VIDEO : Q&A Paul McCartney with Tim Minchin (Part 2)

www.PaulMcCartney.com

JUL

31

2017

‘You Gave Me The Answer’ – Tim Minchin Asks (Part 2)

Continuing with the One On One theme and following Paul's recent announcement that he will return to Australia and New Zealand, we are posting more questions and answers for the second of our two-part edition of 'You Gave Me The Answer' - Tim Minchin style! [Read Part One HERE!]

Tim Minchin [TM]: Someone asked about the six-month break between your last tour and this one or something? I mean you obviously tour and tour and tour. Is the live experience now... Asking how it differs from fifty years ago is obviously a huge question, but what makes you want to get up again and again and how does it feel now compared to those days as an experience?
Paul McCartney [PM]: Yeah, you know, it’s a simple answer! It’s just ‘cause I really like it. It’s a big operation these days, you know, there’s around 140 people who put it together. So I think of it like Formula 1 or something. We’ve got these amazing technicians who can change a tyre in 3 seconds. Can’t tune a guitar…but! [Jokes] No so you’ve got these great guys all working and I think that’s very exciting. And like that’s my team so I love that, and we get on very well, so it’s kind of good to go back to that. It’s like a family reunion. Then the audience is the other big thing. The audience is amazingly warm these days – I hope you heard that! [Laughs] – you’re going to be amazingly warm! No, but there is this thing that comes often which is like, “Woah!” And what I do is I tell my promoter, I’ll say, “Just put one of the shows on sale and just see how we’re doing”. And he might ring me back and say, “Fantastic! Sold out in an hour, the whole thing!" So I go, okay, I’m cool. They like me. It’s funny, I remember that I think when I was younger, when we were starting out with The Beatles, they didn’t necessarily like us. There came a time where they liked us too much and just screamed but in the beginning, you know some of the Teds in the audience, and throwing money at us and things, which we did collect and put it in our pockets! But you know it wasn’t always easy so the fact that the audiences now are very warm is a great thing.
TM: And when you’re there and you’ve got a perfect mix in your ears, do you have a visceral memory of you know playing in 1966 and not being able to hear? I mean, do you remember what that was like compared to now? 
PM: I don’t use the in-ears. So everyone else does and I’m told I should but I like to hear the audience. If someone shouts out I don’t wanna go, “Excuse me?” I’ll just go, “Yeah, sure Tom!” Whatever my response is. So yeah, but we can be heard no matter how loud the audience is now we’ve got big speakers so yeah, you do think, "Wow! There was a time when we couldn’t". Funnily enough what I’m thinking isn’t that - you accept that and you just go, “Oh, it was terrible then” - we plugged my bass and two guitars into one amp one time.
TM: I just don’t understand. I don’t understand how you sang in tune? Like I was listening to that Hollywood Bowl recording, I literally don’t understand how you guys were in tune so much. It’s like you had played so many gigs that it’s just muscle memory.
PM: I think that’s what it was.
TM: It’s unbelievable.
PM: Yeah, that’s what it was. I always say we were a great little band. And that for me is what’s precious about The Beatles. Okay, we were a great little band that expanded beyond all expansion. But the fact that we could sit down and just go, “One for the money!” [Sings] and we all knew it.
TM: You were so tight.
PM: But for me, instead of thinking about the quality of the sound, what I’m thinking about is when we recorded it, or the young kids that recorded this ‘cause you know I was like mid-twenties when I did something like 'Eleanor Rigby’, so I’m singing it going, “This is pretty good this kid’s not bad”. You know, “Oh, I like those words”. You know, “Her face in the jar by the door”.
TM: That’s the other thing that freaks me out. And I am just gonna collapse into Paul the fanboying, but that all those lyrics you wrote in your twenties! I’m a lyrics guy - I care very much about them and I find it very hard to listen to a song where the lyrics are lazy or reductive or clichés or whatever. I just, I can’t, yeah. The fact that you were writing those lyrics in your twenties freaks me out!

