Paul Mccartney - Kisses On The Bottom

Genre: Pop

Year: 2012

Play Album

Track

Listeners

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Write Myself A Letter (2:35)

2838

Home (When Shadows Fall) (4:03)

1454

It's Only A Paper Moon (2:34)

1134

More I Cannot Wish You (3:03)

1019

The Glory Of Love (3:45)

919

We Three (My Echo, My Shadow And Me) (3:21)

854

Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive (2:31)

835

My Valentine (3:14)

2968

Always (3:49)

964

My Very Good Friend The Milkman (3:03)

818

Bye Bye Blackbird (4:25)

796

Get Yourself Another Fool (4:42)

705

The Inch Worm (3:42)

678

Only Our Hearts (4:20)

785

Baby's Request (3:28)

723

My One And Only Love (3:49)

759

About this album

I’m in LA. I’m British. I’m a tourist. I’m in Capitol A Studio, I’m singing on Nat King Cole’s microphone – I’m on holiday!” And she looked at me and smiled. She went, “A holiday.” So I think we all then went, “Great, OK, so let’s get that vibe.” And we did. Whenever we were worried about something I’d go, “I don’t mind, I’m on holiday.” So, coupled with the fact that we were not working from musical charts, and we were really making it up, it ended up much more free and open and organic. It was quite a voyage of discovery. There’s a very relaxed approach to it all. One of the nice...read more I’m in LA. I’m British. I’m a tourist. I’m in Capitol A Studio, I’m singing on Nat King Cole’s microphone – I’m on holiday!” And she looked at me and smiled. She went, “A holiday.” So I think we all then went, “Great, OK, so let’s get that vibe.” And we did. Whenever we were worried about something I’d go, “I don’t mind, I’m on holiday.” So, coupled with the fact that we were not working from musical charts, and we were really making it up, it ended up much more free and open and organic. It was quite a voyage of discovery. There’s a very relaxed approach to it all. One of the nice things that I realised afterwards, I thought, “You know what? That’s exactly how we used to work with The Beatles.” John and I would come in on Monday morning with a song, that George Martin hadn’t heard, George and Ringo hadn’t heard. We’d play them the song and we’d all kick it around until we had an arrangement that we were satisfied with. Then we’d record it, quite quickly, without too much fuss. That was very much the way we did this, which was a great pleasure for me. What about the track, My Valentine? That’s one of your own, albeit in the same general style. I was in Morocco with Nancy, who’s now my wife, and we were having a nice holiday but it was raining rather a lot. I said, “A pity it’s raining” and she said “It doesn’t matter, we can still have a good time.” And I’m like that, too, I don’t mind at all. So there was an old piano, slightly out of tune, in the foyer of the hotel. And there was this lovely Irish guy who knew so much old stuff, really deep stuff like Beautiful Dreamer, If You Were The Only Girl In The World... Again, stuff from my Dad’s era. I used to enjoy listening to him in the evenings and he put me in mind of that genre. So one afternoon, when it was raining, I was in that foyer, and without anyone noticing except a couple of waiters who were clearing up, I sat at the piano and started knocking around with this little tune, kind of in the style that I knew he played in: “What if it rained? We didn’t care. She said that some day soon the sun was gonna shine…” And there was my Irish buddy sitting behind me, he’d been listening to me all the time: “Ah that’s great!” A nice little vote of confidence in the song. When I played it to Tommy, he said “Yeah, I love it, great.” So we did that one and eventually I had the pleasure of working with Eric (Clapton), who put a lovely acoustic guitar part on. And by the way, I forgot the important ingredient, the day I wrote it was Valentine’s Day, a fairly important fact! It was our first dance, very romantic. The songs of that era were very often on the smoochy side. Exactly, they’re pretty romantic. The way I figure it, a lot of it was post-War. My parents’ generation were just recovering, when I grew up, from World War II. In Liverpool they’d all been bombed. So they were now determined to have a good time, and they latched on to these very positive songs. They didn’t have expensive entertainment centres. Basically, many of the houses in those days, and I understand it was the same in America, had a piano. No matter how poor you were, most people managed to get a piano. It’s funny, the one we had in our house, my Dad later told me he’d bought off Brian Epstein’s Dad, in NEMS. People wanted positive songs to lose the memory of the War. And I grew up with that. I think it really gave me a deep love of that kind of thing. Did it shape you much? We think of The Beatles as springing up with rock’n’roll, but you personally had been around for some years before Elvis came along. Yes, we’d actually grown up with songs from that era. Two of John’s favourite songs, when I met him, were Close Your Eyes (by Bernice Petkere, 1933), which is very much of that era, and the other was Little White Lies (by Walter Donaldson, 1930). Those were the kind of songs that we’d been listening to and that attracted me to him. I’d say, Yeah, well I love that song and he’d say I love this one, or that one. And I do think they did have quite an influence on us melodically. A lot of these old songs had what they called a “verse”. Anyone else would call it an introduction. It’s always the bit that you never knew. You include one here on Bye Bye Blackbird. Yeah. Then it goes, “Pack up all my cares and woe” and you go, “Oh, I know this song!” You finally recognise it. John and I liked that. We used to talk about that as one of things it would be good to do. We gave a kind of nod to it on Here, There And Everywhere: “To lead a better life, I need my love to be here…” Whereas in the old days they would have extended that: “She was here, and I was there, and I think she’s everywhere…” Another one might be Do You Want To Know A Secret? “You’ll never know how much I really love you,” and all that. That’s right. That was where all that came from. It’s in a lot of the songs that we were trying to write, even though we were now living in the rock’n’roll era, and influenced by it. But when you say rock’n’roll, there’s Elvis Presley doing Love Me Tender, which is an old song, way older than Elvis. So these songs lived in the rock’n’roll era, as well as the more hard-rocking things, and I think it was good to have that mix. It’s an era you’ve often revisited, isn’t it? Honey Pie, You Gave Me The Answer, Baby’s Request… It’s a style that appeals to me. People will often say “What songs do you like? Who are your favourite composers?” And I say Cole Porter, the Gershwin brothers and people like that, because the songs are very skilled. Cheek To Cheek was always one of my favourite songs, I love the way it returns to its opening: “…carry me through, to, Heaven, I’m in…” It’s a simple little trick, but as a writer I always loved that. And someone pointed out to me that I kind of did that in Here There And Everywhere. So all these influences have always been there. Unless you actually analyse the whole thing you wouldn’t know it, but they were definitely in a lot of what we did in The Beatles. It’s good to hear Baby’s Request, a bonus track here, which you first did for the Back To The Egg album in 1979. Yeah, that was nice. Before we started the album I played Tommy a couple of songs that were written in the style of the album that we were about to make. And he said “Oh, we should try that.” That was originally written, very much in this style, for The Mills Brothers. I was hoping they would do it. Something happened and they never did. I’m not sure if they ever heard that I’d offered it to them. And romance is not just for Valentine’s Day, is it? I hope it goes beyond that. It works all the year round. To me, I’ve found I enjoy this as an album to relax by. I can imagine you come home from work, kick your shoes off, and have your favourite drink, whether it’s hot cocoa or wine or a cup of tea, and you just sit back. It’s that kind of album. It’s a nice mood. Just let it flood over you.read less