Digital Booklet - Kisses On The Bott.pdf - [2012] Kisses On the Bottom - have-fun

p & c 2012 MPL Communications Inc. under exclusive license to StarCon, LLC d/b/a Hear MusicTM, 100 N. Crescent

Dr., Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Hear MusicTM is a licensed trademark of Starbucks US Brands, LLC in the US and

HRM-33600-25

www.paulmccartney.com

The album offers some classic vintage songs and a few Paul McCartney originals.

How did the general idea come about?

bit older and I got a bit more capable. But I was always busking it; he knew the real

chords, and I had to busk my way around. But it was good enough for the family sing-

song. A lot of these songs, like Bye Bye Blackbird, were ones that I’d sung along with.

For years I’ve been wanting to do some of the old songs that my parents’ generation

used to sing at New Year. What would happen is us kids would arrive at the ‘do’, the

carpets would get rolled back, all the women would sit around with their little drinks

of rum-and-black, gin-and-it, Babycham; someone would play the piano and it was

normally my Dad. They would sing these old songs all night: When The Red Red

Robin, Carolina Moon. And I took all of that in.

There’s a track called Home that I remember from my Dad’s era. It’s funny, when I

suggested that one, Diana said, “Oh my gosh, I though I was the only person on earth

who knew that song.” I actually used to do an instrumental version of it, before The

Beatles. I liked the chords, so I used to play a little guitar instrumental when me and

John were just getting it together. So I had nice memories of that one.

Eventually I just said “I really ought to do this, or I’ll go off the idea, and I’ll kick

myself.” So I talked to a lady in our New York Ofice called Nancy Jeffries who knows

all about all the publishing side of the business, and I said, “If I was gonna do it, who

might I work with? Who might produce? What songs do you think I might do? I’ve got

my own selection, what do you think?” And she said, “I think Tommy LiPuma would

be great, you should meet him, and I’ll think of some songs to suggest.”

But some of the songs we’ve done on the album are songs that I didn’t know. Like,

More I Cannot Wish You, is actually from the stage show Guys & Dolls; it didn’t make

the ilm. But I thought it was such a poignant little song. And what totally did my

head in is, it’s a guy, the grandfather, singing to a young girl. With me having a young

daughter it’s very poignant. There’s one that’s quite famous, particularly in jazz circles,

called My One And Only Love ( bonus track ), which I’d never heard, it had passed me

by. But it’s beautifully crafted, one of my favourite songs now.

So I met with Tommy ( LiPuma ), and we just hung out, talking about the songs, the old

sing-songs, and we found we had a lot in common. But we tried to work out a slightly

different approach, and used a selection of songs that wouldn’t be the absolute

obvious ones, like The Way You Look Tonight, songs that everyone tends to cover.

We looked for songs that were a little more unusual, that sometimes people might

never have heard. So that’s what happened. We found a bunch of things. It’s a good

idea to go slightly off-piste. Even to the extent where I didn’t know some of them.

And he suggested Diana Krall, who he knew very well. We ran through a couple of my

selections, a couple of Tommy’s, a couple of Diana’s, and we just threw a lot of songs

into a pool, and eventually I’d say, “I like that one, I’m not too keen on that one…” So

we had a bunch of things and we were ready to record.

Tell us a little about the making of this album.

The great thing about working with someone like Tommy, and it reminded me really

of working with George Martin, is that he’s a knowledgeable guy. He’s a veteran, in

the nicest possible way, of the recording business, so he has a great lineage. And,

like George, he knows all the good players. I’d say, “It might be nice to have a little

trombone solo,” and he’d say “OK” and he’d get in Ira Nepus. And for arrangements

he would say, “Well, I think Johnny Mandel would be great.” I must admit, I wanted to

work with Johnny, cos he’s one of the classics. But then, Tommy knew other arrangers,

a guy like Alan Broadbent who’s brilliant. So he could bring that to it. Rather than

just get any old trombone player, he’d say “I know a guy who knows the style and

would be very good.” That was very helpful. We ended up at Capitol A Studio, in

that very iconic building ( Capitol Records Tower, Hollywood ), where Nat King Cole,

Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, even Gene Vincent recorded. I was thrown in the deep

end, because I’m not a jazz player. I didn’t have a guitar or a piano to hide behind.

