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Released in 2007

House Of Wax

Written by Paul McCartney

Last updated on January 18, 2021


Album This song officially appears on the Memory Almost Full Official album.

Timeline This song was officially released in 2007

Master album

Related session

This song was recorded during the following studio sessions:

Related interview

House Of Wax” is a song from Paul McCartney’s 2007 album, “Memory Almost Full“.

There’s something about chords in a song that can take you to a place. In this song they are not complex but there’s something in the tonality of them that takes you to what the vocal becomes. And I like the lyrics: ‘Lightning hits the house of wax, poets spill out on the streets, to set alight the incomplete remainders of the future.’ It’s quite surreal. I enjoyed singing them because of those chords and the mixture of the melody and the lyrics. I think this will be good to do live. It’s another one that my band played on. In fact the medley was conceived early on in this album and the band is featured on a lot of it.

Paul McCartney – interview with Mail On Sunday, May 12, 2008

Interview with David Khane, from Mix Online, October 1, 2007:

“House of Wax”: The climactic “House of Wax,” which McCartney played live on his handful of “secret gig” shows supporting the album, again features the band, with McCartney providing the crying blues guitar solo. “The solos were a big deal for me,” Kahne recalls. “Those sections were blank; we didn’t know what we were going to put there. I heard ‘Taxman’ on the radio, for which he’d done the solo, and I thought how great it would be if he would just rip in those big breaks. So I asked, ‘Instead of making a more complex part, can you just play guitar solos?’ He said, ‘Okay,’ sat in the control room with his Casino plugged into the Vox and just whipped it up, and literally, a half-hour later, they were done. I’ve never heard him play guitar like that. He just pushes the notes sharp perfectly at the right time.


Lyrics

Lightning hits the house of wax

Poets spill out on the street

To set alight the incomplete

Remainders of the future


Hidden in the yard. Hidden in the yard


Thunder drowns the trumpets blast

Poets scatter through the night

But they can only dream of flight

Away from their confusion


Hidden in the yard. Underneath the wall

Buried deep below a thousand layers lay the

answer to it all


Lightning hits the house of wax

Women scream and run around

To dance upon the battleground

Like wild demented horses


Hidden in the yard. Underneath the wall

Buried deep below a thousand layers lay the

answer to it all


Hidden in the yard. Underneath the wall

Buried deep below a thousand layers lay the

answer to it all

Officially appears on

Bootlegs

See all bootlegs containing “House Of Wax

Videos

Live performances

House Of Wax” has been played in 6 concerts.

Latest concerts where “House Of Wax” has been played

See all concerts where “House Of Wax” has been played


Going further

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present

"House Of Wax" is one of the songs featured in the book "The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present," published in 2021. The book explores Paul McCartney's early Liverpool days, his time with the Beatles, Wings, and his solo career. It pairs the lyrics of 154 of his songs with his first-person commentary on the circumstances of their creation, the inspirations behind them, and his current thoughts on them.

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Paul McCartney writing

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