Slidin'

“Slidin’” is a track from 2020 album “McCartney III“.

“Slidin'” was started during the sessions for Paul’s previous studio album “Egypt Station” which entered the Billboard album charts at #1. The song’s riff came about by Paul jamming with his live band. Before playing a gig, Paul will often perform a soundcheck set of an hour or longer. The riff from “Slidin'” came from the soundcheck jam at his Dusseldorf show in May 2016. To achieve the heavy drum sound that opens the track, Paul recorded the tom-toms at double speed. When played back at normal speed, the drums are then an octave lower and the effect creates a deeper tone.

From Spotify Storyline. Storyline is a feature of Spotify that gives behind-the-scenes information from artists about their songs, presented with a carousel of cards featuring a combination of text and images.

Do you and the band still improvise at soundcheck?

Yeah, we do! We’ve got millions of them! And fortunately, there’s a guy in our team called Jamie, who logs them. And he tells me we’ve actually got thousands! Some of them are really good and occasionally I’ll pick one out and work on it. For ‘Egypt Station’, I picked one out, though we didn’t finish it. I picked one out and we’re kind of making a track around this riff from the soundcheck jam. ‘Cause it was like, “That was a good little riff!” But because they’re improvised they’re instant and then they’re gone.

Paul McCartney – Interview for paulmccartney.com, July 17, 2019

Slidin’ came from a soundcheck jam when we were playing in Dusseldorf in Germany. During soundchecks, when I’m checking my guitar, I like to try and make something up and the band will join in and the sound man then gets the sound of my guitar which I’m going to use later in the show. So I started jamming and this riff came out that I liked and so we developed that and I thought ‘I must do something with that’. I really liked it as a riff, it stayed in my brain, so we did and recorded it for ‘Egypt Station’ [his 2018 solo album] with my band but it didn’t work out, so I had it kind of half finished so I changed some things here and there and put lyrics on it and so it became this.

‘Slidin’ for me is… I would listen to the Olympics, the Winter Olympics and hear the announcers saying ‘sliding’, they kept saying the word ‘sliding’, when they meant Snowboarding or Skiing or Tobogganing anything with slides, I just thought that’s a great, nice name for all of those, a group name for all of that so I then started thinking of snowboarders and skiers and that became the song ‘Slidin’.

Paul McCartney, from NME, December 23, 2020

We used our Studer J37 Tape Machine on this track. The drums were recorded at double speed.

Paul McCartney – from the “McCartney III” Tim’s Twitter Listening Party, December 21, 2020

You’re on a bit of McCartney III, right?

Yeah. It was mainly a solo record, but he used an idea from a soundcheck. We learned it and played the riff. We ended up playing that song since that song was recorded during the Egypt Station sessions. It was called “Slidin’.” I think that song came out really cool. It has us playing on it. After we did that session, I think he wrote lyrics to it and fleshed it out into a whole song.

Rusty Anderson – Interview with Rolling Stone – October 11, 2023

The soundcheck jam from the concert in Dusseldorf was released as a bonus track on some editions of “McCartney III“.

In 2021, for the “McCartney III Imagined” project, English guitarist Ed O’Brien (EOB) reimagined “Slidin’“.

Lyrics

Variations

• A Album version
• B "McCartney III Imagined" version
• L1 Dusseldorf Jam

Officially appears on

Related films

Videos

Live performances

“Slidin'” has been played in 1 soundchecks.