I was just put on what the engineers told me was Nat King Cole’s mic, which was

amazingly intimidating! In front of jazz musicians, which again was pretty intimidating.

I just had to ind my way through this. I tried this, I tried that, and I eventually found

the kind of zone that I’d be comfortable with. And once I’d got over the intimidated

feeling, it became a very pleasurable way to work.

Your own songs apart, the selections are all American, I think?

The thing is, from that era, we just chose what we thought were good songs, so the

nationality of the song didn’t matter. It just happened that there was a lot of good

American music coming out of the States at that time, it was a very rich period. We

didn’t choose on songwriters, we chose on whether we fancied the song or not, at

that moment. So there wasn’t any great head-banging or heavy breathing went into

the choices. It was more, “This feels right, let’s do this one.” So we just did it, a bit in

the manner of the sing-song: “Let’s do this one! Yeah!”

Were songs like these among the irst you ever learned to play?

There’s such a high level of musicianship on there. And the nice thing for me was,

other than going in to do the vocals, I didn’t feel like I had to do much hard work.

The players did all the hard work, and I was just in the booth, singing. There was

one moment when we were having a puzzle over some slight problem, and Diana

turned to me and said, “Paul, what are you going to do here?” I said, “I don’t mind.

No, I never learned how to play them. All I ever did was sing them, at the family

sing-songs. They’re quite complicated, the chords and things. I’d have a bash, and I

did eventually become the sort of family piano player, at New Year, as my Dad got a

I’m in LA. I’m British. I’m a tourist. I’m in Capitol A Studio, I’m singing on Nat King

Cole’s microphone – I’m on holiday!” And she looked at me and smiled. She went, “A

holiday.” So I think we all then went, “Great, OK, so let’s get that vibe.” And we did.

Whenever we were worried about something I’d go, “I don’t mind, I’m on holiday.”

So, coupled with the fact that we were not working from musical charts, and we were

really making it up, it ended up much more free and open and organic. It was quite a

voyage of discovery. There’s a very relaxed approach to it all.

entertainment centres. Basically, many of the houses in those days, and I understand

it was the same in America, had a piano. No matter how poor you were, most people

managed to get a piano. It’s funny, the one we had in our house, my Dad later told

me he’d bought off Brian Epstein’s Dad, in NEMS. People wanted positive songs to

lose the memory of the War. And I grew up with that. I think it really gave me a deep

love of that kind of thing.

Did it shape you much? We think of The Beatles as springing up with rock’n’roll,

but you personally had been around for some years before Elvis came along.

One of the nice things that I realised afterwards, I thought, “You know what? That’s

exactly how we used to work with The Beatles.” John and I would come in on

Monday morning with a song, that George Martin hadn’t heard, George and Ringo

hadn’t heard. We’d play them the song and we’d all kick it around until we had an

arrangement that we were satisied with. Then we’d record it, quite quickly, without

too much fuss. That was very much the way we did this, which was a great pleasure

for me.

Yes, we’d actually grown up with songs from that era. Two of John’s favourite songs,

when I met him, were Close Your Eyes ( by Bernice Petkere, 1933 ), which is very much

of that era, and the other was Little White Lies ( by Walter Donaldson, 1930 ). Those

were the kind of songs that we’d been listening to and that attracted me to him. I’d

say, Yeah, well I love that song and he’d say I love this one, or that one. And I do think

they did have quite an inluence on us melodically. A lot of these old songs had what

they called a “verse”. Anyone else would call it an introduction. It’s always the bit that

you never knew.

What about the track, My Valentine? That’s one of your own, albeit in the same

general style.

I was in Morocco with Nancy, who’s now my wife, and we were having a nice holiday

but it was raining rather a lot. I said, “A pity it’s raining” and she said “It doesn’t

matter, we can still have a good time.” And I’m like that, too, I don’t mind at all.

