Paul McCartney Answers the Web's Most Searched Questions

Hi there, it's Paul McCartney.

I'm doing a WIRED Autocomplete Interview.

(upbeat rock music)

Google is Paul McCartney.

No, I am Paul McCartney.

Google is Google.

(upbeat rock music)

Okay, thank you.

Why is Paul McCartney nickname Macca?

'Cause I'm from Liverpool,

and they abbreviate everything in Liverpool.

McCartney is a bit too formal for, Hey, Macca!

And so George Harrison, Hey, Hazza!

John Lennon, Lennie.

So they just abbreviate everything there,

and so that's why.

It's a deriviation, derivation of McCartney.

Why is Paul McCartney wearing an OPP badge?

Well, if I knew what an OPP badge was, I would tell you.

I suspect it's a badge I had on the Sgt. Pepper thing,

which is like a Canadian thingy,

but I never found out what it was,

but I just liked the badge.

Why did Paul McCartney write Let It Be?

I had a dream.

It was in the years

when we were probably overdoing everything,

drinking and staying out too late and getting crazy.

So I was a bit exhausted, and I went to bed.

Anyway, I had a dream,

and my mother who died probably about 10 years previously

was in the dream.

She came to me in the dream.

It's a magic moment

'cause you're actually there with your mother.

So she seemed to know that I was a bit stressed out,

and she said, Don't worry.

It's gonna be fine.

Just let it be.

And I thought, Wow, and just felt really great

that my mother had given me that advice

and woke up and was just remembering the dream,

and I thought, What did she say?

She said, Let it be,

and so I thought that was a great idea for a song,

so I went to the piano and wrote it.

Now, I'm gonna look at the last question.

Unfortunately, you won't, at home,

won't be able to see this last question.

(gasps)

What?!

How dare you ask me that!

(crew laughing)

(chuckling)

When did Paul McCartney become Sir?

A few years ago.

I don't actually remember what year it was.

Well, it's amazing because the first thing you hear,

you get a letter through the post saying,

You're gonna be knighted, but don't tell anyone.

So that's a pretty buzzy letter to get.

It's like, What?!

It's very exciting actually.

You have to be a bit of a royalist.

You have to think that the queen is cool.

Some people actually turn it down, but anyway, it's great.

You get to visit Buckingham Palace,

and you go in there, and you're in a room full of people

who are getting honored,

and the guy comes in, the equerry, sorta kinda military guy,

explains what you have to do,

how you have to approach the queen.

You have to kind of walk in and then look at her

and then walk straight ahead

and then just bow your head a little bit.

The queen takes a sword.

At this point, you have to be very trusty.

She could do anything with that sword.

One shoulder, the other shoulder,

and then says, Arise, Sir Paul McCartney.

Okay.

When did Paul McCartney write Yesterday?

60, 19 (mumbles) or something like that.

I'm not very good on dates.

It was in the '60s, shortly before we recorded it,

so you can look it up.

The great thing about Yesterday was it kind of wrote itself.

People say to me, Do you believe in mysticism or magic?

With that story, I kind of have to

because I just woke up one morning.

I was just (scatting).

And I go, What's that?

I like that tune.

After a couple of weeks of asking various people

like John, the guys in the band, George Martin,

everyone said, Well, we don't know.

You know, must be yours, and it was.

It was very special 'cause I say, I just dreamed it.

What a gift!

I think a lot of people dream,

and there's music in the dream,

but they just go, Oh, yeah, I was at the Stones concert,

and they were doing this, you know?

I've done that too,

and they've been doing a song I don't know.

Kind of wake up, Wow, what was that, what was that?

And sometimes, you can't remember.

Yeah, so that's how Yesterday happened in early '60s.

That's as close as I can get.

All right.

When did Paul McCartney and Wings break up?

'70s sometime.

You know, the trouble is,

I'm too busy doing stuff to remember all the dates.

Just ask a fan.

They know the dates, and you know,

there are loads of people who actually know stuff,

but when we broke up, I think it's not an exact day.

I think it would be after a trip

when I went to Japan and got busted.

I think that didn't help.

Right, When did Paul McCartney learn to play the piano?

When I was a kid, we had a piano in the house.

My dad played it.

I've read stuff that lots of people in those days,

all over the world, really had pianos in their houses.

It's like having a computer these days.

Everyone's got one.

