Paul McCartney – Back in the World – TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED

A l’occasion du lancement de sa tournée européenne, Paul McCartney a confié l’interview suivante aux web-masters de son site officiel. A lire avec attention :

Q: On the first legs of this tour in the U.S., Mexico and Japan last year you played 58 shows to one million people. Billboard magazine named it Tour Of The Year as it was more successful than any other show on the road. Now you’re about to play more than 30 more shows in 12 more countries, performing for almost three hours a night. What gives you the energy to do that?

Paul: I don’t actually know. I could say a good veggie diet. I could say my new wife and romance back in my life. And I could say it’s because of having a new band and really enjoying playing this particular set of songs with them. Instead of feeling exhausted at the end of the last bit of the tour, I felt exhilarated and it’s down to a combination of all those things because basically I’m enjoying it. It’s all sheer enjoyment for me.

Q: When this tour first began, in April last year, you said that the tour would not be a long one. But by the end of the Back In The World tour you’ll have played more than 90 shows. What happened to the tour not being ‘long’?

Paul: I think it’s a good thing to fool yourself a bit, so you do the tour in sections. We had our first leg in America and then took the summer off to recharge everyone’s batteries. Then we had the next American leg in the autumn, followed by the excitement of playing in Mexico and the pleasure of visiting Japan. If you look at it as a whole, it might seem a bit daunting; but taking it in sections like that it’s less intimidating. It just seems like a bunch of fun, a bunch of little holidays, almost.

But the other big factor in all of this and one big reason why I am enjoying touring so much is because of the audiences. The audience is so important to me. When I started off putting this set together the first thing I did was think about it from the point of view of the audience; I thought what songs would I want to hear if I was in the audience. So, armed with that set list, we expected a good tour and anticipated that the concerts would sell well.

But it was really the reaction of the audience that turned the tour all around and set the tour on fire for us. The heat of the audience’s response was something that you could feel as we hit the stage; it was something palpable. And from then on, we responded to them and they responded to us – which just kept lifting the energy of the tour. The spirit just kept notching up bit by bit; like a reversal snowball – that went uphill, and was hot.

Q: You’ve said that all tours feel different, was it the somewhat manic reaction to this tour that has distinguished it?

Paul: I think there were other elements also; this tour coming in the aftermath of September 11th was a big factor in America. We realised there that we were bringing people an enjoyment that they needed at the time. And besides that making them feel good, it made us feel good to bring it to them. The two worked off each other.

Q: Mid-way through the first American leg of the tour you noted that the crowds were becoming a bit like Beatles crowds in their enthusiasm, was that the energy you’re talking about?

Paul: It’s the intensity of their reaction, really. In the early Beatles days we went to America hoping for good audiences, but the intensity that we experienced was unexpected. And this tour has been the same in that way – the intensity of feeling coming from the audience has been something that you couldn’t help but get turned on by.

Q: You’re playing with a new band and the many great reviews that this show has had have lauded this band for their enthusiasm; does their playing affect your performance?

Paul: Yeah. I enjoy playing with this band; I like them both as people and as musicians and their high degree of musical skill on their instruments and in their vocals meant that it makes it a pleasure for me, I enjoy listening to what they come up with. This is a band that I can sit back and watch. I like playing with them because they make it feel easy, it doesn’t feel like work and I’ve learned that I don’t have to worry about what each of them will be doing. They took care of that themselves, which is a very reassuring feeling because then you can get on with what you’re doing.

Q: In the past you’ve expressed your liking for ‘exploring the accident’, not having everything go to a precise plan. Is this band, and the way you put it together, an example of that?

Paul: Yeah; as a five-piece we’d never played together before this tour. Rusty and Abe played on the Driving Rain album with me. Wix has been with me on the last two world tours, but he’d not played with Rusty and Abe. And neither Wix nor I had played with Brian. As a band, before this tour, we’d only played one song live together when we did Freedom at last year’s Superbowl. That was the first time I’d ever played with Brian. I had been asked if I wanted to audition him, but I just had an instinctive feeling that it’d work. And then when we all got together to prepare for this tour, playing together for the first time and playing together a whole bunch of songs that we hadn’t played together before, we only rehearsed for about nine afternoons. So there was a bit of faith involved; I just instinctively felt that this was going to work and I didn’t want to kill it with too much rehearsal or doubt. I just dived in head-first and believed that it would happen – and sure enough it did. And how.

