Friends To Go

Song facts

“Friends To Go” is a track from Paul McCartney’s 2005 album “Chaos And Creation In The Backyard“.

From Wikipedia:

Friends to Go is a song written by Paul McCartney for his 2005 album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. McCartney has said that he thought it was similar to something George Harrison may have composed.

Paul McCartney confessed he was helped by George Harrison’s spirit to write the song and lyrics for ‘Waiting For Your Friends To Go‘, over three years after the Beatles guitarist’s death. McCartney, 63, said he felt Harrison’s spirit when he wrote the song, arguing he’s unsure about the meaning of the lyrics. “The funny thing about it was I felt as if I was almost George Harrison during the writing of that song,” said McCartney. “I just got this feeling, this is George. So it was like I was writing – I was like George – writing one of his songs. So I just wrote it, it just wrote itself very easily ’cause it wasn’t even me writing it.“

From an interview of Paul McCartney by Gary Crowley:

What’s the inspiration behind the next track, Friends to Go?

Funny thing about some songs is when you’re writing them you can think  you’re someone else. I mean when I was doing Long and Winding Road I thought I was Ray Charles. In actual fact my record of it, the Beatles record of it, is nothing like Ray Charles at all. But in my mind I was being him. I was playing Ray. And on Friends to Go I realised I was playing George Harrison. So to me it just started to sound like a George Harrison song. So I was writing with that in the back of my mind, so it was kind of like (sings) ‘I’ve been waiting on the other side for your friends to leave so I don’t have to hide’.

You know that whole sequence I can see George doing it  (Sings) ‘I’ve been waiting on the other side for your friends to go.’  So that was it. You know I was just sat down to write and the feeling of George came over me and I just kept writing it thinking ‘George could have written this’  it was nice. It was like a sort of friendly song to write. And I just kept imagining I was just over by some sort of housing estate, where these people lived, in a sort of block of flats and I was like over the other side over here just watching them and waiting for them to go so I could go in. I don’t  know why, a psychiatrist could probably again have a whale of a time with that one.

Paul McCartney – from 2005 UK promotional-only interview CD, recorded July 2005 at Air Studios in London

Last updated on January 17, 2021

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