That was the way people entertained themselves

'cause there wasn't much other entertainment,

you know, going back like before TV even, you know.

So, yeah, we had a piano in the house,

and I used to just noodle on it,

and I asked my dad to teach me, but he wouldn't.

He said, You gotta get proper lessons.

So I took proper lessons and couldn't really get on with it

'cause the music I was hearing in my head wasn't (scatting).

(scatting)

This is like (screams) extremely, you know,

I couldn't do that.

Now, you know, I think, kids learning, continue.

I don't wanna tell you not to,

but I just couldn't ever get with it.

I kinda learned myself.

I just picked out chords on the piano.

That would've been when I was about 14 or so.

When did Paul McCartney join The Beatles?

I should know that.

Yeah, I mean, I was like a teenager,

and John had a group that was actually called The Quarrymen,

and I joined them when I was a teenager,

so I would be, I don't know, 16, 17 or something,

and then that became The Beatles.

The Quarrymen, some of the members fell away.

George joined and then eventually Ringo joined.

So that would be like,

I think The Beatles was when I was about 19.

Did The Beatles play at Woodstock?

No, they didn't.

Did The Beatles and Elvis ever meet?

Yeah, we did.

He was in Hollywood, and he was renting a house

while he was doing movies,

and we had wanted to meet him for years.

We were massive fans of Elvis,

even though the sad thing was

we kinda knocked him off his perch.

We didn't mean to.

You know, he was the star,

and we became the stars, and kind of, his era sort of ended.

We never liked that, so we were so keen to meet him,

and we went to this house, the four of us altogether,

and he came to the door, which is a matter of dispute

'cause we did this story once, and Ringo said,

No, he didn't.

He was sitting on the couch.

I say, No, he didn't.

He came to the door.

So, my story,

which I believe is the correct one, sorry, Ringo,

is that he came to the door looking great,

looking really cool, slacks and kind of a,

I think it was like a red jumper.

It was amazing.

It was just like a dream, really, meeting Elvis.

We'd fantasized about him since we were young teenagers,

and here he was in the flesh.

So it was great.

It was lovely.

I knew that he played a bit of bass,

so he and I chatted about what basses he played

and what bass I played and stuff.

I think the most amazing thing,

beside actually just meeting him,

was he had the first remote television channel changer

that we'd ever seen, you know,

'cause it was that year when they came out,

and he was just aiming it at the TV,

and the channels were changing.

We go, Whoa!

He is indeed the mighty god!

He can turn the channels

without approaching this television set!

So, we were very impressed by that.

Did The Beatles and Stones get along?

Yeah, we did, and we do to this day.

'Cause the thing was, we were all young guys

who were just coming into the music business.

We all had a lot in common,

and we would meet each other in clubs

or TV programs that we were all doing,

and we'd hang out socially, you know.

Yeah, we knew them quite well

and had a lot of fun and stuff.

I don't quite know how the rumor got started

that we were rivals.

I mean, me and John actually wrote their first hit,

which was I Wanna Be Your Man,

so we couldn't have been that much rivals.

No, we really liked 'em, and I say, to this day,

yeah, I go to their shows,

and we sometimes get to hang out a bit.

Good group, not as good as The Beatles, but good.

Okay.

Did The Beatles use a click track?

No, because there were no such things as click tracks,

and in actual fact, it was a good thing

'cause you just had to hold the tempo,

and if you ever went off, if you were a good band,

you just go with that little, you know.

Drummers notoriously speed up.

I don't really think Ringo ever did.

He held a really good tempo, but if he did,

we'd just go with him.

(scatting)

We could absorb that little thing,

but he hardly ever did,

and he was, you know, just a great drummer.

So we didn't need a click track.

Also, we didn't have one, even if we'd have needed one.

Did The Beatles wear wigs?

Yes, and I'm wearing one of them now.

I've had it colored to be appropriate to my age,

and this is a wig.

No, it isn't, and no, we didn't wear wigs.

You know how that came?

No, really, there were no wigs involved,

but what used to happen, people would tell us.

When we went on The Ed Sullivan Show,

first appearance on American TV,

all the dads, who were probably very jealous

of these fine heads of hair that we had,

and we were shaking and doing things with them,

and the dads of a lot of kids go,

Oh, they're wigs.

They're wearing wigs.

Oh, they would've talked American.

