Interview for Associated Press

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18mins approx

1. Sit dow interview with Paul McCartney. Talks on: his ‘Back in the World 2003’ tour; compromising himself by speaking out on the Iraq conflict; music to lift spirits; why Paris as his first venue – routing; expectations from European leg of the tour after US – the experience; “to play live is a luxury”; being blessed as a musician; ending the tour in Liverpool; family and ardous schedule; touring like holiday; loves what he does and that why he continues to do it – doesn’t need the money; retiring not something he’s looking at at the moment; No1 tour in US; age range of his fans and why – mixture of nostalgia and just liking the songs; likes Eminem; never performed live Beatles songs; performing Beatles songs as a solo artist; favourite songs to perform in this show: ‘Hey Jude’ and a small song he performs as an imaginary with John Lennon written after John Lennon died; playing acoustic – intimacy of it; having his family and friends join him on tour; family man; tour group as family; having Heather join him on tour.

Including soundbites:

“Very excited, looking forward to it, we have been off the road for a little while now, and just been doing some rehearsals the last couple of weeks and it is great to get back with the band and all the people. I love it.”

“Sometimes it is a little bit like a holiday, particularly because we like playing, so that is the little pay off at the end of the day. But the travelling is very good, I mean we don’t travel badly, you know. We travel like the presidents of countries, you know it is really posh, so we have great travelling and we are looked after very well and we stay in great hotels, so some people would consider that a holiday and only if you hated it and you were jaded and you thought ‘ahhh’ I am really fed up would it be arduous, I think people like myself who love it and the band who love it just consider it as something we like doing, so we get out, stay at nice hotels, fly around the world in these amazing airplanes and meet these incredible people. At the end of the day, there is this audience giving you this incredible feedback.”

“So yeah, as far as retiring is concerned, it is nothing I am looking forward to or even thinking of. I’ve always said that as long as people want to come and see me, you know then I will probably do it I will probably feel like doing it. The minute I start to feel like shuffling around in the audience and going “whoa” it is not very good is it. Or the tickets are not selling well then I will get the big message, thing: It is time to go, you know. I never feel like that and the success of the tour last year, you know what I mean it was the number one tour in America and that is not time to go.”

“I think that the songs that we do, because they include Beatles songs and Wings songs and some more recent songs, I think they hit a lot of nerves in people, so that the Beatle songs hit two sets of nerves. It is the people kind of my age and around my age who were there, either younger then me or young teenagers or a little bit older, and for them the songs, you know we have signs in the audience you know – ” I got married to Hey Jude” – and it is like the song means something very special to them, so I think there is a lot of that in the show, and then you get children, I mean you get like you know eight to ten year olds who have not got any of that nostalgia, it is just that they like the songs, I think it is a mixture of that. “