McCartney Times

“Whenever you run into him you become a teenage fan,” Bon Jovi said. “We went to see The Eagles play. I said, ‘Beatle Paul.’ He said, ‘Why do you call me Beatle Paul?’ I said, ‘Because I’m too old to call you Mr. McCartney and I’m too in reverence to dare think that we’re that close that I can call you Paul. So would you like your majesty or Beatle Paul?’ And he’s like okay. Because he’s a Beatle for God’s sake and also one of the sweetest guys you’ve ever met in your life.”

Bon Jovi had a playdate with Paul McCartney

Bon Jovi’s wife, Dorothea, and McCartney’s wife made plans for the musicians to see each other.

“My wife set it up,” Bon Jovi said. “What she says is a playdate. Her and Nancy are good friends so she said to Nancy, ‘John wants to invite Paul over.’ So Paul shows up by himself. We sit on the couch. I play him a bunch of songs from the forthcoming record. Because I’m so proud of it, I had no issue playing it for him.”

Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney shared a guitar

Bon Jovi had one song he had not yet recorded, so he played it for McCartney live.

“I had just written a song because there had been a couple shootings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio over a weekend,” Bon Jovi siad. “I was so excited about the song and so proud of it that I actually picked up my guitar and played it for him. That is something that 18-year-old me might have done but 50-year-old me would have been too scared.”

McCartney had some ideas, so he borrowed Bon Jovi’s steel horse.

“Now, he’s a lefty so he’s flipping my guitar over and talking through the song with me after I play it,” Bon Jovi said. “You’re sitting there in your mind playing it over and over and over because it’s Beatle Paul.”

Paul McCartney shared a Beatles tip with Jon Bon Jovi

While discussing Bon Jovi’s new song, McCartney made a suggestion based on how he and John Lennon used to write songs for The Beatles.

He was talking about how they would change time signatures and go off into these bridges on Beatles songs when he and John would write things. So we started yapping about that. I said, ‘Yeah, I do have that kind of a bridge. I didn’t play it for you because I couldn’t remember all the list of the names of the cities I wrote that go in the song. I just thought the chorus was there, the verse was there, I could get by. I didn’t have that list.’ When we recorded the song, I had that.