Original subtitles

‐ You up for listening to a bit of music?

‐ Yeah. What have you got?

‐ Here's a little number.

- Country. - Yeah.

‐ This is John's rhythm thing.

‐ Unusual choice.

‐ You try doing that for three minutes.

‐ Yeah.

‐ That brought it alive, I remember him doing that.

- Yeah. - So I'll do this.

‐ And did that just happen in the studio?

- Yeah. - Or this was when you played live?

- In the studio? - Studio.

Wait.

- It's a difficult part. - Yeah.

And, and nobody would play it.

It's just an unusual musical choice.

But then, when you get back to the more regular jink‐‐ junk,

- it sounds amazing. - Yeah. Yeah.

- Just from the contrast. - Yeah.

No, that was, that was a really good thing that did happen.

We all knew we had the freedom to goof around.

‐ Yeah.

‐ That's an example of one that I, I had the words before the song.

We were on a tour bus, and nothing much happening.

I'm thinking...

like, you know, "Hey, honey, I'll be home.

I'll send all my love," and, you know‐‐

There was no recording devices,

so you had to remember them.

But you'd kinda wake up, and it would be there in the morning,

so you'd play it again to fix it.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And John would have remembered it anyway.

So we realized, you know, we were writing songs

that were memorable.

Not 'cause we wanted them to be memorable.

‐ Yeah. You had to remember‐‐ ‐ But because we had to remember them.

You know, it was a very practical reason, really.

What was the music that was played in your house?

Did your dad listen to music in the house?

‐ My dad was a pianist too, an amateur pianist.

So he played our piano in the house.

‐ What type of music did he play?

Like show tunes.

‐ Yeah. He played at home,

so it was lovely hearing someone play piano at home.

His main thing was New Year's Eve, big family party.

And he would get on the piano and just play all evening. There was no‐‐

Did he play and sing too or just play?

No, he would just play.

And then everyone else would sing.

- I see. - It was a sing‐along.

All the ladies, they've got their little drinks,

and they're all sitting, right, with the chairs around the thing.

And they're all singing.

But he got arthritis in his hands,

hence me doing exercises all the time.

But he couldn't play the piano.

So I kind of took over.

‐ Do you feel like you were graduating in the family,

- like going from the kid watching... - Yeah.

‐ to all of a sudden taking the chair?

‐ Yeah, exactly.

- Yeah. - That's exciting.

- Um, daunting too, because - I didn't know all the songs. - Yeah!

‐ But it was great,

you know, it was a very nice atmosphere.

And I‐‐ it's funny, I say to people,

I always thought everyone had loving families,

and everyone was very nice to each other.

And of course later I found that's not true.

- Yeah. - And some people are very unfortunate.

John was very unlucky, 'cause he had, his dad left

his home when he was three,

and John didn't see him until he was famous.

And also John's mum got killed.

You know, so this was an eye‐opener to me.

It was like, "Wow, I thought everyone lived like we did."

- Yeah. - But‐‐

‐ It also speaks to the difference in temperaments as grownups...

- Yeah. - ...that different experience - really changes everything.

‐ That's true. You know, you think about it, John‐‐

- It makes perfect sense. - John had a very defensive way.

‐ He had a chip on his shoulder, it sounds like.

- Which was beautiful. - Yeah.

‐ It's how he got through that childhood.

But I was much more open and just,

"Everything's great." You know, optimistic.

- So as a team, that worked. - Yeah.

‐ Because, you know, I would write, um,

Which is like the perfect foil for that song, you know.

So I loved the way he would always add,

like, a little cynicism to the songs.

‐ Thinking back on it, it's crazy because he wore glasses,

and I didn't.

So if we got into an argument, I would call him four eyes.

You know, "Four eyes."

And he would go, "Pigeon chest."

My chest is not as developed as his or whatever.

So, you know, we did all that.

But these things obviously bring you together.

Yeah.

You probably did everything together in those days.

Yeah, you did. Yeah.

We spent a lot of time together.

‐ Also, we played guitar together.

So any chord John knew, I knew.

And if we learned a new chord,

I remember George and I walking into the local music shop.

It was called Hessy's, Frank Hessy.

And there's a guy called Jim Gretty,

who was a bit of a jazz player.

And he was filling in, working in the shop.

But we watched him play once and he did this.

And me and George went, "What is that?"

He goes... "Well, it's F," something.

I don't remember. I don't even know what it is to this day.

But it was like, "Wow. Show us how you do that."