Oh, they're wearing wigs.

Hey, them guys are wearing wigs.

So, anyway, they weren't wigs,

but I think that's maybe where the rumor started.

Okay.

Can Paul McCartney speak German?

(speaking German)

Okay, give it up,

and a little word, if you're ever trying to go to Germany,

you need to know is (speaking German),

which means like, Yeah, okay. (speaks German)

You say that to virtually everything.

Can Paul McCartney play violin?

No.

It's a completely different ballgame from guitar.

I mean, if you can play guitar,

you can kind of play bass

'cause that's the same ballgame,

but violin is different tuning

and a much more difficult instrument for me to play.

So I can't play violin, no.

Can Paul McCartney read?

Can Paul McCartney pull tapes off?

Can Paul McCartney read sheet music?

Kind of.

I can kind of follow it.

Really, I'll tell you the truth.

With sheet music, we look for guitar chords.

We look at the lyrics and the guitar chords,

and all the dots passed us by.

But you can see it goes up (scatting).

Yeah. (scatting)

I mean, to that extent, I can read it, but not really.

If it gets complicated, no.

What instruments can Paul McCartney?

Sell?

Can Paul McCartney eat?

Play.

I thought it, I thought it.

What instruments can Paul McCartney play?

Guitar, which is kinda what I started on.

Actually, I started on trumpet,

so I can play When the Saints Go Marching In.

So, yeah, then I learned to play guitar,

and then, after that, a bit of piano,

and you know, when I say I can play them,

people say, Oh, you can play these things.

I'm not really a great pianist or a great guitarist,

but for my purposes, and you know, when you write a song,

I can play the stuff I write,

but then if someone says to me, you know,

Play Stairway to Paradise,

I wouldn't know how to play it.

But yeah, I can roughly play piano.

I play drums, but again, you know,

if you put me in Whiplash, that guy would kill me.

I can't really do that kind of drumming,

but I don't really like that kind of drumming,

but I can do (scatting).

That kind of drumming I can do,

and I've learned a bit of mandolin,

oh, ukulele.

You know, so a few little instruments like that.

Is Paul McCartney happy?

Aw!

Yes, at this moment.

Don't get me mad.

Is Paul McCartney a Liverpool fan?

Okay, now, that's a long story.

My dad was born in Everton,

which is the other Liverpool team.

So, officially, I'm an Everton fan

'cause that's our family team,

but I knew the players and the managers

of Liverpool years ago,

and they did so great, and they were big fans of mine,

so I'm a Liverpool and an Everton fan.

I know it's not strictly allowed,

but I got special dispensation from the pope.

Okay.

Is Paul McCartney a vegan?

No, he isn't.

He's a vegetarian,

but he eats cheese.

I'll tell you why.

It's a compassion thing for animals,

and it's a kinda thing

that I recognize a lot of people think it's dumb.

I mean, actually, less people these days than before,

but a lot of people think (mumbling),

but to me, all the creatures on the planet,

that live on this planet, this one little sphere in space,

we've all got a shot at a life, and so many animals don't.

I like the idea of giving them their little shot.

Plus, I'm very happy being vegetarian.

You can get loads of vegetarian options these days,

so it's not like it was in the old days

when you just got a boiled sprout.

Is Paul McCartney's Hofner bass the original?

Yeah, it's one of the originals.

I had two, but one got stolen,

and we still don't know where it is.

Just somewhere along the way,

the one I was using just vanished.

We have no idea where it went,

but the one I'm using is one of the originals.

It's one that I've used for a long time.

It's interesting though to think,

where did that one go?

'Cause no one can bring it out

'cause everyone knows it's mine.

They've got pictures of it.

So my theory is, and it's kinda half fantasy,

but it's that, you go to some German castle,

way in the hills of Bavaria,

and you'll have dinner, and then the host will say,

Come, let me show you something.

And you go up into this little room,

and there's my bass over his mantelpiece.

That could be just a fantasy.

Do you know, I always like hearing

what people are interested in,

and interesting for me,

it's interesting to hear what people don't know.

You know, a lot of hardcore fans know these answers

actually better than I do, but it's nice.

I like that people are even bothered to write in,

to join in the conversations.

I think that's a cool thing.

So, my new album's called Egypt Station,

and you can check out my live performance

from Grand Central Station on my YouTube channel.

Check it out.