Q: Talking of which – this tour has been named Billboard’s Tour Of The Year, it was voted Major Tour Of The Year by Pollstar, the bible of the live music industry, you performed to one million people last year and the live album of the tour has already sold more than a million copies, the DVD of the tour went triple platinum in America…are you chuffed (delighted)?

Paul: Just a bit……As I say, we were going to do what we thought would be a nice tour, but obviously when you get results like we’ve had it buoys up everybody connected with the tour. It means that the energy and the spirit of the whole crew is high and that becomes infectious. For it to be rewarded by great results like breaking house records in more than 20 cities and getting tour of the year and all these accolades is an icing on a very tasty cake. But the main thing is that we’re all enjoying it in lots of ways; not just the success and playing the music but also the camaraderie and the spirit we’ve found on the road. And the appreciation of each other, which is a great thing and something that you don’t always expect. That has been a big part of this tour – the unexpectedness of the size of the success is thrilling.

Q: Beatlemania was first reported in the media 40 years ago this year. But it’s still going on as you saw when 2,000 Japanese went crazy and mobbed you as you arrived at Tokyo airport last year and also in Mexico when people in the audience were bringing their babies to the shows so that these infants could witness what they weren’t even old enough to understand. What’s that about; is it the lasting strength of the songs in the show, is it people wanting to party?

Paul: It’s the past, the present and the future all rolled into one. The spirit of The Beatles is pretty legendary whether I want it or not. The spirit of The Sixties is a historical fact and when you combine that with the Wings era and now, with a good new band, it makes up to something that is not only pretty interesting but also quite exciting. I just feel lucky at this venerable age to have the energy to do it and to feel the excitement. Which is not the obvious thing to be happening at this stage of the game. Many people are in boring jobs and are feeling jaded and fed up with what they do; I’m really blessed because I’m not. I don’t quite understand that, but I don’t ask too many questions. I just feel blessed that I can give people a show that they want and they can give us a reaction that we want. It’s a sort of win-win.

Q: Much of the feverish audience reaction has been captured on Back In The U.S., the DVD that you filmed of the first American leg of the tour. By all accounts that DVD has sold by the bucketload because people wanted an enduring memory of their night at this show. But unlike other tour films, where you pretty much just see the show, you also allowed the cameras access into intimate off-stage areas, not just inside your dressing room but also in your limo, on the jet after the gigs. Was that another part of this sharing that seems to be going on with the audience on this tour?

Paul: Yeah, I think so. That all came about from not just me but also the band and the crew starting to get a feeling that this tour was somehow special. That became the gossip within the tour, that it was special. I was saying that the audience was starting to get like a Beatles audience in its intensity and other guys in the band were saying they’d never seen a crowd do this or that. So because things were looking a bit unprecedented we got one camera in to record it. Then we got a couple more cameras in and then we thought OK, but how do we film all of this? I remembered the Maysles brothers who had originally filmed The Beatles of our first visit to New York – we’d asked them what they wanted us to do and they’d said ‘just ignore us’. That had been the easiest job we’d had all day, so we did – and we were surprised to find that after a short while it was easy to think of them as part of the furniture, rather than something intimidating. So we did the same thing with Mark Haefeli, the DVD director, who showed up with his camera guys; just part of the furniture. It meant that they got nice access and although we said to them at the start that if they filmed something a bit too private then we might take it out of the film, in actual fact that never happened. It was good to bring the audience backstage; into the cars, into the limos, into your dressing room. We take that for granted but, of course, the audience has never been there with us before. As I say in the song, Let ‘Em In – and it was nice to.

Q: The Back In The U.S. live album of the first American leg of this tour has been a huge hit, with more than one million copies sold. But it was not released in Europe; are you now planning to release the album in Europe?

PAUL: Back In The U.S. was released in America as a souvenir of the first American leg of shows. There will be a live album of the show coming out to tie in with the European tour. But as the set list for the European tour will change a bit, we have changed the track list for the European release, which will be called Back In The World, so that the album that will be released in Europe will be a proper souvenir of the European show.

