Sir Paul McCartney has given an exclusive interview to BBC Radio 6 Music’s Matt Everitt. 

On the eve of the re-release of his 1989 album, Flowers In The Dirt Sir Paul McCartney talks collaborations, Chuck Berry, his new album and his own musical legacy.

McCartney’s final album of the ‘80s Flowers In The Dirt featured Paul teaming up with new musicians, new producers and a new song-writing partner in the form of Elvis Costello.

Now, as the record is re-released, he’s spoken to BBC 6 Music’s Matt Everitt about the record, the similarities between writing with Costello and John Lennon, and his experiences and collaboration with Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson and Kanye West.

He also discusses, for the first time, his own new album, his guest appearances on Ringo Starr’s new record, the impact of Chuck Berry and his own feelings about how his work will go down in history.

Listen again via bbc.co.uk/6music

Interview transcript

Did you go into Flowers In The Dirt feeling like it was kind of a bit of a reset?

I think so. I just have periods where I don't really think about it too much. I'm just bringing up my family, and then a point will arrive where I just think: “Okay, I've got some songs. I should get busy, I should record these. We should go out on tour. It's time”. And that's what happened round about that time.

It was suggested to me that I work with Elvis Costello as a partnership and it seemed like a good idea. I thought: “Well, he's from Liverpool, he's good” - which helps. And we have a lot of things in common and so I thought: “Well that could work.”

Was it writing nose-to-nose? Two acoustics, strumming at each other?

There's a million ways to write, but the way I always used to write was with John and it would be across from each other, either in a hotel bedroom on the twin beds, with an acoustic guitar and we're just looking at each other. He'd make up something, I'd make up something and we'd just spin off each other. The nice thing for me, I've said it a million times, but it's always my big memory, is seeing John there, him being right-handed, me being left-handed, it felt to me like I was looking in a mirror.

But it was a great way to work and because we were kids together, and we'd known each other since our teenage years, we'd developed a way of working that would be one of would start an idea, and the other one would spin off it. Obviously, it was very successful. So that was a way I had learned to write and it was the way I liked to write and Elvis was very happy to work like that. So it was like a repeat of that process, and so he was John, basically, and I was Paul.

There's tracks like I Want Her Too, that have got a real bite to them. It's got a lot of power to it, the stuff you've done together. Do you think that's down to that creative, collaborative chemistry?

I think we both wanted to do well. I think Elvis is coming into a collaboration with me which could be a little bit intimidating [laughs] and so he would come into it thinking that, but also thinking: "No, I'm not going to be intimidated. I'm just going to be me." And that was very clear. I was very glad of that.

He would often tell a story about his grandma or his auntie or a family story and both coming from Liverpool, those kinds of things would come up naturally. And one of the songs That Day Is Done, he's talking about being at the funeral of his gran, as I remember, which was a very powerful thing for him and he's telling me about it. So we started writing it. Those kinds of things were very important because this shared background of Liverpool, song writing, and both, having similar memories. Me, from another generation but still, Liverpool, same kind of thing.

There’s all this beautiful extra material in the box set, and I think some of the demos, especially some of the ones with you and Elvis, they're really raw and they just sound glorious. Has it been fun going back and going: "I didn't know we had that, sounds great!"

We’d have a writing session in the afternoon and [that] normally took about three hours before you get so fed up and think, we better finish this song. Then after that, we'd write in my office above the studio. We'd just go down to the studio and say to my mate, Eddie Klein who ran the studio and was the engineer: "Hey Eddie, let's do a quick recording of this." So he'd just set up mikes and we would do it. So there it was, from having written it, walk right downstairs and record it. So the performances are very raw and very straightforward. We didn't have time to think: “What are we going to do to tart this up?” I kind of agree with a few people that the actual demos of me and Elvis have got more spark, they've got more life than the recordings we ended up with eventually. So, it was great to be able to include them in the package.

Do you learn something from every person that you collaborate with? I'm imagining you learned something different from Stevie Wonder than you do from Elvis than you do with Flood or Kanye. I guess it's different with every person.

You do. Exactly. My thing with collaboration, I know I can never have a better collaborator than John. That is just a fact. It's inescapable. So I don't try and escape it. I just know there's no way I can find someone now who's going write better stuff with me than I wrote with John. But having said that, I'm interested in working with other people because they bring their own particular thing to it and, it's interesting. It's educational for me to see how they want to work.

If you're thinking of someone like Stevie, he works by just making something up on his keyboards, which he's always doing. He never does anything else. You invite him to dinner, he shows up ten hours later because he was fiddling around on his keyboard. He's such a musical monster and such a genius, that that's what you learn from him. That's one way of doing it.

Michael Jackson, we just sat upstairs in this office and I tinkled on the piano and we just made up a song there. Now with Kanye, I had no idea what was going to happen because I knew it wasn't going to be two acoustic guitars opposite each other. So I thought: "Well, here goes nothing. Let's see." The one provision I said to everyone, I said: "Look, if I feel this doesn't work out, then we just won't tell anyone. Kanye who? I didn't work with him!”

