Interview for Melody Maker

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As Barry McGuire’s “Eve of Destruction” edged its way to number four in the Pop Fifty, Beatle Paul McCartney this week gave the MM his views on the pop protest song movement.

Said Paul: “Well, the songs are all getting a bit silly, aren’t they? I mean, Sonny’s even on about protests on the length of his hair! Paul, of Peter Paul and Mary, said ‘I’m A Loser’ was a protest song. Well, John wrote most of it. Did he think he was protesting? Don’t be daft!

“You know, if you think about it, ‘Don’t Stand On My Blue Suede Shoes’ is a protest song. So are things like ‘I Love You Baby, But You Don’t Love Me’.

“Seriously, I don’t like ‘Eve Of Destruction’ very much. It seems to be cashing in on a trend. Somebody like Bob Dylan comes up and people say ‘Let’s copy him, he’s good’ and then the whole market gets saturated.”

“Protest songs make me concentrate too much on the lyric which I don’t like.

“These labels like ‘protest’ become ridiculous. Most of them are made by newspapers. It reaches the stage where, one week, you meet a character who knows the scene and you joke, ‘Yeah, it’s folk this week.’ Next week you meet him and you say, ‘Yeah, it’s protest this week!’ Own up.

“It reminds me about all the nonsense written about the Mersey Beat. Everyone was jumping on the bandwagon. […]