Just in case you didn’t get the memo on this, I wish to inform you that Paul McCartney is a genius.
I’m not about to sit here and list the scores of undeniably masterful tunes he’s written or co-written over the years. The fact that virtually anyone reading this can hear ten or fifteen of them in their head without even trying very hard says all you need to know about the man’s inherent gifts for melody and exceptionally memorable hooks. At his creative peak, he practically poured them out of a bottle.
McCartney makes it all seem so easy, and apparently, a great deal of the time it is that easy. At least for him.
Paul Simon, no slouch himself, says in Paul Zollo’s book Songwriters on Songwriting that he doesn’t even consider himself in McCartney’s league. To illustrate, he says he ran into McCartney at a gathering one time. After some chitchat, McCartney asked him if he was working on anything new. Simon replied that, yes, he was currently writing tunes for a bunch of rather complex rhythm tracks he recorded with some brilliant South African musicians (this project would, of course, become Simon’s world music masterpiece, 1986’s Graceland).
McCartney was intrigued by this and said he’d love to hear what Simon was up to. So Simon took him out to his car and played him a cassette tape he had of the tracks. While he listened, McCartney began casually humming and singing melodies to them that, by Simon’s own account, were very nearly as good as the ones Simon had been painstakingly crafting for days!
Another popular songwriter named (checks notes) Bob Dylan once said, “I mean I’m in awe of McCartney. He’s about the only one that I am in awe of. But I’m in awe of him. He can do it all and he’s never let up, you know. He’s got the gift for melody, he’s got the rhythm. He can play any instrument. He can scream and shout as good as anybody and he can sing the ballad as good as anybody, you know so… And his melodies are, you know, effortless. That’s what you have to be in awe…I’m in awe of him maybe just because he’s just so damn effortless.”
And let’s not forget that remarkable sequence from Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back wherein young Paul—he was still only 26 years old—randomly strums on his Hofner violin bass while George and Ringo sit there staring at him, bored shitless. Within no more than three minutes, McCartney cooks up the foundation for the Beatles’ next number one hit, “Get Back,” including the final melody and rhythm. He even blurts out snatches of the finished lyric!
It’s all right there on camera. He just starts playing it in the amount of time it takes most songwriters to choose a guitar and a pick.
I imagine it isn’t that simple for McCartney every time he sits down to create a new song, but I’ve always felt that God-given talent is best reflected by the work an artist can generate with very little effort. Then, in order to give full bloom to their gifts, they work and rework what they’ve got until it’s ready for the world to experience.
Natural instinct, the ability to see or hear what your unconscious is only vaguely suggesting, is where the real magic resides, and Paul McCartney appears to have natural instinct oozing from his pores.
Still, everybody can name two or three—or more—hit Paul McCartney singles that they simply cannot stand, even if they’re dyed-in-the-wool Beatlemaniacs. In my case, I’ll be just fine if I never have to hear “Ebony and Ivory” or “Coming Up” or (God forbid) “Wonderful Christmastime” ever again before I die. Still, when I happen to stumble upon them, they end up running through my mind on repeat for the next several hours, if not the next several days.
That catchiness is McCartney’s greatest strength as a popular artist. His taste is what can fail him. At his commercial best, he blends memorable melodies and bouncy, often witty lyrics into a big piece of aural hard candy, and he does it better than practically anybody else who’s ever tried to do it. But it’s not just the song itself that generates the hit. It’s also how he chooses to bring the song to life in the studio.
Imagine “Silly Love Songs,” for instance, without that catchy bass line placed at the very front of the mix. This ability to create a ridiculously captivating setting for an equally captivating tune is a too-often ignored aspect of what makes McCartney...well…McCartney. He knows full well what he’s doing, but you have to figure he also sometimes does what he does without fully knowing he’s doing it.
That’s just how it works for him. Because, as I’ve already said, he’s a genius.
I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “When is he gonna say something about Badfinger?!"
That would be right now. Badfinger was a huge-selling and critically acclaimed power pop band in the 1970s; their best singles rank with the top hits of the period. They rocked like crazy and had a real flare for emotional, slowly building ballads. Pete Ham and Tom Evans, their key songwriters, were legitimate talents.
But before their band was called Badfinger, they were the Iveys. And the Iveys couldn’t land a hit record to save their lives.
They were the first band signed to the Beatles’ new, self-run label, Apple Records. The Fab Four’s almost religiously committed Man Friday, Mal Evans, and Apple’s A&R head, Peter Asher, had been invited to see the Iveys perform live one night at London’s Marquee Club. They were impressed with what they heard and alerted their bosses to the group’s existence.