TM: Anyway I’m gonna ask a question from someone else now, I’m completely monopolizing! 
PM: Who’s the someone?
TM: It’s Sabina Connacanin, from Australia. “There seems to be a trend for musicians these days to turn their hand to writing musicals”, by which they mean pop musicals, Cindi Lauper, Neil Finn, Sting did one…
PM: And other people! [Points to Tim Minchin]
TM: And other people! Well, I didn’t have a pop career first I just went straight there. “So then, Sir Paul, can we expect to see something from you anytime soon?” Can I just say, “He’s not allowed!” You can’t go stepping in my world.
PM: Your territory. You know, I’ve been asked and still do get asked because it kind of is a natural progression. But John and I, when we started, were asked a lot because “Lennon-McCartney, Rogers and Hammerstein”, we liked it. It sounded like old writers. Sounds like a team. So we were asked a lot but we didn’t like it. John in particularly hated musicals. He liked ‘West Side Story’, we liked ‘West Side Story’ a lot because that was like innovative, it grabbed us and it’s really good. But, things like, John and I one afternoon went to see ‘South Pacific’ and we actually walked out ‘cause he just couldn’t stand it. I mean I would have sat and just watched it ‘cause I had paid my money and I would watch anything. But he’d go, “Oh, bloody hell”, you know because what happens is they start - you know the girl in it, Mitzi Gaynon I think it was - going, “I wonder if he’s looking at me. Can he really see me?” And we’d go, “Oh no!” And he starts like, “Oh, I think she’s looking at me, I don’t know”. And we’re going, “Oh, stop it!”
TM: I have to be very careful about how I talk about musicals ‘cause I’m meant to love them but yeah they’re very very hard to make not suck.
PM: Yeah, there are some very very good ones and there are some… The old ones, you know don’t survive quite as well these days, some of them.
TM: But they keep doing them. And I’m going, “You don’t need to see that one again! Let it die!”

TM: Alright, I’m scared we’re gonna run out of time before we do – “Paul, love your work!” thanks, George, so many questions…
PM: And so little time…
TM: So little time! George asks, “Hi Paul, what is your warm up routine before hitting the stage? Any traditional drinks, snacks or confectionery? A must-have?” Socks? Lucky scarf?
PM: Socks, no. Drinks, not a lot, no. Because I don’t eat and drink before I go on ‘cause I sort of like to feel light. And then afterwards, I can get heavy, you know I have a drink, but before I go on I don’t do that. But I do have little sort of snacky things in the dressing room that I might just grab. Like chocolate covered raisins.
TM: Famously good for the voice…
PM: I don’t think so! But anyway, it’s a little snack. But them, and equal amounts of salted cashew nuts…
TM: You are a total rockstar, you monster. This is how the stories start Paul!
PM: Well then that’s just after a bottle of vodka!
TM: Do you drink any alcohol before you?
PM: No
TM: None at all?
PM: I used to try that kind of thing particularly in the early days of Wings when we thought we were…
TM: Loosen it up?
PM: Yeah, but it didn’t work. I’d just forget the lyrics that I didn’t know anyway. 
TM: Yeah, forget the lyrics! Yeah I’ll have a red wine to chill me out.
PM: Yeah a couple of my guys do
TM: And a Red Bull too – it’s stupid.
PM: Red wine and a Red Bull?
TM: Upper and a downer, it’s ridiculous.
PM: It’s alright!
TM: It’s really bad for you, kids.

TM: “Paul, how do you keep your creative juices running? It seems like you have a never ending supply, do you have different methods?”
PM: No, you know I don’t think about it. I think that’s how! I’m very enthusiastic about stuff, you know so if I hear a great song, or hear an old song that I love, that’ll often kind of make me think, “Oh yeah, oh yeah I could write one like that”, and I’ll sort of - but even if I’m just sitting around, if I’ve got a guitar I’ll strum on it, and if I’ve got enough time I’ll try and write a song, or at the piano. So it’s just ‘cause I love it and they – you know, touch wood – they flow because I love it.
TM: I guess you’ve never not done it?
PM: Yeah, from the age of fourteen it’s been something I’ve done. But you do pinch yourself occasionally and think, “Wait a minute, I was fourteen and I wrote this little song little realising that would it actually be my job, and career, and the whole thing! I thought I was gonna be like a teacher or something sensible".
TM: That is, it is unbelievable how much you’ve made. And when you say, “Alright, well let’s go on tour again”, do you go back just through your memory or through your discography? I’ve seen the set-list of this tour and you play 50 songs or something. You play almost twice as much as most bands do. You’ve got this obviously almost infinitely deep back-catalogue. How do you choose? Do you just think, “Oh, I haven’t played this one for years”?
PM: There’s a bit of that, yeah. Mainly I start with the fact that I used to go to concerts when I was a kid when I didn’t have any money and so I know what I want, so I think the average audience member wants what I wanted, which was the performer to do songs and hits you love. So I kind of start with that and I sort of will sit down - and there’s probably about ten songs that I think – I’d want me to do that. I’d wanna be in a ‘Hey Jude’ sing-a-long. So you know that’ll go in there. And as I get them and think,“We’ll do them”, and then if there’s anything new knocking around, I’ll sort of put that in, if there’s anything I particularly fancy or if the band makes suggestions about, “Hey, you know it’s Sgt. Pepper year, we could bring that back, we could do that?” So then we’ll rehearse them. And if they get past that stage and if we like them in rehearsal, then we’ll do them! And I always like to chuck in a couple that people won’t know. So we do a couple that - well I mean deep fans will know them - your average mom and dad who are coming along, who really liked The Beatles won’t know a few of them. But then sometimes people will come up to you and go, “What was that song you sang in the middle? I loved that”, and then, “Well that’s a little song I wrong for John,” or something, you know.
TM: Yeah. And if all you had done for the last 30 years is tour your sort of top 40 then you wouldn’t feel so motivated 
PM: Yeah, you’d be a bit jaded.

