Quotes from Allan Kozinn

I heard Paul's messages in Ram," Lennon fumed in an interview with Crawdaddy magazine. "Too many people going where? Missed our lucky what? What was our first mistake? Can't be wrong? Huh. I mean Yoko, me, and other friends can't all be hearing things.

In response, he repurposed an unfinished song that had been kicking around since 1969, originally titled 'Since You Came to Me,' and fashioned a response. Composing new lyrics that put Paul directly, and identifiably, in the crosshairs, he transformed his old tune into 'How Do You Sleep?

Paul's approach was positively lackadaisical when compared to a performer like James Brown, who was known to impose fines on his players for wrong notes or deviations from the arrangements. But this was alien to the freewheeling rock band aesthetic that Paul thought he wanted when he formed Wings. In

On May 26—just five days after Ram was released—John brought 'How Do You Sleep?' into Ascot Sound, the new recording studio built for him at Tittenhurst Park. Although

Sailor Sam," a name that would not have meant much to American listeners, although British listeners, and anyone close enough to Paul to know the details of his expanded project list, recognized Sailor Sam as a Rupert Bear character—the sailor who lived on the edge of Nutwood and took Rupert on rides in the sidecar of his motorcycle

The Elvis imitation calls to mind 'Death Cab for Cutie,' the song the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band sang in Magical Mystery Tour.

Two of the band members in Wings walked out in the same week for different reasons, and he never asked why," Henry mused. "You can take from that what you want.

What he missed was "the lack of great sounding boards like John, Ringo, George to actually talk to about the music.

The song Paul chose for this second session, 'Get on the Right Thing,' is built around McCartney's interesting use of a common-tone harmonic trick: the chords accompanying the song's verses all contain an E natural, but the melody McCartney sings against them steadily rises, creating a subtle tension harmonically, and between stasis and movement.

Well, there are many reasons to get finally given the push," he said of his abandonment of Klein as his manager. "Let's say that possibly Paul's suspicions were right.

The problem, the Eastmans told him, was that the Beatles were Apple. They were bound together by the 1967 partnership agreement from which Apple emerged, and worse, that agreement governed aspects of their EMI deal—for example, how they were to be paid. Under the EMI agreement, whatever any of the Beatles recorded was considered "Beatle product," the proceeds paid to Apple.

At the time," Paul said, "I felt that it was a bit too predictable, that everyone would leave the Beatles and go with old Phil Spector or the drummer, Jim Keltner. It was like a clique, and I just didn't want to join in that clique."32 By contrast, Paul was impressed with the approach Ringo was taking.

In a hash-energized moment, he came up with the idea of transforming the live action film into an animated musical, interspersing musical set pieces with the tale of a family of cartoon mice.

One other late addition is undocumented, but it is claimed that the group took the sexual theme one step further, overdubbed the pulsing sound of a vibrator after the line "get you ready for my polygon." (In the final mix this sound could easily be mistaken for the sound of a chainsaw or motorcycle.)

I was beginning to get too producery for everyone," Paul admitted. "George Martin was the actual producer, and I was beginning to be too definite, and George [Harrison] and Ringo turned around and said, 'Look, piss off, we're grown-ups and we can do it without you fine.' People like me who don't realize when they're being very overbearing, it comes as a great surprise to be told."30

Although I condemn any violence, if two people are fighting, I'm probably gonna be on one side or the other, even though I'm against violence.

I had considered orchestrating 'The Long and Winding Road' but I decided against it. I therefore want it altered to these specifications: Strings, horns, voices and all added noises to be reduced in volume. Vocal and Beatle instrumentation to be brought up in volume. Harp to be removed completely at the end of the song and original piano notes to be substituted. Don't ever do it again. Signed, PAUL McCARTNEY c.c. Phil Spector, John Eastman

As a guitarist, though much of the world didn't know it, since the Beatles' album credits rarely mentioned who played the solos, he contributed some of band's most virtuosic playing, including the stinging solo on lead guitarist George Harrison's 'Taxman.

What Paul did not know was that Laine was broke, and homeless, and sleeping in the back room of Secunda's office, and that he was trying to keep body and soul together with a Tin Pan Alley job, writing songs and recording demos at Essex Music in the hope that other artists would record them and earn him some royalties. He was writing a song when Paul telephoned.

A measure of that versatility was the fact that he recorded both the gentle 'Yesterday' and the high-energy 'I'm Down,' with its Little Richard–like screamed vocal line, at the same June 14, 1965, recording session.

None of the other Beatles attended. Just as Paul and Linda were exchanging vows, George was being arrested for drug possession at his own home. He attended the reception. John and Yoko were in the studio completing their second joint LP, Unfinished Music No. 2—Life with the Lions. And Ringo Starr was filming The Magic Christian, with Peter Sellers. No other Beatles were present eight days later, when John married Yoko Ono in Gibraltar.

The band had to stay in outhouses with stone floors," Jo Jo complained. "We got the impression they had only ever been used for animals. True, they had been swept out, but I was most unhappy. . . . We had an old-fashioned bathtub, and we had to fill it with hot water from pots and pans. [Even though] I was eight months pregnant, I was never offered a wash or a bath in Paul and Linda's place.

No Words,' for example, was two songs that became one song.54 I wrote the first few verses and couldn't get any further. I took them to Paul, and he added his little bit of magic.

final syllable of Bowie's 'Suffragette City'—the word suffragette being, perhaps not coincidentally, among the McCartney song's lyrics).