Paul McCartney
Drum! Magazine, 2005
Like my interview with Miles Davis for Keyboard, this one with Paul McCartney was fashioned and conducted to fit within the magazine’s editorial purview. But as with Miles, Paul seemed intrigued by that focus, which gave him an opportunity to do something other than visit the weary ground he had trod already with countless journalists over half a century already — a fact I pointed out right at the top in part to maybe loosen things up a little for us both.
A little background: My profile was intended to run on the cover of Drum! alongside similarly focused cover stories on Paul in Keyboard, Guitar Player and Bass Player. The idea was not just to highlight the fact that he played everything on his new album at the time, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, but also to become the first artist to be lauded on four simultaneous covers in the top instrument-focused magazines.
My brother Andy, who was editor and co-publisher of Drum!, was happy to oblige but made it clear that he needed to have me on the phone with Paul for no less than 45 minutes, or maybe it was an hour. Unfortunately we were only about 20 minutes into it when Paul announced, “Sorry, mate. I’ve got to do the next one. Thanks very much!” So that was that. I transcribed the recording and realized that, while there was a lot of great stuff in it, there wasn’t enough to fill five or however many print pages we had anticipated for the story. So Andy made the only decision he could: Paul was bumped off the cover and the story shrunk down to a very short feature.
I never heard whether there was any blowback from this. I assume there wasn’t. But maybe it could have been different, if I’d been a little quicker on the draw and more duplicitous — details follow the transcript.
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You’ve done interviews about probably every subject under the sun, but is this your first on the subject of drums?
I think it is actually, yeah.
You’ve talked in other interviews about songs, vocals and even guitar licks that inspired and influenced you as you were getting into music. Do you remember hearing drum parts that similarly affected you?
There were a couple of things. Just hearing Gene Krupa, the great man, flail away, was spectacular. I was always very impressed with him. Then later on there started to be drum records, like “Let There Be Drums.” Those were hits when we were teenagers. “Running Bear?” I think that drum riff affected everyone, the Indian-style kind of thing.
And then it goes into swing on the chorus.
Yeah! I’m sure those kinds of things found their way into my DNA.
When did you first play the drums?
My first recollection is in Hamburg. I hadn’t really done anything until then. But you might get behind the kit to try and show the drummer what you wanted. You might say, “I think it’s kind of like this,” just to give some sort of direction on a lick you wanted. That gradually grew to be messing around on people’s kits, which were lying around in the places we were playing because there were a lot of other groups there too. You picked up the very simplest beats very naturally. Right about then we weren’t doing much else; it was pretty much straight-ahead rock & roll that was required. So I’d just find my own way. I’d talk to drummers and they might show me a little thing or two. But basically, it was just sitting in.
I remember one evening when a drummer hadn’t shown up; I think it was with Tony Sheridan’s band. Tony had heard me goofing around and he said, “Come on, man, sit in!” I said, “No way! I can’t do this.” And he said, “Yeah, I’ve heard you! You can do it! It’s simple!” So I did and it went from there, and I was thinking, “Well! I’ve actually done a professional drumming gig.”
“I remember sitting there with a broomstick between my legs, with the microphone tied to it so I could do a bit of vocals and drum at the same time.”
Did you play the whole night with Sheridan?
I played his set, just under an hour, making it up as I went along. It wasn’t great but it was adequate. It was better than no drummer – barely. This grew into me getting a little bit of confidence. Eventually, with the Beatles, there was a period when John, George, and I operated as a kind of trio and just picked up some little bits of work. It’s so long ago, I can’t remember the exact details, but I do remember that we were playing in an illegal club on Upper Parliament Street in Liverpool’s Caribbean Quarter. It was the first black community in England; they’d all come over from the Caribbean. This guy called Lord Woodbine ran this club out of someone’s basement. We used to pick up little bits of work from him. One day he asked us if we’d all come in and accompany this stripper called Janine. We said, “Wow! Yeah, man! There’s a job.” He even paid money as well.
Maybe you asked, “How much do I have to pay you for this gig?”
Exactly [laughs]. So she came in and said, “Okay, I’ve got Ravel. I’ve got a little bit of Prokofiev …” We said, “Oh, gee. Sorry, luv. We don’t read music. But we’ve got ‘Raunchy.’ That might do.” We muddled through it. I had somebody’s old drum kit, and I remember sitting there with a broomstick between my legs, with the microphone tied to it so I could do a bit of vocals and drum at the same time. It was hilarious. So I’d done a little bit of this and muddled my way through a couple of sets. Eventually we started recording, so this experience came in handy.