TM: We have time for one more thing. So I’m just gonna take a minute. We’re just gonna stare weirdly towards the camera. Okay, Guy Sheppard from Australia says, “What is the best”, I mean, how do you answer this? “What is the best or most emotional fan encounter that you have ever had?” Do you have a sort of early career story?
PM: It tends to be more recent. The fan stories in the old days were just a lot of screaming and it was great, but you didn’t differentiate any. Now I can kinda see people in the audience. And there are two that come to mind. I do one of George’s songs - George Harrison – "Something in the way she moves", which is always quite sort of moving for me because you know he’s no longer here. And he was my little mate, George. You know we got on the bus together, and stuff. So we lived our life together really. So when I do that, I’m a bit emotional anyway. And there’s a big picture of him at the back on the screen that we always use. So I’m looking at that and thinking, “Jeez, George, man”. And I’m loving him. And I turn back and the front row is the girl who’s completely [pretends to cry] lost it. And then I’m like [catches breath] and I’m trying to control it ‘cause I’m singing to a bunch of people who don’t know necessarily what I’m going through. So that’s a big memory of recent times. And then there was another lovely one in South America where there was this very tall man with a black beard. Very elegant kind of guy and he had his - what obviously looked like his daughter - and he’s put his arm around her. And she’s beautiful, South American, black hair and she’s just looking up at him and he’s looking down at her with such a look of love and I’m singing, “Let it be, Let it be”, and they’re [pretends to cry] and I’m [pretends to cry]. You know, so it’s hard to kind of control your emotions when you see that. So then you look away. But then you’ve gotta look back. And also I’ve learned audiences don’t mind seeing your emotion. I used to think that was the worst thing ever. You know, a guy crying. You know, Liverpool - you sort of didn’t do that! But now it’s okay! And you can. And I think audiences just kind of go along with it.
TM: Your music is so embedded in people’s histories and it’s obviously so full of emotion and truth from your personal history, and when you can feel that, you’re connecting to the songs that they can connect to. I think finding that authenticity on stage is the reason you go to concerts. I think that’s amazing, that’s beautiful.

We couldn't agree more, Tim and what a lovely way to end a very enjoyable interview! If you have a question that you would like Paul to answer, we'd love to hear from you HERE!

Beatle George Harrison tours the Haight,1967

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd visiting Haight-Ashbury - 1967 



www.sfchronicle.com
Beatle George Harrison tours the Haight, 1992
By Johnny Miller
August 2, 2017


George Harrison and wife Patti Boyd visit San Francisco in 1967.

Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.

Aug. 8: Fired Police Chief Richard Hongisto, now a supervisorial candidate, had harsh words last week for his former colleagues on the board. Speaking at a candidates’ forum sponsored by the business community, Hongisto thrashed the board individually and collectively for spending hours debating obscure issues — and for its failure to extend the state of emergency imposed by Mayor Frank Jordan after the Rodney King riots. “The Board of Supervisors practically applauded the rioters,” Hongisto said in an angry speech. “I was fired from the job as police chief before the National Guard even left Los Angeles.”

He mocked Supervisor Terence Hallinan for inviting Fidel Castro to San Francisco, Supervisor Carole Migden for her hearing on animal sacrifice and Supervisor Angela Alioto for her proposed ban on electroshock therapy. Hongisto was fired for allegedly ordering thousands of copies of an unflattering newspaper removed from their racks. When it was suggested to Hongisto that, if elected, he might have no friends left on the board, he snapped back sarcastically, “They’ve already shown their friendship to me.” Hallinan ... wasted no time firing back. “I don’t believe a newspaper thief is fit to be a member of the Board of Supervisors,” Hallinan said.

— Marc Sandalow

Aug. 8: Beatle George Harrison toured the Haight-Ashbury yesterday peering through lavender glasses, strumming a guitar and eventually drawing a huge following of flower children behind him. Harrison, called “the quiet Beatle,” and his wife Patti, first parked at Masonic Avenue and Haight Street about 6 p.m. and wandered down the street unnoticed among the throng of hippies. Harrison sported the drooping French mustache, long hair, buttons, flowered trousers, denim jacket and heart-shaped shades affected by many members of the love generation. And 23-year-old wife Patti could have been just about any hippie girl with her long blonde hair and granny glasses.

