Paul McCartney – « Chaos and Creation In The Back Yard » : à l’honneur dans Rolling Stone

Paul McCartney sera en couverture du prochain numéro de « Rolling Stone ».
Figurera dans ce numéro, une très longue interview du Sir Britannique dont nous vous livrons un extrait ci-après !

Do you and George Martin still talk regularly?

Yeah, we meet up quite a bit, actually. Particularly because we used his studio for the London end of the recording. George always pops in, especially if he knows I’m there. He’s one of the most important men in my life, and that’s including my father, my brother, the Beatles — George Martin is right up there in the top five. Really, I would like to work with him forever. That would be my dream.

Does he still produce?

No. He’s got a hearing problem, like a lot of us from the Sixties. ‘Cause we did listen to it too loud. He just got to the stage where he thinks, very nobly, that he shouldn’t produce. I say to him, « George, the engineers need the ears. You’re the ideas man. » But I think it’s very cool of him to know when not to do it. So I just rang him up and said, « If I can’t have you, who’s the man? » He chatted it around, thought about it, talked to his son, and a couple of days later he came back and said Nigel.

Had you been aware of Nigel’s work?

Yeah, but without knowing he was the man behind it. I liked the last couple of Radiohead albums, particularly the sound. And Travis, The Invisible Band. And Beck. So we just met up, chatted and liked each other — I think. I liked him. And then I sent him a couple of records that I thought might either turn him on or off, or might just be a direction to go.

Demos you’d made?

No, other people’s records. I liked the idea of toying with a kind of Asian thing, a one-chord thing. There’s an artist called Nitin Sawhney who I like — he’s a British-Asian guy. It was just a vibe I was into at the time, that sort of droniness. I didn’t know what I’d do with it. It was just a mood thing. And Nigel said, « Mmm, no. I know what album I want to make if I’m going to work with you. I want to make an album that’s you. » And I thought, « That’s the kind of producer I need now. »

So we agreed to meet up for a test period — two weeks in London. The first week was with my touring band, and we were quite excited to record together. But Nigel had this itching feeling, like he could do something else. He wanted to move in a bit more daring direction. He said, « I want to take you out of your safety zone, man. » Kept saying that — « It’s just too easy. »

Godrich eventually talked McCartney into saving his band for the tour and playing nearly every instrument himself, just as he’d done on his first solo effort, McCartney. The album was recorded in 1970 and released ten days after McCartney’s official statement that the Beatles had broken up. McCartney’s relationship with the group’s manager, Allen Klein, had particularly soured. « I used to have dreams in which Allen Klein was an evil dentist, » McCartney recalls. « That was a bad sign. I just wanted to be as far away from Apple [the Beatles’ label and business office] as possible. »

To that end, McCartney set up a Studer four-track recorder in his living room and, as he says, went from « everything to zero. It was liberating. » McCartney made the entire album alone (save for some harmonies with his wife), using a single microphone, which he moved closer to the drum kit if he wanted a louder cymbal sound. Some tracks, like « The Lovely Linda, » are mere fragments of a song, and background noises (giggling, doors opening, the clack of the tape) are audible throughout. McCartney called the album « kind of throwaway » in a 1974 Rolling Stone interview, but today its loose, offhand feel is charming, a precursor to the low-fi home taping of indie-rock bands.

In coaxing McCartney to play multiple instruments on Chaos and Creation, Godrich began with percussion. « I love kicking around on the drums, » McCartney admits. « I’ll do it at the drop of a hat. So I started kicking, and he said, ‘Yeah! This is it, man. It just turns the track around. It’s you!’ Then he said, ‘Look, I’d like to hear you on guitar. What have you got?’ I brought my old Epiphone electric guitar out, which was like a cheap Gibson in the early days. It’s the guitar that I played the opening riff of ‘Paperback Writer’ on, so it’s a lovely guitar. It can be quite varied — sort of horny and hard, like the ‘Taxman’ solo; that was the other thing I used it on. George let me have a go for the solo because I had an idea — it was the early Jimi Hendrix days and I was trying to persuade George to do something like that, feedback-y and crazy. And I was showing him what I wanted, and he said, ‘Well, you do it.’ Even though it was his song, he was happy for me to do it. And this became Nigel’s big favorite guitar. »

Do you have a lot of old guitars you end up pulling out?

I’ve got a few guitars that I like. The trouble with fame and riches is that you have more than one guitar. When you’re a kid, you’ve only got one guitar, and you love it, and you string it and you cherish it, and you put it to bed at night and all that shit. You relate to it. When you’ve got more than one, you’ve got two [laughs]. And then you don’t know which one to choose. It’s an embarrassment of riches. Then you’ve suddenly got three and four, and then at my stage in the game, people give you guitars. So you’ve suddenly got a cellarful.

But my Epiphone, that’s my electric guitar, that is the one. I like to play on it because it’s oldish and a bit infirm. It won’t stay in tune easily, like Jimi Hendrix’s guitar didn’t. Jimi was always, like, calling out to the audience, « Will you come tune this? » One night — it’s an old story of mine and I love it — we released Sgt. Pepper’s on a Friday, and on Sunday Jimi opened his show with it in London. He did this long solo like only Jimi could. And at the end of it, he had hopelessly gone out of tune. So he shambled over to the mike and said, « Is Eric [Clapton] in the house? » Eric shrunk down in his seat. Some girls said, « Yeah, he’s here! » Jimi said, « Will you come and tune this for me? » Of course, Eric shrunk even lower and Jimi had to tune it himself.

Anyway, I was into that kind of thing, and that’s why I bought my Epiphone. I went to the shop and said, « What have you got that feeds back great? » That was normally a disadvantage in the old days — in the older old days. I use the Les Paul onstage, because it doesn’t go out of tune as much, and it has a nice sound. But Nigel would wrinkle his nose and say, « It’s a bit heavy rock. »

I’d imagine it’s hard to find people, especially in the studio, who aren’t intimidated by you, and who won’t just be yes-men.

I suppose it is. With Nigel, I pretty much knew the minute I met him he was gearing himself up to tell me no. From the word go. When I first brought him some songs, he just passed a few by and went to the next one, like he was shopping. I brought them back later and said, « Well, you didn’t look at this one. » He said, « I like the other one better. »

Did you wrestle with that kind of bluntness initially?

Yeah, I was well pissed. « You don’t like my songs. How dare you? Who are you? Punk. » But I realized he was looking for a vibe. So if one of my songs was a bit perky, maybe he didn’t think we should do it this time around. I might have thought, « Well, I’ve heard a lot of good perky songs on the radio. And I’m in a perky mood! » But he was just like, « Nah. »

And it was good for me, because it was like working with a band member. It was like working with . . . I mean, it’s too heavy a comparison to say it was like working with John. Because if I say that in Rolling Stone, it’s a huge statement. But it was like working with a great band member. It was similar to me and John, back to when we were just kids, before we’d been discovered.

There was one key moment when it all rose to the surface. I was in the studio, raring to go. Got my Hofner [bass guitar] out, tuned her up, knew what I was going to play. I was in a good mood. I was just about to listen to the track and find my way through a bass part when Nigel said, « You know that song you played the other day? I really didn’t like it. I think it was crap. » I said, « Oh, yeah? » And I thought, « What will I do now? Fucking . . . punch him? Or just spit at him? Tell him to fuck off? Or what? »