Sea-Saint Recording Studio • New Orleans • USA

Do you remember why you chose to record much of the record in New Orleans? And do you think the city inspired the sound of the album?

Up until a certain point, everyone had just recorded in their home country. Basically, if you’re American, you record in America. If you’re British, you record in the UK and so on. So, with The Beatles and early days of Wings that meant London. But then there started to be a little bit of a fashion where people were recording elsewhere. I think The Rolling Stones went to the South of France, and we saw it as exotic and thought it was a good idea.

We knew there was a studio in New Orleans that Allen Toussaint had with his friend Marshall Sehorn, called Sea-Saint. It was a great little studio! I was choosing somewhere where I liked the local music: there was African music in Nigeria, for example, and although it didn’t really find its way onto Band on the Run, it was in the air while we were recording.

When we got down to New Orleans it was around carnival time, so we could get dressed up. We had the kids with us too, so that was nice for them! It’s a very musical city, so we were really trying to soak up an atmosphere. We did do one piece, ‘My Carnival’, because of the Creole feel in the city, but generally speaking we did songs I’d written anyway that could have been recorded anywhere. We were just enjoying the buzz of being in a great place. You would run into local people like The Meters, and Professor Longhair, and it was inspiring to go and see them play.

Paul McCartney – From paulmccartney.com, February 28, 2025

Related sessions