Diana Krall talks about her collaboration with Sir Paul McCartney.
Published on 19/02/2012
Diana Krall has worked on Kisses on the Bottom, the latest album from Paul McCartney, which revisits some old American jazz standards. Talking exclusively to The Express, she told us about her collaboration. She hates talking. Which is not very convenient for even a simple phone conversation. Diana Krall lives in the United States, her house is lost in the countryside with her twins. And she's not very keen on doing some promo for the album.
Surprise: she does not hide his enthusiasm for working on Sir Paul McCartney's new jazz album made with the help of Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder.There's worse as travel companions. And even on the phone, his pleasure is clearly visible.
How did the idea of the meeting between the former Beatle and you, a jazz singer come about ?
Paul dreamed of a jazz album for twenty years. We have the same producer, Tommy LiPuma: Tommy gave us the opportunity to talk. From our meeting, the project took shape. The idea was to work with Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and jazz musicians. But each of us was to embody a role he never played. Result: Paul sings jazz and does not touch any instrument, Stevie Wonder and I do not sing and he plays the harmonica, I'm at the piano.
All American standards included on the record are as beautiful as little known. Who chose them?
Paul McCartney did. He loves famous authors such as Cole Porter, but what he wanted most was to resume the jazz songs that made him listen to his father in Liverpool. It turns out that among these pieces, he thought only they know, many were songs that my grandfather adored and with whom I grew up. Paul also told me that these standards have inspired several tracks he wrote with John Lennon. For example, "Home (When Shadows Fall)," Paul has played with the Quarrymen and The Beatles, between 1957 and 1960.
On Kisses on the Bottom, you play, you have made all the arrangements, and the line-up is all the musicians who accompany you forever now. Finally, who was the boss?
Nobody, really. Each has brought his own musical background. I wanted eclectic musicians. They all played with artists as diverse as Betty Carter, Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock. Paul also gave me the opportunity to confront myself with an extraordinary guitarist, Eric Clapton. I love this guy. He is even more autistic than me! We all had a common language and arrangements came naturally. I wrote them live: most songs on this album were recorded in one or two takes.
On this album, Paul McCartney's voice is almost unrecognizable ...
It is different, it's true. On this record, it has something vulnerable, feminine, broken. It looks like something out of a vinyl post-1940s. Paul singing into a microphone that was used by Nat King Cole. I played and I had chills listening to this melancholy, this fragility. And then, on some tracks, like "My Valentine", he wrote for the record, his voice became blues, powerful like a crooner. He told me he was not sure whether to improvise: this is not true. He returned these songs in all directions.
Do you think that Paul McCartney is a jazz musician?
It is Paul McCartney: a musician who has always composed music with complex structures. At the time of the Beatles, he influenced many jazz musicians: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, who took over "Michelle" and "Help!" - Or Ella Fitzgerald, whose interpretation of "Something in the Way She Moves" is sublime. I myself recorded "For No One", Paul McCartney, on my last album, Quiet Nights. Who would have imagined one day that I would join him on piano?
Source: The Express.
Surprise: she does not hide his enthusiasm for working on Sir Paul McCartney's new jazz album made with the help of Eric Clapton and Stevie Wonder.There's worse as travel companions. And even on the phone, his pleasure is clearly visible.
How did the idea of the meeting between the former Beatle and you, a jazz singer come about ?
Paul dreamed of a jazz album for twenty years. We have the same producer, Tommy LiPuma: Tommy gave us the opportunity to talk. From our meeting, the project took shape. The idea was to work with Eric Clapton, Stevie Wonder and jazz musicians. But each of us was to embody a role he never played. Result: Paul sings jazz and does not touch any instrument, Stevie Wonder and I do not sing and he plays the harmonica, I'm at the piano.
All American standards included on the record are as beautiful as little known. Who chose them?
Paul McCartney did. He loves famous authors such as Cole Porter, but what he wanted most was to resume the jazz songs that made him listen to his father in Liverpool. It turns out that among these pieces, he thought only they know, many were songs that my grandfather adored and with whom I grew up. Paul also told me that these standards have inspired several tracks he wrote with John Lennon. For example, "Home (When Shadows Fall)," Paul has played with the Quarrymen and The Beatles, between 1957 and 1960.
On Kisses on the Bottom, you play, you have made all the arrangements, and the line-up is all the musicians who accompany you forever now. Finally, who was the boss?
Nobody, really. Each has brought his own musical background. I wanted eclectic musicians. They all played with artists as diverse as Betty Carter, Erykah Badu, Joni Mitchell and Herbie Hancock. Paul also gave me the opportunity to confront myself with an extraordinary guitarist, Eric Clapton. I love this guy. He is even more autistic than me! We all had a common language and arrangements came naturally. I wrote them live: most songs on this album were recorded in one or two takes.
On this album, Paul McCartney's voice is almost unrecognizable ...
It is different, it's true. On this record, it has something vulnerable, feminine, broken. It looks like something out of a vinyl post-1940s. Paul singing into a microphone that was used by Nat King Cole. I played and I had chills listening to this melancholy, this fragility. And then, on some tracks, like "My Valentine", he wrote for the record, his voice became blues, powerful like a crooner. He told me he was not sure whether to improvise: this is not true. He returned these songs in all directions.
Do you think that Paul McCartney is a jazz musician?
It is Paul McCartney: a musician who has always composed music with complex structures. At the time of the Beatles, he influenced many jazz musicians: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, who took over "Michelle" and "Help!" - Or Ella Fitzgerald, whose interpretation of "Something in the Way She Moves" is sublime. I myself recorded "For No One", Paul McCartney, on my last album, Quiet Nights. Who would have imagined one day that I would join him on piano?
Source: The Express.
Diana Krall: "Paul McCartney wanted the songs that made him listen to his father"
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