Interview for Club Sandwich

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Paul talks exclusively to Club Sandwich about how he felt the evening of 25 January, performing an entirely acoustic set for the first time in his career, and he runs through the 17 tracks on the new limited-edition album, Unplugged: The Official Bootleg.

“I like any excuse to loosen up, and one of the attractions of Unplugged was that it was so loose. A lot of people liked the very informal, intimate atmosphere. I did — in fact, I was a bit surprised at how intimate and how informal it was. It was fairly nerve-wracking, though, not plugging into amps after all those years, using mikes for the guitars. It’s a completely different discipline — if you turn around to look at the drummer, the guitar sound goes.

“We may well put some acoustic stuff into the next tour. A lot of people said that their favourite bit of the 1976 Wings tour was when we all sat down for the acoustic set. For Unplugged we stood up, because we had sat down in 1976. Next time, we’ll be hovering above the audience.

“To me, the Unplugged set was the nearest thing I’ve done to a pub gig for a long time. And in any particular case, as I’m not a black blues singer from the ’50s, my stuff tends to have more humour when it gets like that. But I don’t feel uncomfortable not being serious. The breakdown at the front of ‘We Can Work It Out’ was hilarious. It’s like something from a blooper tape. The album has that element to it, and I’m really glad we did it.”

Be Bop A Lula

“I had a friend at the Liverpool Institute called Cass, and he was in a group called Cass and the Cassanovas. He was one of the first guys I knew who got into music professionally. The rest of us just played around in our houses, and learnt songs, but he was on a Jim Dale Skiffle Contest at the Liverpool Empire, and me and some other guys from the school went to support him. They came second or third. He was the first rock idol to come from our midst! And at school one day he said, ‘There’s this great record by Gene Vincent, called ‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’,’ so I wrote it down and went to Currys record shop after school and ordered it. That record is purple in my mind, the whole song is purple, because of the purple Capitol label. It was a ’78. We threw that into Unplugged at the last minute: I started doing it at rehearsal and Wix really liked the idea.”

I Lost My Little Girl

“Anything that I had written on an acoustic was considered. Like ‘Mother Nature’s Son’, which we also thought about for Unplugged but just didn’t fancy in the end. And ‘I Lost My Little Girl’, the first song I ever wrote, at 14, was written on the guitar. After that I wrote ‘When I’m Sixty-Four’, but that was on piano. ‘I Lost My Little Girl’ is a very innocent little song — G, G7, C — but quite interesting because the chords go down as the melody goes up; it’s a clear musical trick, but it’s also interesting to see such idea around in my first song.

Did you sit down with a pen and paper, and try to think of all the songs you associated with acoustic?

“Yes, with the band. I mentioned ‘San Francisco Bay Blues’, for example, and Robbie liked that one, so that was in. As I say, we also tried ‘Mother Nature’s Son’ [in rehearsal] but I just didn’t enjoy myself, so we grabbed something else instead. We wanted to enjoy ourselves, ‘junk’, for example, came out of the blue, no particular reason. We tried a lot and the ones that felt better went onto the final list.”

Here, There And Everywhere

“John and I were particular fans of songs with little Cole Porter-era preambles, and we put them into a few of our own. ‘Girl Of My Dreams’, one of John’s favourite songs from early on, had a long preamble before it got into the song. So ‘Here, There And Everywhere’ was going to have a preamble; in fact, it’s only a short one [‘to lead a better life…’], but it’s nice to have those little bits that don’t happen anywhere else in the song.

“When people have asked what my favourite song is I’ve often listed ‘Here, There And Everywhere’. There are some nice chord changes and clever little ideas. It ends on a major chord that you don’t expect, and there’s a real nice key change that George Martin suggested in the middle, to go into the solo. I think that’s why jazz people picked up on it. I like the words, too.

Were you aware, with Unplugged, that it was another one of those things that you hadn’t performed live before?

“My career’s funny. I don’t keep track. I don’t know how many songs I’ve written, for instance, though obviously it changes each year. So, in the same way, I’m pretty vague as to whether I’ve done a song live before.”

Blue Moon Of Kentucky

“I originally heard the Elvis version, uptempo and echoey, then later I heard the Bill Monroe original, a slower waltz version, and loved his nasal delivery. I also saw him doing it on telly, in America, a couple of times. So I thought, for Unplugged, that it would be nice to do his version first and then go into the uptempo Elvis one.