The two walked the length of Haight Street looking into the shops and watching the local residents and finally stopped at “hippie hill” in Golden Gate Park. A young man was entertaining a crowd of about 20 hippies. Harrison and his wife listened for a minute and then Harrison asked, “Can I borrow your guitar?” The young man said “Sure.” Harrison took the guitar and started to play. And played unrecognized for about three minutes. A girl listened and looked at Harrison then started shouting: “Hey! That’s George Harrison. That’s George Harrison!” ... A sizeable crowd formed. Harrison played for about ten more minutes and then shouted, “Let’s go for a walk.” And off they went, Harrison strumming the guitar, the hippies following along. As the crowd left the park it grew. “What do you think of the Haight-Ashbury?” asked a hippie. “Wow. If it’s all like this it’s too much,” Harrison answered.

— David Swanston



Aug. 10: The lights are going out at San Quentin. The towering gray walls which have been illuminated like a carnival through years of California nights will become a dark mass along with the rest of the State’s coastline come Aug. 20 and the new dim-out regulations. Darkness, nature’s great camouflage, will descend upon 3000 inmates of San Quentin, but the nightly parade of hundreds of men across the three-acre yard to and from the prison theater and night school “will go on as usual,” Warden Clinton Duffy said yesterday. The honor system, enforced by the inmates themselves, will replace the disciplinary glare of the 3000-watt lamps that used to expose the yard in a glare brighter than daylight. Warden Duffy said the dim-out would cause only one change in the long list of privileges he has established for inmates. The San Quentin Drama Guild will not be able to give its three performances for “outside” guests.

Aug. 7: Every time an Alameda barkeep pulls back a sudsy schooner from the bar he must sterilize it before he fills it with foam for another thirsty customer. Alameda became yesterday the first municipality in the bay district to order its saloon and soda fountain proprietors to comply with the new State law requiring the sterilizing of all drinking vessels before they are served to a second customer. While the law has gone into effect in the encinal city, the San Francisco Board of Health is still working on the problem. ... Since the law was passed, two representatives of the Board have been detailed to see that the smaller purveyors of drinks equip themselves with proper facilities for washing all drinking vessels in hot water, as the law provides.

Johnny Miller is a freelance writer.

Watch baked goods sing Paul McCartney in Channel 4’s first ‘Bake Off’ trailer

www.nme.com
Watch baked goods sing Paul McCartney in Channel 4’s first ‘Bake Off’ trailer
By Luke Morgan Britton
Aug 3, 2017


Credit: Channel 4

McCartney and the Frog Chorus' 'We All Stand Together' soundtracks the trailer

The first trailer has been released for Channel 4’s new-look The Great British Bake Off.

It was announced earlier this year that Mighty Boosh star Noel Fielding is teaming up with Sandi Toksvig to host Channel 4’s first series of Bake Off, replacing departing BBC presenters Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins. TV chef Prue Leith will be a new judge alongside Paul Hollywood, who opted to move stations with the show.

With the new series “coming soon”, this new animated trailer sees slices of cake, croissants and other baked goods singing Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus’ ‘We All Stand Together’. Watch below.

We all bake together. The Great British Bake Off. Coming soon. #GBBO pic.twitter.com/6QWHdghTFh

— British Bake Off (@BritishBakeOff) 3 de agosto de 2017

Earlier this summer, it was reported that Noel Fielding had been banned from wearing black clothing on the new series of GBBO. Tabloid reports claimed that Channel 4 are aiming to tone down Fielding’s “wacky style” but will allow the comedian to “don some more ­extravagant, colourful ­outfits later in the series once viewers have got used to him”.

Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno also recently claimed that he could be set to appear on Bake Off.

Speaking to Radio X, Pizzorno revealed that Fielding wants to get him involved. “He does,” Pizzorno said. “I wouldn’t rule out, I mean I wouldn’t call myself a celeb but I wouldn’t rule out a appearance on Celeb Bake off – I can make a mean Jaffa Cake for sure.”

Rare concert ticket from The Beatles' final performance at The Cavern Club goes on display 54 years on

www.wirralglobe.co.uk
Rare concert ticket from The Beatles' final performance at The Cavern Club goes on display 54 years on
Lauren Jones
Multimedia Reporter
3rd August 2017

The ticket will go on show at The Beatles Story at the Albert Dock and will be on display for three years

A RARE ticket from The Beatles’ final appearance at The Cavern Club goes on display 54 years after the event at the award-winning The Beatles Story.

Dated August 3, 1963 the ticket marked the band’s 292nd and final performance at the world-famous venue since making their debut at the club on February 9, 1961.

