Paul McCartney and the way he records his songs

Paul McCartney: How does he record his songs?

For a songwriter like Paul McCartney, nothing is more important than the studio work. After the inspiration, that Paul easily finds everywhere, there is a path to follow to be sure that the song turns out successfully.

Paul and his Studer 4-track machine

CAPTURING THE IDEA ON TAPE

As McCartney has confirmed recently, the first thing to do is to capture the idea. The songwriter's nightmare is to FORGET the idea! Paul uses a little dictaphone, that is a device certainly not meant to ensure any recording quality, but just do an essential thing: records the first idea. During the nineties, a cassette containing over 20 songs recorded on tape at the piano by McCartney, very likely at his home in Cavendish Avenue London (circa 1972-73) saw the light with the title THE PIANO TAPE. It's a fascinating listen, bacause contains a large number of songs - that would be included in Paul's albums (e.g. "Mull of Kintyre", "Getting Closer") or that would remains unreleased - in their initial shape. Just like a painter outlines his paintings with a first drawing, so does the composer. Paul is a master and knows how is dangerous to miss the moment. The tape shows that Paul simply puts the root chords at this stage.

STUDIO DEMO

Back in 1971, McCartney built a little studio in Scotland, and ha called it RUDE STUDIO. He has used this studio extensively over the seventies and the eighties to record his demos. Usually, the demo is just a rough sketch of the song, with a minimal arrangement. Great examples of McCartney's studio demos are: "Ebony and Ivory", "Wanderlust", "The Pound Is Sinking", where we can listen to the song already shaped, but without the embellishments of the recording studio.

Paul during the McCartney II sessions

IN THE RECORDING STUDIO

Now it's the hardest part of the work. You can waste a song, even though generally a great song remains a great song and can't be killed by the studio work. But you can ruin the simplicity of a melody by layering tracks and tracks on top of each other.

McCartney's songs are delicate creatures. They benefit from studio work and they shine if they are well-crafted, but the can disappear under overproduction.

There are different ways to record a song for Paul:

- If he works on his own (like he did on McCartney, McCartney II or parts of Memory Almost Full, New or Chaos and Creation in the Backyard), he put down a drum track first, then adding the rest of the instrumentation. If the track is mainly acoustic, Paul could record the guitar first. Same with a piano ballad.

- If Paul works with session musicians, the best example is what he did during RAM. The two musicians (in this case, Denny Seiwell on drums and Dave Spinozza - then Hugh McCreacken - on guitar) helped Paul to lay down the basic track, with Paul playing guitar or piano. He never played bass along with the basic track, preferring to use the guide instrument and overdubbing bass later. The Paul prefers to be the only one to overdub onto the track. Seiwell contributed percussion parts for RAM, but the majority of overdubs were done by Paul alone.

Paul taping his bass, circa 1976

- If Paul works with a steady group, the way of recording can follow different approaches. For albums with a live feeling, like Wild Life , Choba B CCCP or Run Devil Run the basic track and the vocals can be taken live at the same time, with sweetening sessions for backing vocals, orchestra, more guitars, etc. Also in this case, McCartney overdubs many instruments. See the song-by-song credits on my book to have a closer look at this side.

If the album is more a studio production, like Flowers in the Dirt, rarely the vocals are captured while the backing track is being completed. On these kind of albums, the overdubbing is an important part of the work.

Paul overdubbing bass on RAM

McCartney is a talented multi-instrumentalist. Over the course of his sessions, not only he played acoustic guitar, piano and bass, but a lot of electric guitar parts (he does many solos also on RAM, Tug of War or Memory Almost Full), drums (he's the drummer on 1/3 of his solo songs), synthesizers, keyboards, ukulele, 12-string guitar, mandolin, 'cello, flageolet...and the list goes on.

And remember: the studio can be everywhere. Abbey Road, home, a boat on the sea, a castle on the English Channel, the Scottish countryside...