“It’s a song from way back that I had confidence in singing, and that’s often enough to choose it for an act. It’s funny – I never meant to record it, but I did it on the early Wings tours, which we recorded, and now this, which we’ve released, and it’s become a bit more important than I intended it, really. But that’s OK.“

We Can Work It Out

“When I think acoustic, as I did for Unplugged, I tap into a whole other pool of numbers that I wouldn’t think of on electric. I actually wrote ‘We Can Work It Out’ on an acoustic, at twice the speed, like a country and western song. It was nice for Unplugged because Wix could play the harmonium lines on his accordion. And I hadn’t done it for a while – 1965 – and that’s a while, in anyone’s language.“

San Francisco Bay Blues

“This one was by Ramblin’ Jack Elliott – I had the record somewhere – and I think George Harrison used to do it. I nearly did ‘Bearcat Mama’, too, with those old-fashioned chord changes. ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’ by Fats Waller was in the same vein: it was just a bit of laugh. If a gig got a bit serious you could do ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’. The kids at the Cavern used to like it, it was a popular request with the girls.

“So if I’ve got an acoustic guitar in my hand, I tend to play certain types of songs. It all comes from playing to my own kids, although there’s a slightly different set of songs that I have for them. They used to ask me to play guitar when they were going to bed and I’d just sit there for five or ten minutes, to send them to sleep, playing things like ‘Cut Across Shorty’, the Eddie Cochran song, which I nearly did for Unplugged. I have a little batch of songs like that, for kids or for when I’m on my own or at a party, and they tend not to be songs I’ve written but from my teenage years, when I used to sit at home and practice. I used to learn ‘Pink Champagne’ so that if anyone asked if I could play a solo, I’d say, ‘Well, do you know “Pink Champagne”?’ They’re little relics from my teenage years, really.“

I’ve Just Seen A Face

“It’s a nice easy song to do, if I can get the words in the right order. There’s a torrent of words to get out. It’s fast but it works at that speed, because it’s sustained!”

You did it on the 1975/76 Wings world tour at a time when you were barely touching Beatles songs, and people realised then that perhaps this was a special song for you.

“It wasn’t that so much, but if I was going to do Beatles songs, I would do lesser known ones. Now, with so much water under the bridge, I feel comfortable with any of them. The old troubles no longer apply, they’re just songs now, nice songs, that I enjoyed recording, like doing — and people like hearing.”

Every Night

“This was really nice to do on Unplugged. I always enjoyed ‘Every Night’ and particularly associate it with first being with Linda. I remember sitting outside a Greek villa on a lovely night and playing it [in 1969]. Phoebe Snow did a great version, because of which a lot of people don’t know it’s my song. I like that: it suggests that the song is strong — it’s not just my voice or personality that helped, somebody else can get some emotion out of it, too. But I suppose, in a way, I wanted to reclaim it.

“We all enjoyed playing it, and got the idea for the a cappella singing, which worked very well in the small TV studio. It’s a good trick for live work: anybody who stops their song and sings it a cappella always goes down well. So I really liked doing this one, although, of course, I sang the wrong words, which is a feature of the Unplugged album!”

She’s A Woman

“This song reminds me of Abbey Road Studios. I love the simplicity of the Beatles’ recording: John’s off-beat guitar going with the snare. It was the first time we ever did that, a very effective trick, because the bass is then completely free. And it has strange little lyrics, ‘she ain’t no peasant’… don’t give me presents’. Weird.

“I suppose it was my first attempt at a blues song. Good blues songs are the hardest things to write, really. It was great fun, having loved all the black stuff, to suddenly be able to do things like ‘She’s A Woman’ and ‘I’m Down’. We were the white boys but we felt like we were almost in there. Then, when Wilson Pickett or Ray Charles would cover something, it was like the ultimate accolade, because that’s where we got it from. We loved the black guys so much. Still do.

For Unplugged, we did ‘She’s A Woman’ in a lower key, so it’s a more laid-back, country version. The Beatles’ version was more wiry.”

Hi-Heel Sneakers

“‘Can I Get A Witness’, ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’, ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’ – I think of all of those early Motown-type songs in one great rush. There was no particular reason to do it on Unplugged other than that I just thought of it one day. What I like about it now is that sneakers are so in vogue – Reebok, Nike, Air and the others – so I think the idea of ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’ is a very funny one, this year particularly. They should bring one out, a sneaker with a built-in heel! And I love all those black lyrics, ‘A wig-hat on your head’! Like in ‘Crackin’ Up’ – ‘I spoiled you woman a long time ago!’. Very chauvinist stuff.”

And I Love Her

“This is a pretty early one. I was living in London when I wrote it, and I had the last verse first, ‘Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky’. And then I got this idea of ‘And I Love Her’ as the title, which was great. It was like, what came before it? I got on the bus… and I love her? There was something literary about that, which was nice. It’s a very, very simple tune, so this time, just to change it, I asked Hamish to sing the melody and I sang the falsetto harmony above him. It’s a song you can do lots of ways.”

That Would Be Something

“This is a little song from when Linda and I were getting together, a simple little thing that I used to jam. I recorded it all on my own for McCartney and heard it again a couple of weeks before the Unplugged show and thought that it was nice. And I was looking for something a little bit bluesy so that Robbie could play slide and Hamish could harmonise. It worked quite well. There’s no lyrics, really: hippies and the rain, a very ’60s idea, very peace and love.”

