New (Deluxe Edition)

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Track list

Disc 1

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About

From the liner notes of the album, notes from Paul:

Dear you, sorry I didn’t get back sooner. Been busy. New songs needed to be recorded. Some came after dropping off my youngest daughter at school. With a cup of tea in one hand and a guitar in the other I would delve into the black hole of music, and a few hours later, greet the arrival of a new song. Some came as late night inspirations when I played my dad’s old piano, which he had bought from Brian Epstein’s dad’s shop in Liverpool. Others emerged in the recording studio over improvised instrumental layers–hot off the skillet. A couple of them arrived as I was sitting around on holiday, strumming in the cool air conditioned room as the sun beat down outside. Once I had the songs I started to wonder who to do them with. I looked around for producers whose work I admired, and arranged to meet them, the idea being that one of them would stick out, and we would do the rest of the songs together. In fact, I enjoyed working with all of them for various reasons, and ended up with four producers. My only worry was that the recordings might not fit together, but I realised that not only would the fact that I was singing hold them together but the tracks of Beatle albums were often extremely different from each other that worked ok! First, I met up with Paul Epworth, whose studio at that time was above a shop on a London street. He told me that he already had an idea which he thought we could improvise on. He looked at one of the guitars in the studio and said: “I wonder what secrets that guitar is holding for us to find?” I started banging out something on the piano while Paul sat in on the drum kit. The guitar gave up a riff and pretty soon we had the beginnings of the opening track “Save Us”. We went on to record ‘Queenie Eye’ which I had based on the refrain from a traditional street game that I played as a kid in Liverpool. Another day we used a similar technique to come with ‘Road’. Next I hooked up with Ethan Johns, the song of my friend Glyn Johns, who I had worked with on Beatles and Wings recordings. Ethan, a full bearded Glastonbury man was easy to get along with and I got a feeling that his style suited my more acoustic songs. We went to Abbey Road Studios and fairly swiftly put down a take of ‘Hosanna’. Later, in my studio in Sussex, we recorded ‘Early Days’ a song based on my reminiscences of formative times with John before The Beatles, when we were first starting out. It was good to work with young producers whose approaches were so different. Their aims were the same but the variety of their work methods kept the recordings fresh and energetic. Together we finished more tracks than appear on the album. They will, no doubt, show up somewhere sooner or later. Mark Ronson, a snappy dresser and great producer, was someone I knew as a friend, but had never worked with. He had DJ’d at Nancy’s and my wedding. He kept us bopping til the early hours of the morning, so I already liked his vibe, and of course, I knew and loved his recordings with Amy Winehouse and others. We met up at my Sussex studio and started with a song that I wrote that morning in anticipation of our first session together. We went on to record ‘New’ and ‘Alligator’, then finished them off in New York’s Avatar Studios. Like the other producers I worked with the energy in the studio was strong and exceedingly enjoyable. As the son of George Martin, our great Beatles’ producer Giles Martin was someone I was already pretty familiar with. I had known him since he was a ‘twinkle in the eye’ and watched him grow up, seeing him emerge as someone who did a lot of the hard graft on The Beatles’ Love album. We worked together on music for the Olympic games, and had recorded a song for the upcoming Bungie video game. I asked him if he would like to work on some of my new songs. He agreed, so we went into Air Lyndhurst Studios in North London and laid down ‘On My Way To Work’, ‘Everybody Out There’ and ‘I Can Bet’. Next we took all the tracks out to Los Angeles where we had two rooms at Henson Studios and made final mixes of everything watched over at the front gate by Kermit the Frog. In one room Mark ‘Spike’ Stent was set up to mix the tracks. We were along the corridor in another studio, making sure the music was totally ready for Spike to mix. As soon as we were happy with the track we would take it to the mix room to be cooked. After we had listened to what Spike had done and made any necessary tweaks we returned to the other room and finished another song. Sometimes, in the case ‘Appreciate’ and ‘Looking At Her’ we would write and record new offerings for Spike’s oven to bake. The buzz was intense and that period had an atmosphere to it that was positively electric. Then came the phase when a lot of hard decisions had to be made. What to include and what to leave off the album. What order the tracks would run in. Our management team now knew what we had decided. When we had everything in place, the recordings went off to Sterling Sound in New York to be mastered for your delight. We put a lot of energy and effort into making this album. Hard work? No, not at all. We don’t work music, we play it! Cheers to you. Love, Paul.

Last updated on May 27, 2019