Q: Someone in America called this show « the greatest hits show on Earth »; you’re playing more than 20 Beatles songs – in fact you’re singing twice the number of Beatles songs that The Beatles did in their shows – and also more than a dozen hits from your Wings, solo periods and now. Are there particular songs in the show – and on the live album of the show – that are special to you?

Paul: As I said, one of the things I like about this tour is that you can plan a tour but the unexpected that happens on it is a thrill. So for me, the response to singing Here Today was an unexpected bonus. I’d only started doing that when I was reading the lyrics on these poetry readings that I’d done and it was a natural thought for me to see how the song would go when performed with the melody back. I’d never played it live before this tour, but doing that song and seeing how it was received took on its own life for me. Doing Hey Jude has been great because one of our production guys had the good idea of turning our cameras on the audience during the song and putting them up singing on these big screens that we have around the stage. That has made the song very interactive; it’s a great ‘people moment’ in the show. Back In The U.S.S.R. has gone well; it’s a rocker that I haven’t played that often and there’s something about this show in which it works. I also enjoy doing this acoustic set in the middle of the show, when there’s just me onstage, no band; just me and my guitar. That’s something I have never done before this tour. I’ve never stood on a stage with just a guitar, there’s always been somebody else on the stage, a band or a string quartet or someone to lean on. And when we started the tour, doing that set all alone was a bit of a daunting prospect but, coming out of doing poetry readings, I fancied the idea and thought maybe it’s time to try it. People seem to enjoy the one-on-oneness of that part of the show, it’s just you and me, babe. But that’s been good.

Q: Is that the unexpected again? Because when you were first in rehearsals for the tour you were saying that you were not sure that you could carry off that solo section and yet now you appear to almost revel in it.

Paul: Yeah, that’s it. It’s like I had never done a poetry reading before I did it for the first time in Liverpool and I had to ask the other poets there how you did it. They said you read your poems out and talk a bit about them – and that gave me a bit of a clue for the acoustic set in this show, sing your songs and talk a bit about them. I enjoy doing that and I know that if I go to see a show I like that bit of interaction between me and the performer. Not everyone likes that, but I was pleased to see that our audiences did. There was one sticky moment as far as my ‘dare I do it?’ worries about the acoustic set; it was early on in the first leg of the American tour, when we got to Los Angeles. There was a drunk in the audience and he shouted ‘play some rock and roll’. I just said ‘read my lips’ and mouthed ‘fuck off’. But that was the only time it happened and, looking at the people around him, it wasn’t a popular heckle. But overall that section of the show has gone well; it’s seems to have a sort of family feel to it, like singing at a family reunion.

Q: With 15,000 people…..

Paul: Yeah – which is almost the amount of my Liverpool family.

Q: Did the reception in Mexico surprise you?

Paul: Oh yeah. Just the volume of those crowds was surprising. We’ve talked about the energy of the audience and its intensity, but added to that was their sheer volume – so much so that the road crew were having to hold their ears. And these are guys who are used to standing in front of a fully wound-up guitar amp, it surprised them. The passion of an audience like that is always great to see, every performer loves a passionate audience. But what was uncanny was what they did with their cigarette lighters when I was singing Every Night and they were clicking the flames of their lighters on and off in time with the song. That was so amazing that I just had to stop singing the song.

Q: Why did you stop?

Paul: It seemed to me that they were so rhythmical that even if I stopped, which is a bit dangerous because they might all get out of time, I just had no doubt that they would not only be able to continue spot-on in time, but they would also be very much up for it. So I thought they’d enjoy it and I certainly wanted to see it, and I just felt intuitively ‘this will work’. So I was in the middle of singing Every night I just want to get out of my head and then stopped and just clicked my thumbs as they carried on with this light, spot-on in time. It was one of those little magic moments; you think ‘I’ll remember that’. It was their idea to do the lighters and they were so good at it I thought ‘OK, let’s just solo your idea’. Let’s just forget about me and the band and the whole evening, let’s just have the spotlight on you. It was like isolating one of the faders in a mix, let’s just have you for a bit. It wasn’t even you and me, it was just you. Which is after all, at the very end of the show, at the very end of the tour, after you’ve done all the thank yous, you think most of all we wanted to thank you, the audience. That’s the truth of a great tour; it’s that something’s happened with the band, with the music, with the crew – and most of all, with the audience, they’ve responded. And that feedback is………everything.

Source : Dossier Spécial « Back In the World »