Clint Harrigan

About

“Clint Harrigan” was the pseudonym used by Paul McCartney to write the some sleeve notes for Wild Life released in 1971, and Thrillington released in 1977.

John Lennon rightly suggested that Paul was behind Clint Harrigan in his vitriolic letter to Paul, published in Melody Maker, in 1971 (emphasis is mine):

[…] One other little lie in your “It’s only Paulie” MM bit: Let It Be was not the first bit of hype on a Beatle album. Remember Tony Barrow? And his wonderful writing on “Please Please Me” etc. etc. The early Beatle Xmas records!

And you gotta admit it was a ‘new-phase’ Beatle album, incidentally written in the style of the great Barrow himself! By the way, what happened to my idea of putting the parody of our first album cover on the Let It Be cover?

Also, we were intending to parody Barrow originally, so it was hype. But what is your LIFE article? Tony Barrow couldn’t have done it better. (And your writing inside of the Wings album [Wild Life] isn’t exactly the realist is it?) Anyway, enough of this petty bourgeois fun.

John Lennon

In 1990, Paul McCartney admitted to journalist Peter Palmiere that he was Clint Harrigan.

From the liner notes of Wild Life:

When Paul and Linda McCartney were in New York recording ‘RAM’ they needed a drummer so they found a sweaty old basement in the West 40’s and invited some drummers to play on a battered old drum kit. One of those who turned up and went straight for his tom toms was Denny Seiwell, a tall type with eight generations of drummers in his family, who played well and left the drum kit throbbing. After that, Paul, Linda and Denny played together on ‘RAM’ and then each took off for a holiday.

The Macs returned to Britain and during the time following wrote a bunch of songs at their country retreat.

When the time came to go recording again they rang Denny Laine, a Birmingham lad, and asked him if he was coming out to play. Replying in the affirmative he brought his faithful guitar, and he and the Macs, along with Denny S. (who had arrived from the States as if by magic carrying his wife who was drunk again) and his drums, proceeded.

They rehearsed for a while, sang some old songs, wrote some new ones and in time headed for the big city studios.

In three days they had laid down most of the tracks and by the end of a couple of weeks the album was finished.

In this wrapper is the music they made. Can you dig it? 

Clint Harrigan

From the liner notes of Thrillington:

Percy ‘Thrills’ Thrillington was born in Coventry Cathedral in England in 1939. As a young man he wandered the globe. His travels took him to Baton Rouge, Louisiana in the US where he studied music for five years. He later moved to LA where he gained expertise in conducting and arranging as well as the marketing end of the music business. Eventually his path led to London where his lifelong ambition to form an orchestra was finally realized… he takes all the songs from Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram album and, with the help of some of London’s best orchestra and ‘big band’ musicians, forges the pop music themes into new orchestral versions. He is assisted by Richard Newson [sic] who arranged and conducted. When McCartney heard what ‘Thrills’ was doing he even gave the project his seal of approval.

Clint Harrigan