Paul McCartney dialled in with ABC News’ 7.30 and talked about the important elements of songwriting. Paul why he tells them he doesn’t know how to write songs:
“Yeah, I think it’s all down to instinct. That’s sort of what it is, you know. I get to talk to kids these days. I have some songwriting students up in my old school that me and George used to go to and it’s now a performing arts school. First thing I do when I go in the room one-on-one with one of the students, I say ‘I actually don’t know how to do this,’ which doesn’t inspire a lot of confidence I must say. But what I mean is when you’re writing songs, there is no way to do it.”
McCartney also explained his approach towards his students, and emphasised the singularity of the creation process:
“Because you know, it’s her song or his song, and what I can do with them is sit around and listen to what they’ve done and then maybe trying and do a little bit of suggesting ‘What about that word? You’ve rhymed all the other verses but you haven’t rhymed that one. Should we look at a way of rhyming this?’ But I have to admit, it’s instinct.”
He also revealed something about The Beatles, which fans find hard to believe:
“The other thing that surprises people is that none of us -Beatles, Stones, anyone- can read or write music. It’s just the way we do it. My excuse is that I have a Celtic background and they never wrote anything down. It’s all bards, and you’ve got to remember it all.”
In a 2021 interview, Paul McCartney explained the methods he used, and, advised the writers:
“Usually I’ll sit down and I’ll start something I fancy doing, you know, either a key that I fancy playing around in – [on guitar] or on piano – and I see where I go to first, I just see where I go first, just see where it leads me. It’s how we always did it. I would sit down with John and we just sort of follow this road.
Try and get to the end in one go, and it’s normally, then, pretty much written. You may then look at it and go ‘Oh that line’s a bit ropey.’ If you’re lucky, more often than not, you find that you’ve just sort of done it.”
You can watch the whole interview below.