Blackbird

“It’s always good to have a little party piece. Robbie and Wix know all the sports themes — A Question Of Sport, Match of the Day, the cricket – they can play all of those. You learn these fun things: the Beatles used to do ‘The Harry Lime Theme’, I had ‘Pink Champagne’ and George and I used to do a cod Spanish thing, a Bach melody or something, so that if anyone ever started talking seriously about their guitar, or classics, George and I would play this piece. And some of the ways we played it started me writing ‘Blackbird’. It’s two notes all the time. Once you know those two notes and where they go it’s actually quite easy to play, though it looks slightly complicated. Some guitar players like ‘Blackbird’ — I remember Greg Allman saying that it was clever — and it came from the cod Spanish thing.

“With ‘Blackbird’ I was thinking of a black girl, though I never made it obvious because I always liked the ambiguity. The Beatles had quite a few black fans and we always liked that. I’m always pleased to see black people in the audience, the more the merrier for me. So ‘Blackbird’ was a little bit like that — written to black fans in the civil rights movement: one of these days you’ll be free, this is the time to take those broken wings and fly. All of us were keen civil rights supporters.”

Ain’t No Sunshine

“I wanted Hamish to do something, and during a break in jams we often swap around instruments – I get on drums and Hamish might start doing ‘Ain’t No Sunshine’. It was good fun, doing it on Unplugged. Any excuse to be loose, as I said before.

“I like playing drums, I have a reasonable feel, though I’m not a good technical drummer. But as Elvis Costello told me recently, not many people have got feel. So I thought, right then, I’ll play on telly!“

Good Rockin’ Tonight

“This goes right back, it’s one of the pre-pubescent ones. I never really learned the words to it and don’t even like it when I get the words, they spoil it for me. It’s a memory thing, a nostalgia trip, from the days when I wanted to sound like Elvis. I always wanted to sing like Elvis, like a million other kids, then I found my own voice .in the middle of Elvis and Little Richard. There I was, sandwiched. And ‘Good Rockin’ Tonight’ is just a nice little rocker, the Elvis version. I always liked the line ‘Meet me behind the new barn’. Now, being a farmer, it’s even more amusing. You never saw a barn in Liverpool, now I’ve got one! It was nice to think of those country guys meeting girls behind the barn, having dances in the hay. It was part of a culture we felt was very romantic. I also liked the line ‘Do you no harm’ – C&W is very weird: the fact that she might be thinking that her boyfriend might do her harm, behind a barn: it’s a very weird scenario. So it fired our imagination, all those things we couldn’t understand.

“Beatles song titles were always great. You totally remember the song by the title – they just work, they were like film titles, which is why people still use them for articles, films and TV. And John and I got it from looking at America. ‘Quarter To Three’ by US Bonds was the big one: we used to think, how can he get a song out of that? Chuck Berry was great like that, too, I really love his poetry. ‘Motorvatin” – very hard to find an English equivalent to that. Alabama. Georgia. That’s why I was able to put Georgia into ‘Back In The USSR’, because there are certain words that just make it. Chuck Berry was full of them – ‘Brown-Eyed Handsome Man’, just so clever. It comes naturally to blackwriters, like rap. It’s very genuine.“

Singing The Blues

“To me it’s Guy Mitchell and Tommy Steele, even though there’s been a more recent hit. It’s a very simple song to do, one of the ones I’d sing to the kids.

“I recently met Jonathan Routh when I was on holiday in Jamaica – he used to be the Candid Camera man – and he paints now, lives in a place without electricity, and he takes in all the local kids, like an orphanage. We were sitting around his kitchen table and I was tuning his cook’s guitar, so – being left-handed – I turned it upside down. You have to play simple songs if it’s upside down, and I started playing ‘Singing The Blues’ and Jonathan said to all the little kids, ‘Now you listen to this! This is a good one!’, because it excited him from the Tommy Steele period. That really pleased me. I thought, yes, this is an important song in our lives.“

Junk

“Linda was very helpful, because she used to say, ‘I love to hear you play the guitar’. I was no longer sitting in a room on my own, like I used to be. So I’ll strum along when I watch telly. ‘Junk’ came along that way. Handlebars, sentimental jubilee, jam jars: I like images like that. There are certain words you like. I always used to say that candlestick was my favourite word. Certain words either make colours in your head or bring up a feeling. So the song was a pot-pourri of nice words that I had to make some sense out of, so it was ‘buy buy, sell sell, Junk says the sign in the yard’. To lump it all together I got the idea of ‘Junk’. It was a nice way to write a song. There was also the ‘Singalong’ instrumental version, influenced by Phil Spector’s technique of taking off the lyric for a B-side and calling it ‘Singalong’.

“For Unplugged, I thought it would be nice to do a little instrumental, so I reminded the guys of it. It worked nice on the show: they used it as the playout and rolled the credits over it.“