In a recent episode of his A Life In Lyrics podcast, Paul McCartney reflected on the letdown of Guns N’ Roses’ version of his 1973 song, ‘Live and Let Die.’
The singer released it with his band Wings as the theme song for the James Bond movie of the same name. Later, GNR made their own version of the track for their 1991 album ‘Use Your Illusion I.’ McCartney shared his thoughts on the band’s cover, saying:
“I thought it was pretty good, actually. I was more amazed that they would actually do it, this young American group.”
McCartney’s Children’s Experience At School
He then recalled how his children when his children would proudly tell their schoolmates that their dad wrote ‘Live and Let Die’ and revealed the reaction they received as follows:
“The interesting thing was my kids would go to school, and they would go, ‘My dad wrote that.’ They’d go, ‘No, he didn’t; it was Guns N’ Roses,’ so nobody would ever believe them. For a while, it was just Guns N’ Roses.”
Paul’s Satisfaction With The Cover
Still, he was happy that Guns N’ Roses recorded it nearly 20 years after he first released it, as the musician further noted:
“I was very happy that they had done it. I always like people doing my songs.”
Slash On The Band’s Process In Choosing To Cover The Song
The GNR rendition was up for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 35th Annual Grammy Awards in 1993. In the April 1992 edition of Guitar for the Practicing Musician, Slash told John Stix about how the band decided to record the song, explaining:
“It’s one of those songs, like ‘Heaven’s Door,’ that Axl [Rose] and I have always loved. It’s always been a really heavy song, but we’d never discussed it and didn’t know that we each liked it. We were talking one night about a cover song, and that came up, and we were like, ‘Yeah! Let’s do it!’ So I went to rehearsal with Izzy and Matt and Duff just to see whether we could sound good playing it, and it sounded really heavy.”
Chart Performance Of The Two Versions
In his 2007 autobiography, Slash praised Rose for his work on the synthesizer in ‘Live and Let Die.’ He mentioned that the horn sounds were actually created using synthesizers, not real horns. Slash highlighted that Axl spent a lot of time perfecting the sound and getting the details right.
People might argue about which version is better, but McCartney’s song did better in the charts. In 1973, it reached number 2 in the U.S. and number 9 in the U.K. The Guns N’ Roses version only got to number 33 in the U.S. and number 5 in the U.K.
You can listen to both renditions of the track below.
