Sir Paul McCartney has said working with Sir Ringo Starr once again was “a sort of magic.”
The 78-year-old has paired up with Starr, 80, on Beautiful Night, a track from McCartney’s 1997 Flaming Pie album which is due for re-release.
The release is coming as part of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection which also sees 32 bonus audio tracks and a 128-page book containing previously unpublished images by Linda McCartney.
Starr’s contribution has now led to a new music video of Beautiful Night being released, as well as a new EP for the track.
The pair worked together on their first project post-Beatles (PA)
Speaking to PA, McCartney explained: “I’d been saying to Ringo for years that it’d be great to do something, because we’d never really done that much work together outside The Beatles.
“One night Jeff (Lynne, Electric Light Orchestra co-founder) suggested, ‘Why don’t you get Ringo in?’and I said, ‘OK.’It just sort of happened.”
He continued: “I had this song Beautiful Night which I’d written quite a few years ago.I’d always liked it but I felt I didn’t quite have the right version of it.
“So I got this song out for when Ringo was coming in, and right away it was like the old days.I realised we hadn’t done this for so long, but it was really comfortable and it was still there.”
McCartney explained that the pair made a few changes to the original song, but enjoyed their jamming session so much that they ended up doing more together.
“I grabbed my Hofner bass, he started up on the drums and Jeff Lynne came in on guitar, the three of us getting a little R&B thing going,” he said. “And then I did the actor’s worst dream – he’s on stage and he doesn’t know what play he’s in – when you do a jam like that, doing the vocal is exactly that dream, you can just go anywhere, you can sing anything.
“But you’ve really got to clear your mind, forget everything – at the same time as playing the bass – and let your head go to some mystical place.Just totally ad-libbing it all.
“Anyway, when we’d done it I played it back to Ringo and he said ‘It’s relentless’.That was Really Love You.”
The band split in 1970 (PA)
The rock-and-roll legend added that, despite of band having split up in 1970, he still has stage chemistry with Starr.
“To sit down with Ringo is always a great thing.It’s always worthwhile.It’s always fun,” McCartney recalled.
“In 2019 when I finished touring in Los Angeles, Ringo got up on stage and we were doing Helter Skelter together.And he’s drumming away and I’m singing facing front because I was on the mic.
“But when I wasn’t on the mic, in the solo breaks and stuff, I really made a point of turning round and watching this guy drum.
“And I’m thinking, my god, you know the memories across this 10-yard gap here, him on the drums and me on the bass, the lifetime that’s going on here.”
He added: “So, you know, it’s a sort of magic.And he and I these days get quite emotional about it, because we should.We ought to.It’s a bloody emotional thing, the years.If nothing else.”
The Paul McCartney Archive Collection will be released on Friday 31st July
Martin A Nethercutt is a writer, singer, producer and loves music.
Creative Director at McCartney Studios
Editor-in-Chief at McCartney Times
Creator-in-Chief at Geist Musik
President (title) at McCartney Multimedia, Inc.
Went to Albert-Schweitzer-Schule Kassel
Lives in Playa del Rey
From Kassel, Germany
Married to Ruth McCartney
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