- So we got it. So now me - and George knew this chord. - Yes.

‐ So we'd show that to John. "Look at this," you know.

- Yeah. - And so now we all knew this chord.

I used it in...

‐ Amazing.

‐ John was at art school by this time.

So they had great art parties, and there'd be great girls.

John would kind of invite us.

We were his little friends, you know,

which was a little bit embarrassing at that age.

So I would wear, like, a black turtleneck sweater,

and we were all trying to be French.

We were trying to be, you know, we loved the French artists,

particularly the girls, Juliette Gréco.

She was like, "Wow, look at that."

Brigitte Bardot, you know. These were our favorite ladies.

But I would sit in a corner and think, you know,

"Well, if I work the black turtleneck and play guitar,

"then they might think I'm French,

and therefore, they'd be attracted to me."

So I'd be kinda going...

"Hi, baby."

And years later, John said,

"Remember that crazy little French song you used to do at the parties?"

I said, "Yeah." He said, "You should finish that."

The other thing was,

because I had this Frenchie thing in my mind,

Edith Piaf did a record Milord,

I was kinda going off the back of that.

Milord, Michelle, and then I had a very good friend,

actually the guy who introduced me to John, Ivan.

He was married by this time.

And his wife, Jan, was a French teacher.

I said, "Jan, listen, you got to help me.

What's a, what's a rhyme for Michelle?"

She said, "Ma belle."

I said, "What's that mean?" She went, "My beautiful."

I said, "Great, Michelle, ma belle."

And then how do you say,

"These are words that go together well," in French?

"Sont les mots qui vont tres bien ensemble."

"Okay, you'd better write that one out."

But, um, so between her and John reminding me to do the song,

um, I had Michelle.

One, two, three, four.

‐ There's that chord.

‐ Are you getting the chord?

‐ F demented.

‐ The harmony's overdone.

Where's your bass part?

- It's working again. - Yeah.

‐ This is nice.

‐ I was good when I found that, you know, I thought.

So, would you have, would you have had the bass part worked out

- in advance of the studio? - No, no.

- So you went in with just a guitar song? - I tell you, man‐‐

Yeah, you know, that really was‐‐

- I say, looking back... - Yeah.

‐ I astound myself.

- Spur of the moment. - Yeah.

‐ Now you hear, at this point, it slows down

- a little. - Yeah.

‐ No one could figure that out.

It was‐‐ it was our attempt to be like the Milord record,

which she slows.

But we didn't dare do that.

- So we just slowed down a little bit. - A little bit.

‐ It just sounds like we, we got it wrong.

- Yeah. - You know?

We had one and a half hours to make that track.

‐ Yeah.

‐ Which is pretty economical.

‐ Come into the studio, playing it for the guys.

Are you already thinking about what else it needs?

‐ No, that's all live in the studio. That's‐‐

- Right then? - Yeah.

Yeah, we wouldn't‐‐ I mean, you'd think we would've got together

- and worked out those harmonies. - Yeah.

Of course, George Martin, our producer,

was very helpful with that too.

George would sort of say, "Okay, Paul, your line is‐‐"

- Or whatever. - Yeah.

‐ And then he said, "Okay, George, yours is..."

And George would do... Or whatever.

There'd be strange little lines, unrelated,

- but you just had to remember them. - Yeah.

‐ Or else the grownup would tell you off.

Wow.

Were there any inspirations,

like other bands, that you would listen to for harmonies

besides the Everly Brothers?

‐ Beach Boys, I think, was a big influence on the harmony.

There was a little intercontinental rivalry,

mainly Brian, his writing.

I think he'd heard one of our albums

and thought, "I've got to do better," you know.

And that was Pet Sounds, which I loved.

It was like, it's still one of my big albums, you know.

- So atmospheric and different. - Yes.

‐ And yet, it was the Beach Boys still, you know?

- Yeah. - And we heard Pet Sounds and thought,

"Right, we've got to do something better than that."

- Yeah. - So we did Sgt. Pepper.

‐ I was on a plane with our roadie,

and we were eating,

and he said, "Could you pass the salt and pepper?"

And I thought he said Sgt. Pepper.

I said, "What?" He said, "Salt and pepper."

I said, "I thought you said Sgt. Pepper."

So we had a laugh about that.

But then, more I thought about it,

"Sgt. Pepper, that's kind of a cool character."

‐ Rocking hard.

‐ Yeah.

‐ And yet, because it's Sgt. Pepper's band,

they're putting, you know, brass in.

- The other instruments. - Tubas.

