when all the songs were sung

UP FRONT | MUSIC

McCartney reflects on life, love and yesterday



Preparing to launch his US Tour in Miami this week, rock legend Paul McCartney talked candidly with The Herald about embracing his past while looking forward

BY EVELYN McDONNELL

The Miami Herald

Sunday, Sep. 11, 2005

Surrounded by potted palms and Indian tapestries in an AmericanAirlines Arena dressing room that has temporarily been converted into a mini Taj Mahal, Paul McCartney looks like the rock royalty he is. Tanned, fit, elegant and preternaturally youthful at 63, he's relaxed as he eats a salad and chocolate dessert -- even though he has just a week to finish rehearsing his band before their US Tour launches here Friday.

It's been four decades since McCartney conquered the world with the biggest band of all time. Artistically speaking, the honorary knight could rest as comfortably as he is in this traveling lounge and just stroke his laurels. But he's not.

On Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which comes out Tuesday, the universe's most famous bassist teamed with a young, edgy producer who challenged him musically and pushed him emotionally. McCartney uses his 20th studio record since The Beatles disbanded to vent feelings he spent decades burying.

''When The Beatles broke up, there was a lot of rejection and stuff, for all of us,'' he says. 'I normally didn't deal with it. . . . But this time I thought `No, it's a good source of material.' So a couple of the songs I decided to write about that kind of thing. It was quite a release really.''

On a mournful tune called Riding to Vanity Fair, McCartney sings, "There was a time/ When every day was young/ The sun would always shine/ We sang along/ When all the songs were sung/ Believing every line.''

OPENING UP

In a sit-down with The Herald, Sir Paul (as Queen Elizabeth anointed him in '97) talked candidly about the past, old songs and new songs, Charles Dickens and love. That openness ''seems to have become a feature now of how I live,'' he said. "If I'm sad about something I won't want to just hold it in. I'll want to talk to someone about it, I'll want to show it, I'll want to get it out some way.''

For living legends like McCartney, albums have become secondary to tours. Concerts are where the big money's at (tickets for Friday's show cost as much as $250). But in the case of Chaos, McCartney postponed the tour in order to get the album right.

''I said I wanted to make a good album,'' he says. "I put myself on the line a little bit.''

At the suggestion of Beatles producer George Martin, McCartney hired acclaimed producer Nigel Godrich. Godrich helped make modern rock history with Radiohead's '97 masterpiece OK Computer. McCartney was also a fan of his work with singer-songwriter Beck and British band Travis.

''I liked the sound of those records,'' McCartney says. 'Some people said, `Oh, does it mean you're going to make an album like Radiohead, it's going to be a bit electronic?' I said no, Travis didn't, Beck didn't. . . . Nigel makes an album like you, whoever you are.''

One of the first things Godrich did was tell McCartney to get rid of his band. Paul plays most of the instruments, including drums, harmonium and flugelhorn, on Chaos himself. The producer also told McCartney which songs he thought were crap, including Vanity Fair. The singer fought for that track but says it is the "most reworked song I've ever done in my life.''

''It was quite a good exercise, after I got over the shock of someone telling me they didn't like it,'' McCartney says. "Which has happened to me plenty of times, but not recently.''

Over the years, the man who penned such somber Beatles classics as Yesterday and Hey Jude has been derided for wasting his talents on ''silly love songs,'' as McCartney himself has called them. Several of the strongest new tracks -- At the Mercy, Anyway -- are melancholy.

''I generally tend towards the optimistic,'' McCartney says. 'But sometimes when you're looking around for something to write about, you say, `I've just done a few optimistic songs. Now, is there anything else going on in my life, or has there ever been anything else other than optimism?' And you cast around and you think, yeah of course there has, there's been rejected friendships, there's been times when you're not getting on with people, things like that. I've had plenty of those in my life.''

THE GIFT OF MELODY

McCartney grew up in working-class Liverpool. His father was a musician; his mother died when he was a teen. He was 17 when he and John Lennon first played together. McCartney brought his schoolmate George Harrison to the group. By '64 The Beatles' genius for rock 'n' roll melodies was making global history. But the band splintered unamicably in '70. McCartney went on to a solid career as a solo artist and with his band Wings. In '98, Linda Eastman McCartney, his wife of almost 30 years, died of cancer. In 2002 he married 34-year-old landmine-victims activist and model Heather Mills.

McCartney says personal tragedies and world events inspired his new candor. 'Something like George passing, it makes you think, `God things are so impermanent: suddenly there's this little friend of mine, he used to get on the bus, and now he's passed away.' There's that whole lifetime of a friendship [that] physically has ended, not emotionally.''

McCartney says his increased emotional openness is also a result of maturity. And it reflects the zeitgeist.

''When you're about 18 and particularly you're a boy, you're not allowed to cry,'' McCartney says. 'All your friends go, `You're a big sissy,' so you really hold it. But after 9/11, things like that, you'd just be stupid if you didn't allow yourself to cry.''

Referring several times to psychology, McCartney sounds more like a therapy-obsessed Californian than a Brit.

'Most of the stuff I do you can analyze. . . . I'll write a song, like Yesterday, `Why she had to go,' and I look back on it and try to analyze it, and of course I realize it probably had to do with the death of my mother. I didn't realize it at the time. I thought I was just writing a sad song.''

And then on new songs like English Tea and Jenny Wren, McCartney relishes a thoroughly British appreciation of posh dialect and Dickens heroines. "That idea of this very Englishness, this parody thing, is something I've been doing for a long time. . . . I like reading Dickens. One of the reasons is because of the language, the way people talk to each other.''

McCartney may be baring his soul a little more than usual these days. But Chaos is not some emotional confessional; its revelations are cloaked in artistry. And it's not all minor-chord moods. Alongside the sad songs are Mills-inspired silly love songs, such as A Certain Softness and This Never Happened Before.

"I like love so I like love songs. I like romance. I like to listen to songs that talk about that and that contain those kinds of feelings. I'm a great Nat King Cole fan . . . I like to think of myself a bit in that tradition.''

At Shaq's shack onWednesday, McCartney and his band brushed off some golden oldies, including the early Beatles tune Please Please Me and the '70 McCartney-penned Badfinger hit Come and Get It. He says that on this tour, they will play maybe a half-dozen new songs and some ''new old ones, some stuff we've never done before.'' He understands that his fans come to relive the sunny days "when all the songs were sung.''

THE BACKYARD

The new CD's title combines lyrics from two songs. ''There is a long way/ Between chaos and creation,'' McCartney sings on Fine Line. On Promise to You Girl, he writes about ''looking through the backyard of my life.'' But although the cover features a 1962 photo of the singer, he downplays the notion he's recalling his past.

'The interesting thing is if you look at my songs when I was 24, like Yesterday: `I'm not half the man I used to be.' Well I was 24, half the man would make me 12,'' McCartney laughs. ' `The long and winding road that leads to your door': it sounds like someone who's about 80. 'Looking through the backyard of your life,' I could have written that lyric when I was 24. It just would have meant my days in Liverpool or my days in school. Now it's got more significance because it's a bigger backyard.''

emcdonnell@herald.com