Paul McCartney Talks ’70s Beatles Reunion Offers in KROQ Interview
By Brian Ives
May 6, 2014
Paul McCartney called into Los Angeles’s KROQ (a Radio.com station) during the Kevin and Bean show this morning to plug his current “Out There” tour, which hits Dodger Stadium on Aug. 10. During their conversation, they discussed everything from the Beatles to Dave Grohl to his daughter’s musical taste.
Macca seemed to be in a jovial mood, and when asked if he has to be addressed as “Sir Paul,” he replied, “King Paul will do.” Comparably, when reminded that he last played Dodger Stadium 48 years ago with the Fab Four, he said, “It couldn’t have been me!”
But as for the long-told rumor about how close he and John Lennon came to actually showing up on “Saturday Night Live” in 1976 when Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles a whopping $3000 to reunite? “It nearly happened man, it very, very nearly happened.”
The legend has always been that Paul was visiting John in New York City, and that they were watching “SNL” at Lennon’s apartment. McCartney told the KROQ hosts, “We’re just sitting around and having a laugh and ‘Saturday Night Live’ came on, and he said, ‘Have you been watching this?’ ‘No, I’m living in England, why, what’s going on?’ He said, ‘They’ve got this amazing thing going on, where Lorne Michaels came on last week and he said I’m entitled to offer you, the Beatles, so much money [to reunite].’ It wasn’t an awful lot – it was the standard rate.
“So John said, ‘It’s a hoot, you know what would be great, we can go down there now. It’s only around the corner, we should show up.’ For about five minutes, we were going ‘We’ve got to do it.’ Then it was like, ‘Are you kidding, let’s stay in and watch the show, stay comfortable, if we go down there it’s gonna be crazy. It would be a great story,’ but we decided against it.”
Paul McCartney (Larry Busacca/Getty Images)
When asked if the decision to never reunite was one of the smartest decisions they ever made, McCartney agreed. “We talked about it, we certainly got offered a lot of money to do it, but it was one of those things, it was like, ‘You know what, guys? We’ve done it. We’ve come full circle. We’ve been through all the joys and the horrors of being in a band, we’ve done everything we wanted to do.’”
He added this somewhat stunning admission: they feared that the reunion would not be well-received. “‘If we get back together again, it could fall flat, we might not enjoy it, so why do it?’” he explained. “As we say in England, leave ‘em laughing.”
Although he points out, “Once or twice, it was quite tempting, we got some tempting offers. [But] Why spoil the whole thing and come out of retirement and have it not work, so we decided against it. I agree with you, it was the smartest move.”
They also asked about his more recent musical partnership with Dave Grohl.
“The thing about Dave is, he’s such an enthusiast, he’s a live wire,” McCartney said. “Anything you do with him is ‘up.’ As you know, you’ve interviewed him. He’s a very ‘up’ guy and it’s very infectious. I’m a great enthusiast too. So when he asked me to come along and do some music for the Sound City thing, I said, ‘Well, OK, we’ll see what happens.’ I got there and he said, ‘What are we going to do, should we do an old rock ‘n’ roll song?’ And he made a couple of suggestions. And I said ‘I’ve done that.’ A couple of the ones he mentioned I’d done with the Beatles. I said, ‘I don’t want to try to top those.’
“I’d just been given a new guitar by Johnny Depp, that little cigar box thing, I was so in love with it, I said, ‘Let me wail away on this and see what happens.’ I started kicking around on that, and Dave jumped in on drums, so there was no way there wasn’t going to be any chemistry. And then Krist [Novoselic] and Pat [Smear] started playing alongside us, and we suddenly had a big thing going. We listened to it, the first take was about 20 minutes and we said ‘What are we gonna do, should we structure it a little bit?’ So we agreed on what we were gonna do, got back in there, made the song, and it was all over in about three hours. All of us had a complete blast.
“In the middle of all of that, I didn’t know that I was in a Nirvana reunion,” he admitted. “I thought I was jamming with a bunch of guys. It was only when I heard them talking, ‘Hey, we haven’t done this in 20 years or something!’ I’m going, ‘What are you talking about, guys?’ ‘Well, you know, we’re Nirvana.’ I must admit, I didn’t even know, I said, ‘Oh, OK, that’s pretty cool.’”
Given that that song, “Cut Me Some Slack,” won a GRAMMY, and that Grohl lives in L.A., is there a chance he might join McCartney’s band when they play Dodger Stadium? “There’s always a possibility, it depends who is in town and who fancies showing up. Nowadays I have millions of people I know out there, not least of all, Ringo [Starr]. Who knows, we might find a couple of them creeping up on stage unbeknownst to me.”