The Cavern Club played an important role during the band’s early development but by the time they played their final show, just one month after they recorded She Loves You, The Beatles had outgrown the setting. 


AT THE CAVERN AUGUST 1963

Diane Glover from The Beatles Story said: “We are delighted to introduce this exciting piece of Cavern Club history into our exhibition.

"The ticket represents an important time in The Beatles’ career and recognises the crucial role that The Cavern Club played in the success of the band.”

The iconic Cavern stage has played home to a plethora of musical legends since the club first opened 60 years ago, in January 1957. Including The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, Queen, Chuck Berry, more recently Adele and Jessie J.


The Cavern Room at The Beatles Story exhibition

Tickets for the final Beatles show went on sale exclusively to Cavern Club members at 1.30pm on July 21 and sold out within 30 minutes.

The Fab Four were joined on the bill that evening by The Mersey Beats, The Escorts, The Road Runners, The Sapphires and Jonny Ringo & The Colts.

The ticket joins a collection of other rare Cavern Club memorabilia from the early 60s, as well as the guitar which was used by George Harrison during the performance.

The rare Australian Maton Mastersound guitar has been on display at The Beatles Story since July 2015 and was only on loan to George at the time due to his usual guitar, a Gibson Country Gentleman, being repaired.

The ticket will be on display within The Beatles Story’s main exhibition for the next three years.



For more information and to buy tickets, please visit beatlesstory.com

Paul McCartney revealed as guest drummer on new Foo Fighters album

www.theguardian.com
Paul McCartney revealed as guest drummer on new Foo Fighters album
The Beatles legend will join a secret guest – ‘the biggest pop star in the world’ – on the rockers’ new LP Concrete and Gold
Ben Beaumont-Thomas
Thursday 3 August 2017 


‘He’s a great guy’ … Paul McCartney performing last month.
Photograph: Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP

The Foo Fighters have revealed that Paul McCartney is a guest on their new album, playing drums on one of the tracks.

Speaking to ET Canada, a band member said: “He’s a pal. We’ve known him for a long time. He’s great. He’s the most wonderful person in the world. He’s a great guy. He hadn’t even heard of the song. He comes in and [frontman] Dave [Grohl] picked up an acoustic and showed him real quick. He sat on his special drum set that his tech set up for him. I sat there with a drumstick conducting. He did two takes.”

Grohl has also been heavily teasing another major guest on the record, calling them “the biggest pop star in the world. He or she sings backup on one of the heaviest songs on the record … It was sort of towards the end of the album and this person came up and said, ‘Man, I’d really love to sing on your record. I looked at [producer] Greg [Kurstin] and said, ‘OK, come in tomorrow and we’ll figure something out.’ So we found a backup part for this person to sing and we decided we were gonna make it our own dirty little secret and see if anyone can figure it out.”

He denied it was Adele – who Kurstin also produces – or Taylor Swift. Other guests on the album include the Kills and Dead Weather singer Alison Mosshart, and Boyz II Men’s Shawn Stockman, who Grohl apparently spotted in the car park of the recording studio.

McCartney, meanwhile, is also guesting on the forthcoming album by Beatles bandmate Ringo Starr.





www.esquire.com
Paul McCartney Plays Drums on What Will Ultimately Be the Best Foo Fighters Album
Your dad is definitely going to ask you to put this on his iPhone.
BY MATT MILLER
AUG 2, 2017 


Getty

Fighters' Taylor Hawkins is a beast behind the kit. He often is the driving force of even the band's more forgettable songs. While Dave Grohl is a charismatic frontman and performer, Hawkins gives the band its real spark. Unfortunately, Hawkins isn't Paul McCartney.

And though McCartney isn't best known for playing that particular role in the rhythm section, he'll always be a more preferable drummer than Taylor Hawkins. That's just the way it is, and that's why Hawkins was replaced by McCartney on one song on Foo Fighters' upcoming album Concrete and Gold. As the band said in an interview with ET Canada:

"He hadn't even heard of the song. He comes in and Dave picked up an acoustic and showed him real quick. He sat on his special drum set that his tech set up for him. I sat there with a drumstick conducting. He did two takes."

This sounds exactly how a recording session with Paul McCartney should go. And this will undoubtedly be the best song on Foo Fighters' new album, which, according to Grohl also includes a feature from a pop star more famous: "He or she sings backup on one of the heaviest songs on the record. And we're not telling anybody who it is." Who is more famous than Paul McCartney? Beyoncé's twins? Cristiano Ronaldo? The Pope?

