IT WAS CHRISTMASTIME. SOMEBODY RANG ME UP, AND THIS high voice I didn’t recognise said, ‘Hi, Paul.’ I thought, ‘This is a girl fan, and how the hell did she get my number?’ I was quite annoyed. Then the voice said, ‘It’s Michael,’ and suddenly it dawned on me. It wasn’t a girl; it was Michael Jackson, and he basically said, ‘Do you want to make some hits?’ And I said, ‘Well, yeah, sure. Come over here.’ Our paths had crossed a few times before. Michael covered the Wings song ‘Girlfriend’ on his album Off the Wall, and I’d known his producer, Quincy Jones, for a long time. Quincy had picked up the Oscar for The Beatles when we won for best Original Song Score with Let It Be in 1971.

So, Michael flew to England and came to my office in London. We went up to the top floor, where I have a piano, and just started doing ‘Say Say Say’. I let him lead quite a bit, and I think a lot of the sensibility of the song was Michael’s. ‘Baptised in all my tears’ – that’s a line I wouldn’t have used. I would help with the tune, and he’d be throwing in the lyrics. We were both quite excited to work together, and the song came together pretty quickly; we were bouncing off each other. I wrote the lyrics down, and by the time we left the office we had ‘Say Say Say’. I think the first time we recorded it as a demo, it was just the two of us singing and me on guitar.

For me, writing a song is just following a trail and then diverging from it and beating a new path. I set down a map of sorts, some rough coordinates, and then go there and find stuff on the way, just picking up little objects that happen to be lyrics or melodies. It’s a time of discovery, and that’s what I love about it. Before I write a song there’s a sense of something missing, and I pick up my guitar or go to the piano, and afterwards – say, three hours later, if I’m in a productive mood – there won’t be a hole anymore; there’ll be a new object. It’s a very satisfying feeling. You’ve created a car or a piece of furniture, or in my case a song. And it’s not just something that takes up space in the world. With any luck, it helps define the world.

With George Martin and Michael Jackson. AIR Studios, London, 1983