question. I had heard that Abbey Road was not supposed to be called Abbey Road. You were going to call it something like Mount Everest.
Paul: Yes.
Howard: This is true? What is the story there?
Paul: Well, you know, you’re making an album, and toward the end of the album you start thinking, “We need a title for this.” So you’re looking around, you’re fishing around, and the engineer, Geoff Emerick, who was our Beatles engineer, did all the great sounds for us, was smoking cigarettes called Everests. So Everest.
Howard: It’s a good name.
Paul: It’s big. It’s heroic. That could be good for the album. So that was the working title. But the more we thought about it, “No, this is not great.” And just one day, we were in Abbey Road, working, and I just suddenly said, “Well, look, why not Abbey Road?” Because if we did that, we can just run outside, there’s a level crossing as we call it, there’s a crossing, and we could just stand there, we could get photographed, come back to work, it’ll take two seconds, that’s it, and it’s not a bad title, Abbey Road.
Howard: Isn’t it weird how just a simple thought like that becomes a legend? I mean, that’s iconic now, Abbey Road.
Paul: Yes.
Howard: And yet it could have been called Everest, and that would require the Beatles to fly to Mount Everest for the whole photo shoot. So in a way, it was sort of a lazy approach.
Paul: It was a cheap approach.
Howard: What do you think of Ringo now coming up with a statement he will not sign anything. He’s just peace and love.
Paul: I love him. I mean, you’ve got to love Ringo. The truth is, Ringo was always like that. He was the one, if fans came to his door, he’d just say, “Piss off.” And he would not have any of it. You know, “This is my private life. Out there, I’m a Beatle. That’s fine, and I’ll do things. You know, when we go to shows. But I’m at home with babies and a wife. I don’t want that.”
Howard: He said, “I will not sign anything.” Listen, Ringo’s not that busy. What is he busy with?
Paul: I just signed outside.
Howard: Absolutely. It’s not a big deal.
Paul: Listen, he has the right to do whatever he wants to do in life. And he doesn’t want to do that, and I think it’s very brave of him. I like that about Ringo. I mean, he went up to Liverpool. Liverpool was just declared the capital of culture in Europe. And so it was a big year for our hometown. So Ringo goes up there, and he opens the ceremony. He plays. The whole city loves him. He’s the favorite son. And he comes back down to London, he goes on a talk show, and the guy says, “Well, you must love Liverpool and miss it.” And he goes, “Not really.”
Howard: Wow.
Paul: You know how they make statues out of hedges? Well, there was one with the Beatles in Liverpool, and his head got cut off shortly after. You know, you got to love him.
Howard: How are you and Yoko doing?
Paul: Fine.
Howard: Wasn’t there a thirteen-minute track you wanted to release that the Beatles had done and then Yoko said no?
Paul: It wasn’t Yoko. George didn’t like it. The thing is, I was asked to do something in the sixties. I got asked to do a piece of music for a thing called the Carnival of Light, just a real hippie thing. I just went into the studio before a Beatles session, and when the guys came in I said, “Can we just have fifteen minutes where I just organize a little bit of craziness? Is everyone up for it? Just wander around and hit anything you want, say anything you want, ping the piano or go on the drums.” The guys said, “Yes, sure.” I said, “We’ll just do this for fifteen minutes, and then I’ll give it to a guy to put a lot of echo on it.” So we did that. It’s fifteen minutes of avant-garde Beatles music. And because the Beatles were such a big thing, it now is of interest.
Howard: You were willing to let it out there, but George was against it?
Paul: Yes, I thought it might be good on the anthology when we were putting everything out. That was every old bootleg we’ve ever done, and I thought it might be an interesting part of the sixties story. I thought that was a perfect place for it.
Howard: Is that good for Pete Best financially, because some of that stuff did include him? Did he get a cut of some of the dough?
Paul: Yes.
Howard: Did you ever say, “You know, I feel so bad for this son of a bitch. We threw him out of the band.”
Paul: No. I know the family and stuff, and we chat.
Howard: Has he written you letters from time to time? “Come on, help me out. This is killing me.”
Paul: He’s got his pride, Howard.
Howard: Was he fired from the band because he was so good-looking?
Paul: No, you know what? The truth was we just kind of fell in love with Ringo’s drumming. Ringo was in another band, and we had Pete. We’re working. And we used to go see this other band, and think, “God, that drummer’s good.” And one night Pete couldn’t do it, and Ringo sat in for him, and we all just went, “Oh my God, what is happening?” It was something funny going on.
Howard: Is the lesson learned from that never miss work? Just show up, and don’t give anyone that opportunity?
Paul: Even if you’re very ill, show up. Don’t let Ringo sit in for you.✦
Howard: I haven’t spoken to you since George Harrison died. How you doing with that? That’s got to be major.
Paul: Well, you know, how you deal with everyone dying. I mean, I lost both my parents. I lost John. Stuart [Sutcliffe, original Beatles bassist]. Lost Linda. It’s very tough. You want them back. You want them back all the time, you know? But I think in the end, you do what I do, I think what most people do, which is just remember the great stuff. You know you can’t get them back.
Howard: Are you sad? Do you wake up every day feeling like there’s an empty hole in your heart?
Paul: No, not every day. But, you know, my life now, if there’s ever a reference or if ever I think of a story including George, obviously there’s a sadness to it now that wasn’t there before.
Howard: Is his son in touch with you at all?
Paul: Yes. He’s great. Dhani’s a lovely boy.
Howard: He’s a musician?
Paul: He’s a musician. He’s really good.
Howard: Biggest mistake, though, for any kid of a Beatle is to go into music, right?