Evans was really convinced. He personally handed the Iveys’ demo tape to each one of the Beatles and was instrumental in getting them signed. When Apple began to sour on the group, Evans loudly sang their praises and argued that they should be given another chance. He was a true believer who eventually produced one of their best singles, the crunchy, Beatle-like rocker, “No Matter What,” in 1970.
But that came later. The Iveys’ first single, 1969’s “Maybe Tomorrow,” was pushed like crazy by Apple but only reached number 61 on the U.S. charts and never cracked the British top 100. When their next single was barely even released by the label, the Iveys’ then-bass player, Ron Griffiths, complained in a print interview that the Iveys weren’t getting enough support from the Beatles.
Mal was much closer to Paul than he was to the rest of the Beatles, so when McCartney heard about Griffiths’ interview, Evans once again insisted to him that the Iveys had the makings of a big-time pop group.
Paul was listening. He had recently been commissioned to supply three new songs for an upcoming satirical film called The Magic Christian, which starred Peter Sellers and Paul’s old pal, Ringo Starr. So the ever-busy Beatle decided, what the hell, maybe he could get the Iveys in on this Magic Christian thing.
But first, that band name had to go.
Both the Iveys and the brain trust at Apple, which likely included anyone who happened to be sitting around the office and smoking pot with McCartney at the time, decided that “the Iveys” was too namby-pamby a name for the late-60s rock music scene.
After tossing out a handful of possibilities, they finally landed on “Badfinger,” which was a reference to “Badfinger Boogie,” an early working title for “With a Little Help from My Friends” (John Lennon had somehow injured his index finger on a piano while writing it, probably while being higher than Lucy in the sky).
Since Paul had recently whipped up a song called “Come and Get It” for The Magic Christian, it was quickly decided that the newly rechristened Badfinger would record it, write and record two other songs for the soundtrack, and get major press via the movie and the fact that Paul McCartney wrote a song for them and produced the whole shebang.
But McCartney wanted to make damn certain that Badfinger would finally score the big hit that they and Apple Records had been longing for. So he set about doing just that.
The Beatles—seen here in the early stages of iconically crossing a street—were busy recording their swan song, Abbey Road, at the time. One morning, before the other Fabs got to the studio, Paul showed up and recorded a demo for “Come and Get It.”
“I’d written the song ‘Come And Get It,’” he later said, “and I’d made a fairly decent demo. Because I lived locally, I could get in half an hour before a Beatles session at Abbey Road—knowing it would be empty and all the stuff would be set up—and I’d use Ringo’s equipment to put a drum track down, put some piano down, quickly put some bass down, do the vocal, and double-track it.”
Being Paul McCartney, he knew precisely what he had when he was finished, even if it took him less than an hour to do it.
“I said to Badfinger, ‘OK, it’s got to be exactly like this demo,’ because it had a great feeling on it. They actually wanted to put their own variations on, but I said, ‘No, this really is the right way.’”
You probably already know what Badfinger’s absurdly appealing recording of “Come and Get It” sounds like since it made it all the way to number six upon its release—just like that, as conjured by an actual Beatle—and has been a staple of classic rock radio ever since. But here’s McCartney’s tossed-off version...
And this is the Badfinger single...
One of these things is exactly like the other. Okay, Badfinger speeds up the tempo a teeny-tiny bit, but that’s basically it.
Which begs the question— if Badfinger releases a top ten single that’s a note-for-note, syllable-for-syllable, breath-for-breath copy of Paul McCartney’s version, did Badfinger really have a top ten single? I guess the answer is “yes” because it still says so right there on the Billboard charts. But if we’re being honest here, that’s Badfinger pretending to be Paul McCartney pretending to be the Beatles!
Google tells me that Paul McCartney has simultaneously had his name as a writer and performer on...Holy shit!…fifty-seven top ten U.S. singles!! I’m here to argue, though, that, in all fairness, he should at least be credited for fifty-seven and a half, if not fifty-seven and three quarters.
I mean, come on! It always bothers me when an artist doesn’t receive proper recognition for his work.
When I was growing up, Paul was the Beatle who made me roll my yes the most. His thumbs-up affability was the furthest thing from cool that I could think of. But, like the rest of the world, I came around to being in awe at his sheer gifts. He CAN do anything. He's a once-in-a-century songwriter in terms of coming up with melodies that will stay in your head forever. He can play anything. He has about seven or eight signing voices he could call on at any time. His off offs are career highlights for other people. All in all, Paul is amazing.
I love that you grok that Paul’s taste can sometimes be a little cringe. “Ebony and Ivory!” Gack! Cringe!
But he is genuinely a genius and I knew that even though I didn’t know half of the examples in this essay and… THANK YOU. A fab read, as always!