I said, "It'd be great to make an album like

we're alter egos of ourselves."

So we don't have to think this is like The Beatles making an album.

There's no pressure of what do The Beatles need to do now.

- Yes. - This is just some other band.

‐ Nice bass sound. The bass sound was‐‐

‐ Little picky on the end.

‐ Were these written as one? Was it written‐‐

Yeah. No. Two songs.

‐ Because it really leads in, like that's the way it's supposed to be.

- And that was one - of the fun things to figure out... - Yeah.

- ...how you're going to get - from there to there. - Yeah.

‐ Maybe have a bridge chord or something, you know.

We wanted a Ringo song on our albums,

because he had millions of fans.

So they always wanted to hear a Ringo song.

And in the early days, he did covers,

- a country song called - Act Naturally, which is great. - Yes.

‐ Very, very Ringo.

But we said, "Well, let's wait. We could write one."

‐ Again, the chords are simple,

but the bass is keeping it active and moving all the time.

‐ Yeah, we sync the bass and keep it moving.

And then the rest is pretty straight.

But that's the good thing,

you can do that straight stuff and play off it.

- Yeah! Yes. - Bom.

But you need the straight stuff.

‐ Yeah, if everybody was playing off it,

you wouldn't hear the song.

It's like...

It's like lead bass, essentially.

‐ Sgt. Pepper's, was that the first one that you took an extended time to make?

‐ Yeah. I think we'd sort of taken six months period in which to do it.

The big musical papers were starting to say,

"Well, what's happened to The Beatles?

They've dried up."

But we're busily working away

in Abbey Road...

like little Snow White's elves.

‐ And you stopped touring, so that gave you more time.

‐ Yeah, and also the songs were getting more complicated.

But it was very exciting knowing we were doing Sgt. Pepper's.

‐ Yeah.

There's stories of people driving through Laurel Canyon that weekend

and anywhere you drove,

all you heard was the Sgt. Pepper album coming from everywhere.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

‐ So, that weekend was like a hot weekend summer.

And then our record just come.

So everyone's got it for Friday night.

They've got it for Saturday, and they're all getting stoned

and getting drunk and everything to it.

And on Sunday, Jimi Hendrix was doing a concert.

So Jimi came on, and he opens with Sgt. Pepper.

He learned it only two days before.

‐ He did a great version of it. Real wacky, loud, and beautiful.

He's using his vibrator arm, his Bigsby arm,

and he's going...

"You know," I said, "That put you out of tune."

So he starts kinda tuning up a little bit,

and the guitarists in the audience go,

"There's no way back, Jim.

- "You know, you're going to have - to just stand there and tune it." - Yeah.

‐ "Even though it's your second number."

- Yeah. - "You can't just crack on."

‐ Yeah, yeah, yeah.

‐ And he leans in on the mic, he says, "Is Eric out there?"

Looking for Eric Clapton.

- To tune it for him? - Yeah.

Eric's out there. Eric's hiding.

He doesn't want to be seen in the audience.

"Would you tune this for me, man?"

‐ It's so funny.

‐ Yeah. It was a big, big release.

Your first gatefold as well.

Yeah.

‐ It had the gatefold, with the big picture in the center,

and I remember it had cutouts.

- It had little cutouts and everything. - It had a lot of stuff.

‐ Yeah. And the thing is, you know,

the sort of thing I was thinking that time,

and I knew the others thought similarly,

was that when we'd been in Liverpool

and you'd bought an album,

it was a, it was a huge event,

actually buying a vinyl album,

because number one, you had to save up lots of money to get it.

Then I had a half‐hour bus ride.

So you'd take it out of its brown paper bag,

- and you'd study it on the way home. - Yeah.

‐ And you'd read every little liner note

and every little photo.

So we wanted to do something that was really value for money.

- Yeah. - And then, if you're on that bus ride,

you'd need a few bus rides to check this thing out.

When we were kids, I used to get on the bus.

On the next stop, George would get on.

We were going to the same school.

It was called the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys,

where there were a thousand boys.

That was it. No girls.

Anyway, on one of these journeys,

there was a free seat next to me.

And he sat down, and we started talking.

And we talked about what we loved,

music and guitars,

because George was very into guitars.

If you were guessing,

how many other kids on the bus cared about music?

‐ I would guess one, if you were lucky.

‐ So you felt a connection to him right away

- just because you had guitar - in common, and it was rare. - Yeah. We both used to‐‐

It was quite rare. Yeah.

So we got to know each other really well.