Longtime Ringo Starr Engineer Talks New Album, Working With Paul McCartney on His Day Off

 Feb. 19, 2017 Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney Reunite in Studio Bruce Sugar, who has engineered some of Ringo's recent albums, posted a picture of himself and the Beatles' rhythm section on Facebook.




www.billboard.com
Longtime Ringo Starr Engineer Talks New Album, Working With Paul McCartney on His Day Off
by Steve Marinucci
8/1/2017


Ringo Starr poses for a portrait on June 13, 2016 in New York.
Scott Gries/Invision/AP

Bruce Sugar says when you're in the studio with Ringo, it's all about "acting naturally"

Bruce Sugar, Ringo Starr's longtime recording engineer, is very enthusiastic about the Beatle's forthcoming album, Give More Love, which will be released Sept. 15. “We're real happy with it. Everyone who's heard it can't wait till it's put out there in the universe.”

The album has 10 main tracks and four additional bonus tracks that are new versions of old Ringo songs, including a version of “Back Off Boogaloo” that was assembled from an old recently rediscovered tape. And as always, the album has an assortment of distinguished names playing on various tracks, including fellow Beatle Paul McCartney, Ringo's brother-in-law Joe Walsh, Edgar Winter, Peter Frampton, Nathan East, Don Was, Jeff Lynne, Timothy B. Schmit, and current Ringo All-Starrs Steve Lukather, Richard Page, Gregg Bissonette, among others, along with Sugar himself. He says the plans for the new album started coming together just after his last one, Postcards From Paradise, was released.

“It wasn't long after Postcards came out,” he said. “Ringo likes to plan his life years in advance. I think he went on tour after that and then when he got back we started looking at some different ideas.”



He said recording sessions with Ringo can be accurately described as “acting naturally.” “It's very casual, especially when it starts out. I just go over to his home studio. And we just play around with some different synth ideas and bring in a few friends of his initially and see if he can get the ball rolling, kind of get a feel for what he wants to do.”

Paul McCartney plays on two songs on the album – the opener “We're On the Road Again” and also “Show Me the Way.” Sugar says McCartney came in in the middle of sessions for his own album, for which a release date has yet to be announced.

“They talk when they're both in L.A. Ringo just asked him, 'Look, I'm doing an album. Could you play on it?' And Paul was so nice. He came by on his day off on a Sunday. And he worked hard, too. Those weren't easy songs he played on.” He said McCartney's vocal on “We're On the Road Again,” which has been released ahead of the album, is “vintage McCartney.” “But the bass on the ballad 'Show Me the Way' … that's a difficult ballad. So he had to work on that a bit. We definitely put him through his paces. But the guy's the greatest. (He's) humble. He came in to help his friend on a Sunday when he had his day off. What else can you say?”

Sugar says the songs that McCartney played on were challenging. “I think (Paul) was initially a little taken back by what Lukather wrote. It's a little more sophisticated than some of the stuff Ringo's done in the past. I think Paul was looking at and listening to it. He doesn't read charts. He has his own notation.” Sugar says he's discussed this with Starr. “I've brought that up to Ringo. 'I can't believe Paul doesn't read charts.' He goes, 'We're all buskers.' They just played, just played by ear.”

The CD contains four bonus tracks – “Back Off Boogaloo,” “You Can't Fight Lightning,” “Photograph” and “Don't Pass Me By” – that are new remakes of previous Ringo songs. “Those are new recordings. We had a couple of bands playing at his birthday bash at Capitol last year playing Ringo songs. Two of the bands were Vandaveer and Alberta Cross. Ringo thought it would be cool to have different versions of some of the songs (they played) as bonuses. So they provided us with a track and we did some vocals on them and I remixed the tracks.” Vandaveer is on “Don't Pass Me By” and “Photograph,” while Alberta Cross is on “You Can't Fight Lightning.”

“Back Off Boogaloo” is different. It came from a tape with one of the first recordings of the song that Ringo found recently while preparing for the massive auction of his items that took place in 2015. The story of how it came together recalls how the Beatles' “Strawberry Fields Forever” was made.

“He had shipped all his stuff over here from England during the auction. They consolidated everything he had. He had storage areas all over the place. I don't know if it was him or his assistant were going through some of the stuff and they found this quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape and they put it on. It was Ringo, just him on guitar singing and playing 'Back Off Boogaloo'. There was just a cool vibe.

“Ringo's idea initially was to get Jeff Lynne to take that tape – it was like a minute long -- and turn that into something. Jeff took it and sent us something back, then I told Ringo let me work with it. I had to manipulate the tempos and do all the Pro Tools editing you do these days and kind of married it to what Jeff did. Then Ringo played drums on it and we got Nathan East to put a bass on it. The front piece is from that original quarter-inch tape. There's a little bit in the middle from the quarter inch tape that I put in there. The rest of it is all new with Ringo singing. With the background vocals, Ringo said to get some of the vocals from the original record he did with George and put that in it, too, so it would kind of be three different generations of Ringo on the record.

