Interview for Disc And Music Echo • Saturday, September 10, 1966

Interview

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BACK FROM THEIR MOST TALKED ABOUT AMERICAN TOUR — THE BEATLES.

Paul McCartney in his new house, cosy but with no piano yet, talking about how THEY felt. The worry of the first few days and whether they’d make it or not. And the possibility of, despite everything, returning to America to fulfill a long ambition — to record there. This week in London Paul McCartney saying “If they’d wanted to shoot us it would have been easy for them.“

ABOUT THAT TRIP:

“At the beginning, we felt that we had to do something about the remark John made or get got! People in America took what he had said as an arrogant remark. It wasn’t. The first few days were peculiar because it just wasn’t a Beatles tour. We would have been more worried if we hadn’t been working and so preoccupied. But after we’d been to Memphis — which we were most worried about — it was fine. We were in America as usual and that was that. Before we went was the worse time. People kept saying ‘Are you sure you’re going to be safe?’. And I suppose we could have been in danger. The Americans were roused. And if anyone had wanted to shoot us it would have been easy for them — at one of those concerts with thousands of people milling around. In fact, as it turned out the whole thing had been blown up terrifically by the time it had reached the British papers. We found out that the guy who started it did it purely as an unashamed publicity stunt. If we’d known that before we went we wouldn’t have been so anxious.”

ABOUT RECORDING OUT OF BRITAIN NEXT YEAR:

“We were going to record ‘Revolver’ in America. But they wanted a fantastic amount of money to use the facilities there. We thought we’d forget it because they were obviously trying to take us for a ride because we were the Beatles. We’d been thinking about going to record there for some time. It would have been for a certain sound — an American sound. The Stones have it now on their records and they get better all the time. Then when we finished ‘Revolver’ we realised that we’d found a new British sound almost by accident.

l think there were only two tracks on that LP that would have sounded better if we’d cut them in America, ‘Taxman’ and ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ because they need that raw quality that you just can’t get in this country for some reason. But ‘Eleanor Rigby’ would have been worse because the string players in America aren’t so good.

Yes, we may still record in the States. What we would do is write some numbers especially, take them over, do them and see how it works out.”

AND ABOUT PLANS FOR THE REST OF THIS YEAR AND THAT INEVITABLE MARRIAGE QUESTION:

“We’re not doing anything for a few weeks — then we’ll be working on a new LP and single. I’m halfway through a song I started in Los Angeles but can’t finish because they haven’t moved my piano in here yet!

“No, I don’t think we’ve really thought about not doing a tour in Britain this year. You don’t really miss touring. Really you rely a lot on your audience for your act, which means that when you perform live it’s difficult to keep control of what’s going on.

“I still get the same feeling as we had in the beginning. It’s not quite as exciting doing a tour here as when we first started but in a way, to a more or lesser degree, it’s the same. You still get rough nights with the good ones. John’s away filming with Dick Lester at the moment. Oh, I don’t know about doing any solo film work myself but I’ll probably be doing a few things,” he added mysteriously.

“ON THE SUBJECT OF ALL THOSE MARRIAGE THINGS ALL I HAVE TO SAY IS THIS: I HAVE HAD A PROPOSAL FROM MRS. ELVIRA MILLER — AND ACCEPTED.”‘

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Last updated on January 4, 2023