Paul: Well, what are you going to do? It’s like children of famous actors, children of famous anything. They’re born with the gene. And so you had Julian [Lennon], he’s got John’s genes. You got Sean [Lennon] and Dhani. My son, James, is a great musician. And Ringo’s kids are all great drummers.
Howard: What’s your philosophy? Does James have to go out and make a living, or do you say, “Look, I’m a wealthy man. I’ll set you up. I will give you a couple million bucks. You got a trust fund. Go ahead, go live your life. Go be a musician and never get a job.”
Paul: I think what you end up doing is kind of something in the middle, because I want any one of these kids, particularly my kids, and obviously all the other kids you’re talking about, to have the hunger that we had.
Howard: How do they get that?
Paul: Well, I think you can’t get it, is the answer. So you have to come in somewhere in the middle.
Howard: So if your son says to you, “I want to be a musician,” you support that and you don’t say to him, “Hey, go get a regular job at a florist’s.”
Paul: If he wanted to go and be a florist, he would have done that. But it’s in his genes. Since he’s nine, he’s been playing guitar.
Howard: Are you depressed by the world’s situation right now?
Paul: Yes, not exactly happy about it, but I’m an optimist. I’ve been around a little while. You’ve seen stuff. You’ve seen Vietnam, you’ve seen Nixon, you’ve seen 9/11. We’re not in a very good place at the moment, especially the economy. But I am an optimist, you know? I sort of think it comes around.
Howard: Where are you living right now?
Paul: England.
Howard: You don’t go out to the Hamptons anymore?
Paul: I do in the summer. I go out there to be photographed by paparazzi.
Howard: Absolutely. We’d love to see you date. I heard Christie Brinkley was very into you and was really on the hunt for you one night. That’s what I heard.
Paul: Well, you know . . .
Howard: You should bang her. You should do it. Give it to her one time.
Paul: Howard, you are just so bad.
Howard: And how do you like being a father now with a young kid?
Paul: I love it.
Howard: You love it?
Paul: I really love it.
Howard: Are you hands-on?
Paul: Yes, man.
Howard: What do you mean?
Paul: Typical morning, Monday morning, I get up at six-thirty. I make breakfast. I get her up. I get her dressed. We watch the TV.
Howard: There’s no nanny?
Paul: No nanny. I drive her to school. I talk to the moms, talk to the teacher, pick her up after school. I love it.
Howard: But you have to share custody. Isn’t it hard to let go of her?
Paul: Well, you know what, in truth I don’t really want to talk about that, because that’s very private.
Howard: Very private, but you can talk about it with me. The other kids are jealous or resentful of your young child?
Paul: No, they’ve got all their own kids to deal with.
Howard: They don’t feel like some kid’s going to get more of their loot of McCartney fortune?
Paul: No.
Howard: All right, here’s the first single from the new album [“Sing the Changes” from Electric Arguments, McCartney’s third album under the name The Fireman]. I like it.
Paul: Made up in a day.
Howard: You’re saying there’s thirteen tracks on the record, and you did one in a day?
Paul: Yes.
Howard: Doesn’t that lead to regrets, though? Don’t you go, “Oh, maybe I should put more thought into it”?
Paul: It’s like improvisational theater—improv—that I’ve heard about for years. You hear actors talking about it, and I always wondered, “What would that be like?” You know, just making it up as you go along. Once you do it, that’s it. The whole idea is that you’re going to dredge up something from your subconscious. And actually, a journalist the other day, from Rolling Stone, read me back the lyrics to this one, and it sounded like a poem. I go, “Wow,” because I’d never heard them. I just made it up, we cut it and pasted it, and I just go, “Yeah, that sounds nice.”
Howard: Let me ask you a question. Did you have to go to your daughter Stella—she was very vocal against you getting married to your previous wife—did you have to go to her and say, “Honey, you were right”?
Paul: No. You don’t talk about stuff like that. You just get on with it. It’s okay.
Howard: My daughter just graduated college. She had a college class on the Beatles, and it was, like, her favorite thing. It’s insane.
Paul: Well, you should’ve let your kids grow up listening to it, Howard.
Howard: You struggled with cocaine for a good year, right?
Paul: True.
Howard: And when you were in the Beatles?
Paul: I didn’t struggle. I was a young man, and that was part of the picture at that time. But I would advocate young people not to do it. It’s no good, man.
Howard: But how did you get off of cocaine? You were addicted.
Paul: I was not addicted.
Howard: You were addicted. You were on it for a year. Everyone knows you were addicted.
Paul: No, I was actually very lucky. Because all of this stuff, as you know, kids particularly, it’s a peer-group thing. Suddenly it appears and somebody’s doing it, and you don’t have the wisdom to say, “No, I can stand back from this.”
Howard: You tried heroin too?
Paul: No, no, no. The same person I knew who introduced me to coke, he did heroin. And he said to me, “Do you want to try?” It’s just the fear. I said no.
Howard: Oh, really? Because I wasn’t making a joke. I’ve read that for a year you did cocaine, and you felt that you were addicted to it.
Paul: No, I wasn’t addicted to it. I was very lucky because it was actually just before it broke mainstream. So for that year, I just sort of did it like, “You know what? This is a mug’s game.” And I stopped it. And then just about everyone I knew in the world—including lawyers, bankers, businessmen, everybody, the straight people—suddenly started getting heavy into it. So I was very lucky actually. So I’d say to kids . . . A lot of people knowing you, the good thing about this is that you can advise kids. I used to say to kids, “Look, I know it’s a peer-pressure thing. So what I would advise you to do is, you can’t say, ‘Oh no, I’ve never tried it.’ Because then the kids will say, ‘Sucker.’ So I said to say, ‘Oh no, no, no. I’ve been through that. I gave it up.’ ”
Howard: And now they go, “Wow. Cool.” Do you still smoke pot?
Paul: I don’t know nothing about that.