"So we've got Ringo from when he first wrote it, then part of his distorted original vocal, then the new vocal that we did here. It's an interesting conglomerate. Plus Joe (Walsh) played slide guitar on it, another cool thing. It's an interesting example of what you can with digital editing these days.”

Other Ringo classics got a new look, including “Don't Pass Me By” from The Beatles (The White Album). “They all sound pretty cool. 'Don't Pass Me By' is kind of a different approach than anyone else has done on that, that kind of laid back slide guitar deal. It's kind of a cool, cool vibe on that.”

At one time, there was talk of making a country album. Only “So Wrong For So Long,” which made the album, survives. “It's a good country song. It's a little more traditional than what they're doing now on the radio, but it'd be interesting to see if they'd play Ringo on country radio,” Sugar says. “They should. It'd be great if they did.”

Nashville or not, Sugar is quite excited about Give More Love as it stands. “I think it's the best music I've done with Ringo. I think it's the best musical album we've done,” Sugar says enthusiastically. “We'll see what happens.”




Give More Love
Ringo Starr

Product details
Original Release Date: September 15, 2017
Release Date: September 15, 2017
Label: Roccabella
Copyright: ℗ A Universal Music Enterprises Release;2017 Roccabella, Inc. © 2017 Roccabella, Inc., Under Exclusive License to Universal Music Enterprises, a Division of UMG Recordings, Inc.

Total Length: 52:38


1
We're On The Road Again
by Ringo Starr

2
Laughable
by Ringo Starr

3
Show Me The Way
by Ringo Starr

4
Speed Of Sound
by Ringo Starr

5
Standing Still
by Ringo Starr

6
King Of The Kingdom
by Ringo Starr

7
Electricity
by Ringo Starr

8
So Wrong For So Long
by Ringo Starr

9
Shake It Up
by Ringo Starr

10
Give More Love
by Ringo Starr

11
Back Off Boogaloo (Re-do)
by Ringo Starr

12
Don't Pass Me By (Re-do)
by Ringo Starr

13
You Can't Fight Lighting (Re-do)
by Ringo Starr & Alberta Cross

14
Photograph
by Ringo Starr & Vandaveer

THE BALLAD OF SEAN & YOKO

www.harpersbazaar.com
THE BALLAD OF SEAN & YOKO
She was blamed for breaking up the Beatles, then the world mourned with her when John Lennon was killed. Now, at 84, Yoko Ono is finally being recognized for her artistic legacy—with a little help from her son, Sean.
By Stephen Mooallem
Jul 31, 2017

Sean Lennon is talking about his mother’s child-rearing philosophy. “She had a very sort of postmodern, post-hippie, post-feminist way of thinking,” he says of Yoko Ono.“ It was very liberal, and she always treated me like an individual. She never really told me not to do anything, except get a Mohawk or a tattoo. So there were very few boundaries. She believed that kids are individuals and shouldn’t be treated like a subservient class.”

At 84, Ono—singer, artist, activist, and guardian of the legacy of her late husband (and Sean’s father), John Lennon—is enjoying a remarkable late-career reappraisal. The Ono oeuvre, once maligned as a conglomeration of unbearable neo-Dadaist pranks and unlistenable music, is now considered haute. Her conceptual-art projects—films, installations, happenings, and performance pieces, such as her 1964 work Cut Piece, in which she invited viewers to cutoff swaths of her clothing with a pair of scissors—today are seen as groundbreaking. Her albums and recordings, which mostly eschewed melody and traditional song structure, are held up as revolutionary. Even her clipped aphoristic “instructions,” famously compiled in books like her seminal 1964 Grapefruit, have been heralded as presciently tweet-like. And two years ago, New York’s Museum of Modern Art explored some of Ono’s early efforts in the exhibition “One Woman Show, 1960–1971.” (Back in 1971, the only way she could get an exhibition at MoMA was to invent a fake one, along with a fake ad campaign, that she publicized in local papers featuring an image of her standing in front of the building holding an oversize “F.” The fictional show was called the“Museum of Modern [F]art.”)

"We’d gone through the loss of my father together, so I witnessed her struggle."

But while it took the wider world decades to truly appreciate Ono as an artist, Sean, now 41, began to do so early in life. “I don’t really know when I realized, ‘Oh, Mum does performance art or she is an avant-garde artist, and Dad was in a band called the Beatles.’ I just remember realizing when Dad passed away that his music really touched a lot of people,” he recalls. After John Lennon was shot and killed outside the Dakota, the family’s apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, in December 1980, “people suddenly started gathering outside,” says Sean, who was five years old when his father died. “For months, they were living in [Central Park], and singing ‘Give Peace a Chance’ and Beatles songs. So my sense of people’s connection to the music probably started around then,” he says.“ But my mother’s music was the music I really grew up with. I wasn’t thinking about whether it was mainstream or not. When she made Season of Glass”—written in the wake of John’s death and featuring an image of his blood-spattered glasses on the cover—“it impressed upon me the idea of what art and songwriting is. We’d gone through the loss of my father together, so I witnessed her struggle, and then I saw her turn that struggle into art literally within a few months. I realized that art was a way of processing and understanding your experience.”


