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Before his Miami, Florida performance at the American Airlines Area, Sir Paul met with Miami Herald's Evelyn McDonnell. Seated in his dressing room surrounded by potted palms and Indian tapestries, enjoying a salad and some chocolate dessert, he recalled the breakup of the Beatles:
"When the Beatles broke up, there was a lot of rejection and stuff, for all of us. I normally didn't deal with it . . . But I thought no, it's a good source of material. So (with) a couple of the songs, I decided to write about that kind of thing. It was quite a release, really. [He then sang a few verses of Riding to Vanity Fair: "There was a time / When every day was young. / The sun would always shine. / We sang along. / When all the songs were sung / Believing every line.]
"That openness seems to have become a feature now of how I live. If I'm sad about something, I won't want to just hold it in. I'll want to talk to someone about it; I'll want to show it; I'll want to get it out some way."
Sir Paul said that he postponed his tour to finish his new album. At George Martin's suggestion, he hired Nigel Godrich to produce it.
"I said I wanted to make a good album. I put myself on the line a little bit. I liked the sound of those records [Radiohead, Beck, Travis]. Some people said: 'Oh, does it mean you're going to make an album like Radiohead? It's going to be a bit electronic?' I said no, Travis didn't, Beck didn't . . . . Nigel makes an album like you, whoever you are."
Sir Paul revealed that Nigel Godrich did not want to include Vanity Fair on the album, but Sir Paul fought to keep it:
"[It is the] most reworked song I've ever done in my life. It was quite a good exercise, after I got over the shock of someone telling me they didn't like it,which has happened to me plenty of times, but not recently."
He talked about the melancholy tracks on the album, At the Mercy and Anyway"
"I generally tend towards the optimistic, but sometimes when you're looking around for something to write about, you say: 'I've just done a few optimistic songs. Now, is there anything else going on in my life, or has there ever been anything else other than optimism?' And you cast around and you think: 'Yeah, of course there has.
"Something like George (Harrison) passing, it makes you think, 'God, things are so impermanent: Suddenly there's this little friend of mine, he used to get on the bus, and now he's passed away.' There's that whole lifetime of a friendship that physically has ended, not emotionally."
(kindly submitted by PLUGGED correspondent Joan M. Hopkins)
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