And we used to hitchhike,

and the guy who'd give you a lift, "Great, great."

So you'd get this lift, and he'd say, "Well, I can't go any further than this.

I now go over here." So he'd drop us.

And what we'd do is we'd go to a little shop,

and we would buy a tin of rice pudding.

It was called Ambrosia.

And I, very resourcefully,

had brought along with me a little camping stove.

‐ Wow.

‐ So we're at the side of the road

trying to hitch, like...

We've got this little open can.

‐ Wow.

‐ We weren't Beatles. We weren't anything.

But if you look back, it's quite amazing,

"There's two of The Beatles eating rice cream."

‐ On the side of the road.

- Really, on the side of the road, yeah. - Yeah.

- And then... - we'd go to the pictures,

we'd go to the cinema together often.

That was sort of the great, you know, entertainment.

And there used to be an advert...

for furniture, and it was Link furniture.

And so the advert said, "Thinking of linking?"

So me and George used to like that,

"Thinking of linking?

"I mean, if that was a Buddy Holly song,

it would be kind of a good one."

So we kinda wrote this.

‐ Fantastic.

‐ So those little things, you know, just‐‐

And we only remembered that when we were doing The Beatles anthology.

George said to me, "Do you remember this?"

"What? It's Thinking of Linking."

Yeah.

So, you know, those things, I say, all of that brought you together.

And then I did the whole sort of thing with John, similar songs

and hitchhiking and all of that.

So by the time we came to be a recording group...

‐ I think this is why we could, so quickly, just put together a lick.

- Yeah. - You know?

Um, and, and that made it, more joyful.

One, two, three, four.

George developed later as a songwriter.

In the beginning, I don't think he was that interested.

He just kinda just left it to me and John.

But he became one of the greats.

‐ From the little guy I met on the bus.

‐ Yeah.

‐ A little guy with a little quiff, you know, with his hair

and a little guitar player,

he turned to be a very wise man.

So when I use the word magical, that's sorta what I mean, you know.

It's like that didn't have to happen.

We could have had five years and gone back to the factory.

‐ Which probably was what was expected.

‐ Yeah. Really, nobody,

no groups were supposed to last more than a few years.

‐ This is where Eric Clapton came in and played.

‐ Was that the first time a known non‐Beatle played on record?

- Yeah. - Had you met him before?

‐ Yeah. So he was on the scene.

‐ Did you think of him as George's friend or as the guy from Cream?

- George's friend. Yeah. - Okay.

- Well, we just knew he was - a great guitar player. - Yeah.

Once the music starts playing, everything else‐‐

‐ Yeah. It's true.

- Yeah. - It's funny 'cause I worked with him

maybe a couple of years ago in the same studio,

Abbey Road, number two.

I said to him, "Wow.

We haven't been in this studio together since Guitar Gently Weeps."

He said, "Yeah, I know."

I mean, you think about it, it's very generous of George

to give Eric this moment

when he could have had it for himself.

‐ Absolutely.

‐ But it's just like, George was very like that.

He was, he was very open.

‐ Alright. Doesn't even sound like a bass.

‐ Very aggressive sound, isn't it?

‐ Con‐considering... it's accompanying this.

‐ Yeah.

‐ I've never heard a bass sound like that before.

Very unusual.

It's almost like two songs are happening simultaneously.

‐ Yeah.

- Do you know what I'm saying? - Yeah.

‐ It's like... two whole‐‐

‐ Yeah.

- Either one of them, great. - Yeah.

‐ And then right on top of each other, it's fasc‐‐

‐ This is another. It's another song here.

‐ Yeah.

Or‐‐

‐ Fascinating.

- Yeah. - You know, it's just amazing.

‐ That's interesting you bring that up.

I was not conscious of that till I listened to it now.

‐ No.

‐ I hear that tone on it, and it's like, "Wow."

‐ If you had a studio musician come in,

the best musician in the world to play on your new song,

he would not play that.

‐ He would never do that.

‐ No, because it's not‐‐

‐ He'd be much more sensible.

‐ It's just fascinating to see it come together.

You guys were essentially blending styles,

but not by mixing two genres,

but really by mixing two fields.

‐ Yeah.

‐ Like when The Beatles played a reggae‐influenced number,

it doesn't sound like reggae, it sounds like The Beatles.

‐ Right. Yeah, yeah.

‐ So it becomes something new.

‐ Yeah. That's, um‐‐

I think that's a nice fact of music is,

even though you're inspired by something,

it's going to sound like you.