So there was an old piano, slightly out of tune, in the foyer of the hotel. And there

was this lovely Irish guy who knew so much old stuff, really deep stuff like Beautiful

Dreamer, If You Were The Only Girl In The World... Again, stuff from my Dad’s era. I

used to enjoy listening to him in the evenings and he put me in mind of that genre.

You include one here on Bye Bye Blackbird.

Yeah. Then it goes, “Pack up all my cares and woe” and you go, “Oh, I know this

song!” You inally recognise it. John and I liked that. We used to talk about that as

one of things it would be good to do. We gave a kind of nod to it on Here, There

And Everywhere: “To lead a better life, I need my love to be here…” Whereas in the

old days they would have extended that: “She was here, and I was there, and I think

she’s everywhere…”

So one afternoon, when it was raining, I was in that foyer, and without anyone noticing

except a couple of waiters who were clearing up, I sat at the piano and started

knocking around with this little tune, kind of in the style that I knew he played in:

“What if it rained? We didn’t care. She said that some day soon the sun was gonna

shine…” And there was my Irish buddy sitting behind me, he’d been listening to me

all the time: “Ah that’s great!” A nice little vote of conidence in the song. When I

played it to Tommy, he said “Yeah, I love it, great.” So we did that one and eventually

I had the pleasure of working with Eric ( Clapton ), who put a lovely acoustic guitar

part on. And by the way, I forgot the important ingredient, the day I wrote it was

Valentine’s Day, a fairly important fact! It was our irst dance, very romantic.

Another one might be Do You Want To Know A Secret? “You’ll never know how

much I really love you,” and all that.

That’s right. That was where all that came from. It’s in a lot of the songs that we were

trying to write, even though we were now living in the rock’n’roll era, and inluenced

by it. But when you say rock’n’roll, there’s Elvis Presley doing Love Me Tender, which

is an old song, way older than Elvis. So these songs lived in the rock’n’roll era, as well

as the more hard-rocking things, and I think it was good to have that mix.

It’s an era you’ve often revisited, isn’t it? Honey Pie, You Gave Me The Answer,

Baby’s Request…

The songs of that era were very often on the smoochy side.

Exactly, they’re pretty romantic. The way I igure it, a lot of it was post-War. My

parents’ generation were just recovering, when I grew up, from World War II. In

Liverpool they’d all been bombed. So they were now determined to have a good

time, and they latched on to these very positive songs. They didn’t have expensive

It’s a style that appeals to me. People will often say “What songs do you like? Who

are your favourite composers?” And I say Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers and

people like that, because the songs are very skilled. Cheek To Cheek was always one

of my favourite songs, I love the way it returns to its opening: “…carry me through,

to, Heaven, I’m in…” It’s a simple little trick, but as a writer I always loved that. And

someone pointed out to me that I kind of did that in Here There And Everywhere.

So all these inluences have always been there. Unless you actually analyse the whole

thing you wouldn’t know it, but they were deinitely in a lot of what we did in The

Beatles.

It’s good to hear Baby’s Request, a bonus track here, which you irst did for the

Back To The Egg album in 1979.

Yeah, that was nice. Before we started the album I played Tommy a couple of songs

that were written in the style of the album that we were about to make. And he said

“Oh, we should try that.” That was originally written, very much in this style, for The

Mills Brothers. I was hoping they would do it. Something happened and they never

did. I’m not sure if they ever heard that I’d offered it to them.

And romance is not just for Valentine’s Day, is it?

I hope it goes beyond that. It works all the year round. To me, I’ve found I enjoy this

as an album to relax by. I can imagine you come home from work, kick your shoes off,

and have your favourite drink, whether it’s hot cocoa or wine or a cup of tea, and you

just sit back. It’s that kind of album. It’s a nice mood. Just let it lood over you.

I nterview by Paul Du Noyer

Digital Booklet - Kisses On The Bott.pdf

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika: