Il y a quelques jours de cela, Billboard publiait une interview de Paul McCartney, donnée dans le cadre de la promotion de son album à paraître « Chaos & Creation in the Backyard ». Nous vous proposons de découvrir cette dernière, en version originale ci-dessous :
Q: I sense that people are surprised that this is your 20th solo album. Chaos and Creation In The Backyard Fine Line / How Kind Of You / Jenny Wren / At The Mercy / Friends To Go / English Tea / Too Much Rain / A Certain Softness / Riding To Vanity Fair / Follow Me / Promise To You Girl / This Never Happened Before / Anyway Chaos and Creation In The Backyard Fine Line / How Kind Of You / Jenny Wren / At The Mercy / Friends To Go / English Tea / Too Much Rain / A Certain Softness / Riding To Vanity Fair / Follow Me / Promise To You Girl / This Never Happened Before / Anyway Chaos and Creation In The Backyard Fine Line / How Kind Of You / Jenny Wren / At The Mercy / Friends To Go / English Tea / Too Much Rain / A Certain Softness / Riding To Vanity Fair / Follow Me / Promise To You Girl / This Never Happened Before / Anyway Fine Line Fine Line / Comfort of Love Fine Line Fine Line / Growing up Falling Down.
A: I’m kind of surprised, because I don’t count how many I’ve done; I just do the next one, and love it. There’re always people who say, « Did you know it’s 40 years since the Beatles?, » and I go, « Get away. » Or « You’ve done 3,000 gigs. » I say, « Never. » Of course the more we go on, the more it mounts up. But it really doesn’t matter to me whether it’s the 30th or the 3,000th. But at the same time it’s kind of impressive.
Q: How did your initial meeting with producer Nigel Godrich go?
A: Our ideas were surprisingly similar. I said, « I’m going to make a great record. » I thought instead of saying, « I would like to make a good record, » I’m going to put some pressure on myself and motivate myself. And he said, « If I do it with you, it’s got to be you. » I suggested a couple of possible things I was listening to that we might draw off. And he said, « No, we’ve got enough to draw off. That’s what people want: an album that sounds like you. »
So we decided to do two weeks at Rak Studios to see if we could work together or if we hated each other.
Sure enough, we got on very well. First week, I came in with my live band, thinking that might be the way we’d go. But he started to intimate toward the end of the week that he wanted, as he put it, to take me out of my safety zone, to do something different.
Q: In what way?
A: He said, « I like the way you play drums. » I said, « I’ve got one of the world’s greatest drummers in Abe (Laboriel). » He said, « Yeah, but it might be a bit safe. You know these guys, they know you. I’d like to try something out. » I love playing drums. I love knocking about on a lot of instruments. I may not be the world’s greatest drummer, but I’ve got a feel that he liked. I remember
Elvis Costello talking to me about the feel I had on drums.
So that turned out to be the feel, and I had to say to the guys in the band, « Look, we’ll be playing this live, but I hope you understand. » They were really cool about it, and we set off on the road.
Q: You mention Costello, who you collaborated with on (the 1989 album) « Flowers in the Dirt, » and this feels like it could be your best record since that one. Is there a link, in terms of bringing somebody new in who was prepared to tell you good things and bad things?
A: I think that’s probably true, yeah. Someone you respect who has their own respect in the community and who is forthright enough to say, « No, we can do better than that. »
The funny thing is, I always like that, but what happens is when you reach a certain position, people will naturally, in a way, assume that whatever you say goes.
But in a lot of the areas I work, like tours and in the office, if you were able to look in on a meeting of mine, it’d be, « OK, who’s got a good idea? What do we do now? » I really like teamwork.
Q: When you meet new people, not just in work but socially, you must have to take the lead. You must be aware that an awful lot of people are completely daunted by meeting you at all.
A: It’s true, yeah. It’d be like when I met Phil Everly. He was such a figure from my youth that I went all daft and said, « Err, I used to be you … John was Don …, » and all the most stupid things, and he got thoroughly embarrassed.
But I am very aware of that, even to people at the newspaper shop. I do a sort of Liverpool thing, which is (jokingly), « Look here, I don’t want any trouble off you, » or whatever. I’ll be in their face, and they’ll go, « Oh, he’s just ordinary, » and we soon get at ease. It comes in handy in situations like that.
People always expect you to be riding around in stretch limousines all the time, but I will sometimes take public transport if it’s convenient, and it does surprise people, you see the heads turn.
I was in New York and I needed to get uptown, so I took one of the uptown buses. A few people noticed, and this black lady said, « Hey, you Paul McCartney?, » and started getting quite loud. I said, « Yeah, but I don’t want any trouble off you, babe, » and she laughed.
I said, « If you’re going to talk to me, come over here, sit by me. » So she did, and I heard her entire history, how she was going to visit her sister and all this stuff.
Q: Another tour coming up in the States suggests that you’re having a good time now.
A: The end of my last American tour, promoters were saying, « We could still take more, do longer. » Because I don’t really go out for much longer than three months, I find I get bored and it really becomes a slog. Three months at the rate we tour, which is pretty much one gig, then a day off, is pretty leisurely compared to how we used to work.
Q: Are you planning on any more « new old » songs onstage?
A: Yeah, I found a few, I must say, which will be surprises. That’s one of the great pleasures now, because I used to resist Beatles songs. It was as if I was just trading on the past.
But I realized audiences loved them. They didn’t mind you doing that — in fact just the opposite. But I found that on the last American tour, things like « Hello Goodbye, » that I’d never sung live before, was very entertaining for me and the audience. So that became a big plus. I’ve got a few songs I did in Europe that I’ve never done on American soil, and I’m thinking of a couple of others I’ve not done before, so it means they’re very fresh. Nous vous rappelons qu’à l’occasion de la sortie de cet album, la rédaction de Yellow-Sub.net se mobilise et vous propose dans ses colonnes :
_ – [Un dossier spécial sur cet album, et le premier single accompagnant sa publication, « Fine Line ».->rub1048]
_ – [Un forum spécial consacré à l’album->art7906]
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(CD 2 titres)
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