Yoko Ono with her son, Sean Lennon, in 2015.
KEVIN MAZUR/GETTY IMAGES.

Ono and Lennon first met at London’s Indica Gallery in November 1966. At the time, he was married, and the Beatles had just released Revolver. Nevertheless, the pair quickly merged their personal and creative lives in a way that was at the time and to their disappointment—frequently misunderstood.

Case in point: Early on in the couple’s relationship, in June 1968, they planned to
plant a pair of acorns on the grounds of Coventry Cathedral as part of a late entry
in a sculpture exhibition. The site where the acorns were to be buried was surrounded by a circular white bench from which visitors could sit and watch the acorns grow. The bench had a plaque that read, yoko by john lennon, john by yoko ono. According to Ono, the installation was Lennon’s idea, meant both to symbolize their coming together and—like many of the projects they would initiate—to promote world peace. Unfortunately, the bench was moved to another area of the property because the show’s organizers quibbled with the notion that what Ono and Lennon submitted was, in fact, art. Lennon went so far as to write an impassioned letter to Canon Stephen Verney, who had been in charge of overseeing the exhibition, to protest the decision, but to no avail. Lennon eventually sent his driver to retrieve the bench.



The episode was indicative of how many of their collaborations would be received: gestures borne of love and idealism were often met with cynicism and confusion, and frequently resulted in anger directed at Ono, who was blamed—wrongly—for leading Lennon astray. The difficult run of albums that Ono and Lennon made together, including the recently reissued Unfinished Music No.1: Two Virgins (1968), Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions (1969), and Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band (1970), shockingly un-Beatles-esque as they were, seemed to only deepen the animus. In many ways, they were taken as a bitter affront on the part of Lennon—a repudiation of his life with his mop-topped bandmates and the mass adoration that had been showered upon them. “You hear a lot of things on those records,” Sean says. “You hear a couple in love and having fun and experimenting and indulging in their sort of honeymoon. Then, on the other hand, you can’t help but think of how that impacted their relationship in the future because of a lot of people’s negative responses. Obviously some people loved what they were doing together, but there was a lot of mainstream negativity, and I think that was hurtful.


From clockwise left: Ono with husband John Lennon and Sean in Japan in 1979; Lennon and Ono at a Grapefruit book signing in London 1971; mother and son at the Grammy Awards, 2014; Ono performing Cut Piece in New York, 1965; the family at home at the Dakota; 1975
From clockwise left: Nishi F. Saimaru © Yoko Ono; Steve Granitz/WireImage; Central Press/Getty Images; Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images; Minoru Niizuma © Yoko Ono

Ono’s response to the antipathy has always been to practice a kind of "psychic jujitsu," says Sean. “When people have asked her how she has dealt with all this hate that’s been focused on her since she met my dad and the bad press and the mis-understandings and the blaming of her for things that were outside of her control, I have heard her say, ‘Well, it’s all just energy.’ I do think in a way that she does thrive off of energy—whether it’s good or bad—and she manages to somehow refocus that impulse into something positive.

And though John Lennon died nearly four decades ago, Sean’s recollections of their time together are vivid. “There was this movie that my dad watched with me called La Planète Sauvage,” he says. “It’s a French sci-fi cartoon from 1973, and it’s still one of my favorite films. After he passed away, I watched it all the time. My dad and I used to play this game where he would scribble something nonsensical on a piece of paper,” Sean adds, “and I would have to turn it into something by drawing on it. Then we’d trade, and I would do a scribble, and he would turn it into something. That game was monumental for me; if I hang out with a kid, I’ll still play it. And a lot of the stuff that I’ll draw is kind of alien landscapes from La Planète Sauvage.”

As for Ono, she remains too out of this world to be fashionable. But to say that she has finally been acknowledged is an understatement. She has been embraced as a sort of éminence grise of the avant-garde. And in June, it was announced that she’ll receive a songwriting credit for Lennon’s 1971 hit single “Imagine,” in accordance with his wishes.

“I don’t really know where my mom got her rebellious nature from, but she obviously has it in spades,” Sean says. “She just does what she feels; she doesn’t belabor anything or second-guess herself. From a very early age, she was doing completely radical work.”

This article originally appeared in the August 2017 issue of Harper's Bazaar.