The Essence of Ringo
During the Beatles’ run, with Ringo onboard, there must have been a number of years when you didn’t actually play drums much at all.
Yeah, I was completely redundant. We loved Ringo so much. He was our favorite drummer in Liverpool, and when he joined the band it was an explosion for us. Every song sounded new and fresh. He could pass what we felt at the time was the true test for drummers, which was to be able to play to “What’d I Say” – the cymbal work and the toms. And he could play the whole thing. We were like, “Oh, my God! Here’s a true genius.” No wonder we used to do “What’d I Say” for two hours.
Ringo was a thinking drummer. Unlike most of his peers, he’d change what he’d play from one section of the song to the next.
That’s true. That’s one thing about great drummers: They actually listen to the songs, so they can allow the vocalist space. And then when you get to the end of a phrase, they make a comment: [sings], “Eight days a week … ba-dap-a-doo bop.” That’s the only phrase that could have been played at that place. He’s brilliant with that. He started with that natural ability to think it through, but once John and I spotted that he was more capable to do that than any other drummers we’d ever worked with, we would direct him in the riff.
In certain songs we’d write, as part of the song, a clear idea of how we wanted the drums to go, so there would be a two-way thing. On things like “Come Together” we might all weigh in. Of course, he’d pick it up and make it his home. But then we’d be jamming a song like “Get Back” and he’d come up with that quasi-military thing that was the signature of the song. It was so cool to have a drummer who could complement your song.
That was also great preparation for you, once you began drumming as well.
Yeah, that’s right. But we’d started to write that kind of thing as well. There were many sessions where John or I, or both of us, or George, would say to Ringo, “Okay, we need to open the song with a sort of bash.” He’d go, “Well, what about this?” We’d go, “Yes, exactly.” We all weighed in on every part of the arrangement, whether it was the drum part, the bass part, the guitar part, or anything. We had four arrangers in the group.
Did you play drums at all during the Beatles years?
I dabbled a little bit on some of the Beatles recordings. At certain times I’d be looking for something, and either Ringo would get so fed up with me that he’d say, “Well, you do it yourself,” or he would say, “Look, you’ve got a clear idea. Why don’t you do it?” I did play drums on one or two Beatles records. I think I might have played on “Back in the U.S.S.R.” I certainly played on “The Ballad of John and Yoko.”
“Come and Get It”
When did you start working more seriously on drums?
I remember making a demo, which is in the anthology, of “Come and Get It” for Badfinger. The Beatles were in the studio at the time. We were all set up for a month’s work, so Ringo’s kit was there and it was miked up. I’d say to him occasionally, “Is it okay if I use it?” He was very cool about that. I remember coming in one morning with the engineer. I lived very close to the studio, and I knew the guys would be there in about an hour’s time, so I got in ahead of everyone and said, “Look, I just wrote this song last night and I want to get it down on a demo for these guys in Badfinger. I’ve got a very clear idea of what I want, so I’m just going to run ‘round all the instruments and play them. I’ll start off with the drums.” I imagined the song in my head. I hit the crash cymbal occasionally. It didn’t get much more elaborate than that. Then I stuck some bass on it, I stuck the piano on it, I stuck a little bit of guitar, sang it, and mixed it. Before I knew it the guys were there.
The Badfinger demo, then, was your first one-man-band effort.
Yeah, I think it was. I wanted the demo to be pretty complete, because I had a vision of how this song should go. When the guys from Badfinger came in, they said, “Okay, now we’ll do it our way and make it Badfinger.” I said, “No, guys. You can make the rest of the album like that, but please make this track exactly like this demo. Copy it slavishly, if you don’t mind.” Most bands would mind, but I just knew if they did it my way it would be a hit. So they did it very faithfully, and it was a big kickoff thing for them. And on the rest of the album they showed their own thing. But, yeah, that was the first time. And after that I got myself a kit.
Then it was the end of the Beatles, and it was an emotional breakup. Unfortunately we weren’t getting on well; there were all these business differences and the famous “Beatle wars” were going on. So I thought, “You know, I’ve got a new lady. I’ve got a baby. I’m just going to get into the safety of my own home, bring a machine in from EMI, plug the microphone into the back of the machine, get on my drum kit, and bash away. I’ll do a take and listen to it. If the bass drum sounds a bit distant, I’ll push the mic in a bit. If the snare doesn’t sound right enough, I’ll just move that mic.” I made the original McCartney album like that. That was really the proper start for me playing drums on my own.
When you began getting ready to cut that album in 1970, was it hard to avoid feeling frustrated about not being as strong on drums as you were as a bass player, guitarist, keyboard player, singer, and writer?
I’m funny about things like that. I didn’t get too intimidated, though I probably should have. I just have so much enthusiasm when I do something that I don’t even consider that. I’m lucky in that respect, because some people would rack themselves with doubt and guilt, but when I came to that project I just thought, “Man, I’ll just have a bit of fun.” I didn’t even consider what I was doing. That’s one of my problems: I never do! Someone says, “Would you write a classical piece for the Liverpool Orchestra?” And I go, “Yeah!” I’ve never done it before, but it doesn’t even occur to me that I should have thought longer. And I’m in.
“I just thought, ‘Hey, this is fun!’ It didn’t occur to me that I was some idiot jumping on the kit.”
It’s funny, because on that thing, which was the Oratorio, I was halfway through when I met some Irish guy in a pub who said, “Doesn’t it terrify you, the thought of writing something for an orchestra?” And suddenly I realized, “Oh, shit. It ought to terrify me.” But I can’t help it. That’s how I was with drums. I just thought, “Hey, this is fun!” It didn’t occur to me that I was some idiot jumping on the kit. I did realize, and to this day I realize, that I’ve got feel.
It’s the same thing on the new record: Nigel (Godrich, producer) said to me, “Will you play drums?” And I said, “Well, I’m not technically very good.” And he said, “Yeah, but you’ve got a great feel on these songs.” I remember Elvis Costello saying that to me too: “Man, there’s not that many drummers who’ve got feel. Some drummers can play rings around you technically, but for feel I like your drumming.” I suppose that’s the thing. It’s not arrogance, it’s just the knowledge that I’ve got a reasonable feel. That’s what gave me confidence: As long as I keep it simple and don’t get too flash, I can play with a steady, swampy, straight-ahead feel, and that’ll do the job.
The songs on the 1970 album are like snapshots of someone’s life. In the nice sense of the word, it’s all rather rough.
It really is. It’s like Grandma Moses. It’s someone playing from the heart, for the fun of it. Dave Stewart said to me, “Man, there’s still something about that album. It communicates.”
It begins the continuum toward the new album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, where your drumming is also more tied to the changes of each song, as opposed to on Flaming Pie, where you’re collaborating with other people and laying down more of a basic backbeat.
It harks back to Ringo and the thinking drummer.
The Art of Not Playing
One of the lessons of the new album is when not to play drums. You often wait until the second verse, for instance, before bringing them in.
A lot of that has to do with the collaboration between me and Nigel. Nigel is a thinking producer. I would lay down the song, probably first on whatever instrument I used to write it – acoustic guitar or piano. “Friends to Go” is one such song. Your natural inclination is to go “one, two, three, four, bang,” and you’re in with the drums. But he said, “You know, it’s a nice acoustic opening you’ve got here. Let’s let it ride.” I know what he’s talking about; that’s a good producer. So we didn’t do anything, and on the second verse I came in with the bass drum. It’s really very ordinary, but it’s what the song needed at that point. It didn’t need any more than that.
Actually, in “Friends to Go,” Nigel said, “You know, a great entry, right before the middle eight, would be the cymbal.” So I do a little bit of that “What’d I Say” cymbal, where this flamboyant ride cymbal thing comes in. We designed it with that kind of drumming in mind, and I must credit Nigel with a lot of that. He said, “We don’t need the drums for a little while.” Then, I think it’s in the third verse, they come in big. The bass comes in and the whole band’s in, and suddenly it’s like, “Wow! This is the lift we need for the third verse.”
You often play the drums as an arrangement device to add intensity, rather than as a rhythm timekeeper. That cymbal bit in “Friends to Go,” for example, is a cue to the listener that you’re going into a new section.
Yeah, it’s like a guitar riff. We were aware of that. We had fun with that on this record.
In fact, on songs like “Too Much Rain” or “This Never Happened Before,” you do the reverse: You pare the drums down to some single element, or take them out entirely, as part of a diminuendo.
Well, in the Seventies, when you had drum machines and synths, I was always trying to do that with producers, but they’d say, “Look, just play the tambourine through the whole track and we’ll work it out later.” I’d go [dubiously], “Uh, okay …” Inevitably it would stay in for the whole track. I was moaning about this to Nigel; I said, “I hate the way that used to happen!” Because you’d have this record full of everything from A to Z; none of the instruments ever stopped. And that was boring. I reminded him – and myself – that on the Beatles records you’d have a tambourine for a verse, and then it would stop and be taken over by a snare of something. And then you were so happy when it reappeared: “I love that tambourine! Here it is again!” It made you fall in love with the instruments, rather than be bored from the word go.