Kanye is like the anti-composer because he's a collector. Then he's going to curate the collection. I brought my guitar fully expecting I'd just say: "How about this? Do-do-do ..." And he'd go: "Oh, bah-bah-bah-be-de…" And it would be great. But it wasn't like that at all.

I just was myself and I told Kanye various stories that had inspired me musically. One of them was how the song, Let It Be arrived, which was through a dream I'd had in which I'd seen my mother, who had died ten years previously. My mother had come to me and I was in a bit of a state at the time, it was mid-60's and in the dream, she sort of came to me and said: "It's going to be all right. It's going to be good. Just take it easy. Just let it be."

But I was so inspired by that that I wrote the song. I told Kanye that, because he'd lost his mother. So then he wrote a song called Only One when I was just noodling around on the electronic piano that I had in the room. I started playing some chords and he started singing along with it. And just blocking out words and that was all recorded. So he got the melody, I put the chords in and the style and that's how it happened.

I have to ask you about Chuck Berry. Obviously a massive musical hero of yours. What was he like? Did you work with him much?

I didn't work with Chuck. I met him. He came to one of our concerts when we were playing in St. Louis, his home town, and he came round backstage. It was great to meet him and just be able to tell him what a fan I was. When I think back to being in Liverpool pre-Beatles, when we were all just kids learning the guitar with the dreams of the future, we suddenly heard this little thing, Sweet Little Sixteen. We never heard anything like that, and then when Johnny B. Goode came along, all of his fantastic songs, Maybelline. All these songs about cars, teenagers, rock 'n roll music, was just so thrilling. It was a world we didn't really know existed because in actual fact, in Britain it didn't. This was new, coming in. You can't imagine a time when ye olde rock 'n roll was brand new. But it was. There it was coming at us, so you can imagine what a thrill it was when you'd never heard anything like that.

People who have heard it all before now because it's history now still love it. But imagine just never having heard it before. Bang! Sweet Little Sixteen comes at you. So he was a huge influence on us and we copied a lot from his guitar style as did Keith Richards and people like that. I always saw him as a poet. His lyrics, to me, are like American poetry. They capture that sort of high school stuff, rock 'n roll and the cars and just fantastic.

I must say it continued to influence us for years and years and years. John came into the studio one day with this song, he plays it for me, [Paul picks up a guitar starts strumming and singing, “Here come old flat top, He come groovin' up slowly…”] And I go: "What? We can't do that! That [lyric] is Chuck Berry’s You Can't Catch Me!". Anyway, it became Come Together. It shows just the influence. "Here come old flat-top." That's a lyric John could not let go of and he couldn't better it, so he just used it. I said: "It's a bit of a nick, isn't it?" He said: "No, it's a quote." I said: "Okay, fair enough."

This is an odd question, it kind of follows on from the Chuck Berry stuff. Because looking at this wave of tributes that followed his death - and also we lost Prince, we lost Bowie - do you ever wonder how are you going to be remembered? I mean, I’ve imagined my own funeral. I want friends weeping, I want black horses with plumes. I want the whole thing. Do you ever think about that?

Yeah, I think everyone does. I think you do and you put it out your mind. I do. I don't get into it, really. No, I'm probably just very offhand about it. I remember John once, saying to me: "I wonder how I'll be remembered. Will they remember me well?" And I had to reassure him. I said: "Look at me. You are going to be so remembered, you've done so much great stuff. There's no way any one's going to forget you. You're really great." But it was funny; you wouldn't think John would even have a remote bit of insecurity about it. But I think people do. You think: "What are they going to say? Are they going to take your worst reviews and go 'ooh', or are they going to take your best stuff or whatever?" Luckily, it won't matter because I won't be here. I don't worry about that. It's just what we're born into and what we will leave.

On a more positive note, what's next?

I'm making a new album which is great fun. I'm in the middle of that. I'm working with a producer I first worked with two years ago on a piece of music I'm doing for an animated film. Since then, he went on to work with Beck and got best album of the year with Beck. Then he went on to work with Adele and has just got song of the year, record of the year, with Adele, of course and just got producer of the year. So my only worry is, people are going to go: “Oh there's Paul going with the flavour of the month.” But he's a great guy called Greg Kurstin and he's very musical and he's great to work with. So I'm in the middle of that and then shortly, in a couple of weeks, I go off to Japan to do some concerts there in Tokyo which should be great fun. So yeah, I'm at it. Beavering away doing what I love to do. As Ringo says: "It's what we do."

Oh yeah, what have you done on the Ringo record?

We meet up with each other quite often and this time was in LA and we went out to dinner. He said: "Right. I've got a record I'm making. You're going to play bass on it, aren't you?" That's Ringo's way of saying: “Will you?” And I go: "Yeah, of course." "Oh great!" And then he's super grateful. Yeah, went round to his house and he's making an album and he wanted me to play bass on two of the tracks, one was a rocker and one was a ballad. And they're very nice. Yeah, so I just sat around in the studio with him and did these. It was great. It's great working with my old buddy because he's such a lovely guy and we have the world of memories. We go from Hamburg to the present day and that's a lot of memories in there.