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Okay, this third McCartney record.
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Um, the third of many, but the third of a trilogy of solo records, really solo records, essentially you.
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Right from start to finish.
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How important was it that this came out before the end of of this year that that none of us will ever forget, many of us want to forget, but that ultimately kept within the tradition of of the end of a decade, start of a decade.
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Yeah, that was that was good.
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I didn't realize, of course, I never count.
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So, someone said to me, you know, well, that's great, you know, you did McCartney in 1970. I said, oh, yeah.
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He said, and you did McCartney 2 in 1980. I go, oh, that's great. He said, so, great.
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So, let's get this out before 2020.
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And as you say, though, it's been such a crazy year for me, for you, for everyone, everyone that we run into.
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It's one of those, wow, can you believe this?
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And I say to people, it was going to be so auspicious, 2020.
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It looked so good on a poster.
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That looks that's going to be so good.
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You know, you know, perfect vision.
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It's going to be like the greatest year.
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And then suddenly, boom, it was special, but in a weird way.
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So, yeah, but it was good once it was pointed out to me, 70, 80, 20.
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I thought, well, that's nice. So, we did it.
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Doesn't surprise me that time doesn't play as much of a factor consciously for you as it does for all of us.
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Um, but it also doesn't surprise me that it plays a factor at all.
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Everything that you've been associated with time has flowed in this strange way through it.
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And I can't really dive into this album without recapping to some degree.
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So, I want to go back to 1970 and the first solo McCartney record because they are related.
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And this was a very tumultuous time.
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Um, widely documented, John had already told you and the other boys in the band that he wanted to move away from it, and you retreated and made this record.
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I would love some memories that spring to mind from that time as we begin this this journey to three.
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The thing was, I'd really recently met Linda.
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And we were settling down together.
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We'd got married and we were settling down together.
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And because the Beatles had finished, I had a lot of time on my hands.
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You know, normally I'd have we doing this, we're going to go rehearse, we're going to do a record, we're going to write some songs for the new record.
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And suddenly there was like nothing to do anything for.
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So, I was just hanging around the house, but I had uh my guitar, I had acoustic, I had electric, little amp, there was piano there.
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And I had also had a drum kit.
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So, I was was goofing around each day, you know, just for my own fun.
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And then then I thought, well, actually, you know, it became a nice to get these things down because you didn't have iPhones then.
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So, to to get you get it down, you had to get in a big serious piece of equipment.
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So, I got um one microphone and one Studer four-track machine.
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And my mate set it up and just said to me, "Well, look, here's what you do.
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If you're doing drums, you just plug this into the back of the machine."
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The microphone went straight in uh to the back of the channel one, whatever it was.
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He said, "Then you turn it on and go and hit the drums.
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And if it sounds right, you're great.
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If it doesn't, move the mic." So, you go, "Okay."
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So, that's what I did, you know, I found a kind of sweet position for the drums that would get me enough bass drum, enough this and that.
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And so, that's what I did, you know.
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So it was it was a great way to spend my time uh because as you said, you know, it was a difficult period.
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Here was this band that I've been in uh a lot of my life and these guys who were my best buddies ever and suddenly we we'd split up and we weren't working together.
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And so we're each in our separate homes and I was in mine uh but as I say, having just met Linda there was a romantic element to it and there was a new discovery of, you know, thinking about a family and uh Yeah.
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So all of that was was very nice.
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You know, I'd be playing a bit of electric guitar, let's say, and just sort of playing around.
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And Linda would come in and say, "I didn't know you played electric." I said, "Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I do. A little bit, you know."
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She said, "Oh, that's great. That's good."
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So she was very encouraging, you know.
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So that would encourage me to go, "Right, I'm going to do it."
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A song would have big electric on it, you know, whatever.
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It sounds like she had to encourage in a lot of in a lot of ways because and I want to reference actually a lyric on three on Find My Way where you talk about, you know, I never thought there'd be days like these.
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Now you're overwhelmed by your anxieties.
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You've written about anxieties before.
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Everybody goes through them at various points in their lives and thankfully nowadays they're far more acknowledged and far more there are tools to deal with them.
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But it wasn't like that, was it?
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I mean, this this first solo album to some degree did pull you out of a really, as you say, a dark place based on what was going on around you. Mhm. Yeah, that's true.
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I think, you know, as I said, I think Linda was a huge help.
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Uh I I I'd hate to think what would have happened if I didn't have her.
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Um but yeah, it was very dark.
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Uh you know, you think about it.
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You're a kid and you join a little group called The Quarrymen.
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And you're goofing around, you're learning to be a kid in a group.
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Then you go out to Hamburg, and you learn more, you come back, and you climb the sort of ladder of success till you become this phenomenal success, hugest thing ever.
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And the Beatles, and that's your whole identity.
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Uh and then suddenly, someone switches the light off. Yeah. And it's like, "Whoa. Okay."
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Now, uh Looking back on it now, do you think subconsciously or in a subterranean way you knew there was something there that wasn't clicking with John, or did it really just knock you for six?
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No, I we'd always had arguments cuz any family, any group, you argue.
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I mean, not crazy ones, but just like, you know, "That guitar's too loud." "Oh, no, it isn't." "I think it is.
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I think, you know, you shouldn't play there."
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"Well, I want to play there."
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"No, I don't think it fits with the song." "Well, I do."
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You know, you have those kind of little things.
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So, there was a bit of that.
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Maybe a little more than usual, but nothing nothing major.
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But then, I think we had the idea it was sort of coming full circle somehow, but but very sort of gently.
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We didn't It was no big bust-up.
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And uh we just happened to have a little meeting, a group meeting one day when George uh John walked in, and he said, "Uh I'm leaving the group." So, it was that sudden.
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And you didn't want to say, "What do you mean?"
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cuz you knew exactly what he meant.
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He meant he's And I, you know, looking back on it, I think, "Well, he just hooked up with Yoko."
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And he was in a completely new track for his life. He had a strong woman. He loved strong women.
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He had a strong woman he could admire.
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Uh he loved sort of experimentation.
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And here was Yoko saying, you know, "Let's take all our clothes off for the album cover."
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You know, that's the kind of thing appealed to John, you know, he's like, "Yeah, whoa, you know."
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Just this sort of radical behavior.
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So, looking back on it, you can see that he had to just clear the decks and say, "Okay, guys, you know, we've done our bit. It was terrific.
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It was wonderful, but I'm off." Yeah.
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Having said that, that's looking back on it.
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Actually, at the time, it was like, "Whoa." Uh is is this final?
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And we were kind of, you know, we we parted around for a couple of weeks thinking, "Does he mean it?"
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And we'd ring each other saying, "Well, I don't know.
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Is he Are we really finished?" Whatever.
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And then there were all sorts of weirdness going on where record contracts were being negotiated and our sort of not very good manager at the time would come in, this guy called Allen Klein.
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He was saying, "Don't tell anyone cuz I'm in the middle of a negotiation."
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I was saying, "You've got to tell them." Negotiation of what?
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You can't pretend the group is still together.
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We're going to get a new record when we all know it's not going to happen.
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So, it was weird in in all those respects.
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It's like any catastrophe, you've got to get through it or you've got to go under.
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And so, it was like, "Okay, let's try and pull this together. Here we go. Um it's a new venture."
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And as I say, with Linda and with the family growing, um that was like, "Okay, well, this is my direction.
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This is my direction now.
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And with music to help me through it, I can do this.
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I'm going to be able to manage this."
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So, it's difficult for quite a while, but I kind of eventually got the idea of where I wanted to go.
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I thought, "Well, okay, I'll get a new band cuz I like being in bands. I like bands.
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It's kind of I like making music.
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Uh I like writing, like recording. So, that's what I'll do.
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That's easier said than done.
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You know, I'll be I'll get a band, you know.
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And of course, of course I think it was actually the right decision, but it was a weird decision to just decide to go back to the absolute square one.
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Cuz I thought my thinking was, well, the Beatles were just these four guys.
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We didn't know anything when we started.
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We knew a couple of chords, knew a couple of songs. We hadn't written much.
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But, we thought, well, we'll we'll we'll we'll figure it out, you know, we'll work it out. And and we did.
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So, I thought, well, with new band, we'll do that.
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I said to Linda, "Do you want to be keyboard?" She said, uh, "Yeah."
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You know, so I said, "Great, you're in, you know." And it was like that.
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We just formed it from the ground up.
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And uh, it took a few years, but then we we gradually had Wings and uh, became became successful band, you know.