So on “Too Much Rain,” one of the versions prior to the final version did have stuff going through those little sensitive bits, where the vocal comes down. And I said, “You know, that used to be so sensitive, where the lyrics are like, ‘It’s not right in one life, too much rain.’” I said, “You know, when I was writing that on solo acoustic, that meant something. And now we’ve got boom, bing, bang going over it. Suddenly it doesn’t mean as much, so can we knock everything out and build back up again?” We did, with a little bit of trepidation, but once we tried it, we knew it was the way to go.
The drum sound is very boxy, much like on McCartney in 1970.
It’s raw and basic, and that’s all down to Nigel. With the Beatles, whenever we got a new engineer we’d take him down to listen to the drums. Then we’d go back up into the control room, and it’d be like [tiny percussive sound] … pink! And we’d realize that it’s really not surprising, because that sound just went through that little wire, and why on earth we expected it to sound what we’d just heard in the studio is a mystery. But Nigel started as an engineer – he actually engineered the record as well as producing it – and a great engineer will get that sound. That was one of the real joys, when I started working with him. I heard a drum sound and I’d go, “That is a drum sound.”
One track, “Certain Softness,” has a bongo part.
That’s Joey Waronker. He sat on the floor, I played acoustic guitar, and Jason Forester played another acoustic; the three of us made the basic track. I don’t play all the drums on the album – I play a lot of them, but we also have Joey and James Gadson. Nigel knew them both and invited them in. James comes in on “At the Mercy” with the kind of drumming I love, which is just pure feel, and another track or two.
Is there a gong in there too?
Yeah. One thing about Nigel as a producer is that when you get to a certain point where the song needs just a little bit of a lift, he will say, “Okay, we need something here.” I had been spying on an orchestral session next door – it was a film session -- and I’d seen the biggest gong on the world. These guys were on a break, so I said, “Listen, could I just borrow your gong for five minutes?” The guy said, “Yeah, sure,” so we literally wheeled it from their studio into ours. And I left him, taped to the gong, three pounds, ten shillings, and sixpence, with a little note: “Herewith our rental fee for your gong.” Originally, we thought we’d overdone it. Technically, he probably did. But we loved it, so we left it; it just sounded right.
There are only a couple of songs where you lay down a backbeat on the snare; mostly you find some sort of a pattern – hitting the third and fourth beats, perhaps. How do you find those patterns?
You just play it around a few times. While Nigel would be getting a sound on the drums, I’d say, “Send it to me a few times and I’ll just goof.” Then he’d give me some feedback; he’d say, “That thing you’re doing in the third verse is great. We should just use that throughout all the verses. Now, I think you should try something else in the chorus.” Between us, we’d just work it out, but it starts with me ad libbing along with the thing.
What kind of drums do you play?
I’m playing a Ludwig kit. I just thought that after all these years, the drum sound I admire is Ringo’s. So I just said to Ringo one day, “Hey, man, would you just tell me what drums you use?” And I just bought them – an identical kit.
You’re left-handed. Do you set up differently than he does?
No, I set up right-handed because for all those years no one would let me mess around with their kit, so I had to learn right-handed. It doesn’t make any difference to me.
Is it set up like Ringo’s kit?
It’s exactly the same: Zildjian hi-hat, one floor tom-tom, one top tom-tom, one snare, one bass drum. End of story.
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… As it turned out, that was the end of our interview too. However, after about half an hour my phone rang. It was Paul again, introducing himself and asking if I was ready to chat. Apparently he had mixed my number up with someone else’s. For a second I considered steaming ahead under false pretenses but instead assured him that he was supposed to be calling another interrogator — maybe the Guitar Player person?
“Oh!” he said. “Sorry about that! Cheerio!”
Which left me with a lesser amount of nonetheless high quality content. Though I’d been expecting the equivalent of a four-course meal, the interview ended up closer to nouvelle cuisine: smaller portions of excellent content, leaving us satisfied though hungry for more.
Peace Sign:
Photo © Darkmoon Art / Pixabay
With Ringo:
In 1984, from Give My Regards to Broad Street. Photo © AJ Pics / Alamy Stock Photo.
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Nice interview.