Interview for paulmccartney.com • Tuesday, March 30, 2021
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- Album This interview has been made to promote the McCartney III Imagined Streaming.
Interview
PaulMcCartney.com: McCartney III Imagined is such an exciting concept, and we can’t wait for everyone to hear all the different tracks on the album. Would you ever consider getting another one of your albums reimagined? If so which one?
Paul: I think it’s a really interesting idea. Usually when you’re making music, you don’t dream up the idea that someone else will cover your stuff – you just wait to see if it happens. That’s the traditional way of things being re-imagined. But it is kinda nice when you actually put it together as a project, and say to people, ‘Would you like to do this?’ Particularly when they’ve got a lot of time on their hands, when we’re all in lockdown and no one’s touring… I think it is a good idea. And which other album might I do, given the chance? RAM is the one that comes to mind.
PMC.com: We’ve got the 50th anniversary of RAM coming up this year, maybe there’ll be some organic ones coming through.
Paul: Now that would be an idea.
PMC.com: Have you considered writing songs for other artists again, in the same way you did in the sixties for artists like Mary Hopkin, Billy J. Kramer, and Peter and Gordon?
Paul: The truth is that I have been doing that with two big projects that I have on: with the animation feature film High in the Clouds which is in production, and with the musical It’s A Wonderful Life. I’ve demoed songs for both those projects, but they won’t be sung by me. Maybe they’ll find a way to work in my version in the end credits, or something, but generally it’ll be the characters in the plays and films performing those songs. So, whoever plays George Bailey in It’s A Wonderful Life will sing the songs I’ve written for him.
So, that’s kind of my modern equivalent of writing for Billy J. Kramer or for Peter and Gordon… but it’s morphed into more than that. I’m writing a lot of songs for each project which are all going to be sung by lots of different people. I can’t wait to hear that!
PMC.com: Do people still approach you to write songs for them?
Paul: People don’t really do that so much anymore. It’s not like it was in the sixties, when it was a way to get our name out there. Back then, me and John – well, the four of us actually – would come down to London and go to Charing Cross Road and meet our music publisher, and they would introduce us to couple of guys who write for people. That got us excited, and we would say, ‘Yeah, we could write a song for you – we’ve got one left over’. Billy J. Kramer was managed by the same person as us, Brian Epstein, so it was easy to give him some stuff. But that was when we were just starting out.
So, what’s happened with McCartney III Imagined – with these other artists reimagining the songs – is great. In the spirit of McCartney III having arrived by surprise, I thought, ‘Well, let’s just see what happens!’