Finally, asked if he minds talking about the Beatles after all these years, he acknowledged that people are sometimes self-conscious about asking him about it.
“I do enjoy it, it’s like talking about your college days, when you’re not in college anymore and there’s quite a few years gone by,” he said. “I’m looking back on it, it’s like looking at a scrapbook. People think sometimes, ‘I don’t want to bore you, I don’t want to ask you a Beatles question,’ I say, ‘No, it’s OK.’ I could be at a dinner party, and everyone is telling their stories, and I’m thinking, ‘It’d be good if they asked me a Beatles question, I’ve got a few stories there.’”
kroq.cbslocal.com
THE BEATLES’ PAUL MCCARTNEY GETS INTERVIEWED BY KEVIN & BEAN
By Nadia Noir
Paul McCartney Interview Part 1
On August 10th, Paul McCartney will play Dodger Stadium for the first time ever since The Beatles‘ played their second to last live gig on August 28, 1966. The musical icon will play an epic three hour set including his solo stuff, his new stuff, and Beatles stuff.
The musical icon called in to Kevin & Bean and talked about his life as a Beatle, working with Dave Grohl for Sound City, and what goes into picking an expansive set that simultaneously allows him to pace himself.
Sir Paul McCartney, or as he joked to the Morning Show crew, “King McCartney,” is a humble, easy to talk to guy who says that it’s a little “freakish” that so many young fans are still into the Beatles despite them breaking up in 1970 and that the person who played Dodger Stadium 48 years ago “couldn’t have been him.”
Many things have changed since the Beatles performed, including the sound system. Being talented musicians and playing live in a stadium setting was pretty hard for the Beatles, which is one of the reasons that they let their “records do the touring” after playing live got on their “nerves a bit.” Even then, the Beatles’ show weren’t even that long.
“The joke is, I say to people, ‘Take a guess. How long did the Beatles play when the came onstage?’ Nobody guesses. I mean, we did about half-an-hour,” said McCartney. It was also thirty minutes where the guys were trading who sings the lead vocals. McCartney only sang for “five or ten minutes.” When Kevin & Bean joked that he should feel guilty about taking the money back then, McCartney laughing and said “No way.”
Money wasn’t enough to bring the Beatles back together for a reunion, though. McCartney said the group discussed the idea for fiscal reasons and got very “tempting” monetary offers, but that they decided they’d come “full circle” and why “spoil the whole thing.”
“We’ve been through all the sort of joys and the horrors of being in a band. We’ve done everything we’ve wanted to do and if we now sort of get back together again, it could fall flat,” recalled McCartney about the conversation. “We might not enjoy it, so why do it. As we say in England, ‘Leave ‘em laughing.’”
But most of the members of the band went on to have very successful solo careers, including McCartney who says the material he performs and the audiences help him last the whole way through his extensive sets. “I suddenly find myself on the last number going, ‘What happened?’ So, I just love it. I love to do it,” said McCartney effusively.
Paul McCartney Interview Part 2
One reason why the audiences may respond the way they do, is that everyone loves McCartney. With a guitar given to him by Johnny Depp, McCartney wrote a song with Dave Grohl for Sound City and the other dudes in Nirvana without even know that he was at an unofficial reunion. Everyone just wants to work with him.
“In the middle of all that, I didn’t even know I was at a Nirvana reunion. I thought I was just jamming with a bunch of guys. It was only when I started hearing them talking, they said, ‘Hey. We haven’t done this in twenty years.’ I thought, ‘Hey, what are you talking about guys?’ We’re Nirvana. “Oh, ok. That’s pretty cool.”
Playing in Los Angeles also gives him the opportunity to have plenty of special guests.
“We’ve got loads of friends and that’s actually what makes it so great to come to LA. So, who knows? We might have them creeping up onstage unbeknownst to me,” quips McCartney.
Why? Because no one turns down the opportunity to play with a Beatle. And for this, McCartney is actually proud. He even says he wishes people would ask him a Beatles question at “dinner parties.”
“It’s like kind of talking about your college days when you’re kind of not at college anymore and there’s quite a few years gone by. With the Beatles, so much what we did was incredible. And I can talk like that because it’s over. It’s like looking at scrapbook.” McCartney starts listing them wistfully and after a short intake of breath, breaks the reverie of his nostalgia. “There’s so many great moments, that I actually like being reminded of them.”
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario