293: Macca's 80s with Glenn Greenberg

Summary

Episode 293: Macca's 80s with Glenn Greenberg – A Detailed Summary

Something About the Beatles Episode 293, titled "Macca's 80s with Glenn Greenberg," delves deep into Paul McCartney's career during the tumultuous decade of the 1980s. Hosted by award-winning author Robert Rodriguez, the episode features returning guest Glenn Greenberg, a Beatle author renowned for his insightful analyses of the band's history. Recorded a few months prior to its release on November 13, 2024, this episode explores the intricate dynamics between McCartney and his former bandmates, legal battles, musical collaborations, and personal reflections.

---

1. Introduction to the Episode

Robert Rodriguez opens the episode by acknowledging its delayed release, noting that he records episodes in batches to ensure consistency and quality. He reintroduces Glenn Greenberg, highlighting his previous contributions to the podcast, including discussions on George and Paul, George and John, and in-depth episodes like "Now and Then" and the extensive five-hour "Epic" episode. The initial focus was intended to be on Paul McCartney's missteps during the 1980s, but the conversation organically expanded to encompass broader topics related to the Beatles' legacy during that era.

2. The John to Paul Letter and Benefit Concert [02:23 - 12:00]

The discussion commences with a fascinating revelation from the Mind Games reissue—a previously unknown note from John Lennon to Paul McCartney dated early 1972. In this memo, John invites Paul to collaborate on a benefit concert in response to the tragic "Bloody Sunday" incident in Northern Ireland. Both Beatles had recently released politically charged songs ("Give Ireland Back to the Irish" by Paul and "Sunday Bloody Sunday" by John) addressing the violence.

Notable Quote:

Robert Rodriguez [02:23]: "With the Mind Games reissue... it's pretty cool, something we didn't know about before. So that's always good."

The authenticity and source of the letter remain uncertain, raising questions about whether Paul was aware of it or if it was included with consent. This discovery underscores the continuous unfolding of Beatles history, revealing new layers even decades later.

3. Beatles Relations in the 1980s [12:00 - 22:43]

Rodriguez and Greenberg delve into the strained relationships among the Beatles during the 1980s. They discuss a taped meeting involving Paul, Linda, John, and their attorneys—highlighting internal conflicts over royalties and management. The meeting, which surfaced from public archives, reveals Paul's frustration over his renewed contract with EMI, granting him a larger share of Beatles royalties without disadvantaging the other members.

Notable Quote:

Unknown Speaker [13:38]: "They were losing nothing on this. But this was... something was put on the table for him to resign with Capital after being with CBS Columbia."

The conversation touches upon the legal struggles Paul faced, including disputes over Northern Songs ownership, exacerbating tensions with his former bandmates. The episode underscores how business disagreements strained their personal relationships, preventing any Beatles reunions during their lifetimes.

4. McCartney's Solo Career and Albums [22:43 - 35:48]

The focus shifts to Paul McCartney's solo endeavors in the 1980s. Rodriguez critiques albums like "Broad Street" and "Press to Play," highlighting perceived missteps such as inconsistent song quality and forced collaborations. The discussion emphasizes McCartney's difficulty in navigating his post-Beatles identity, often leading to eclectic musical experiments that didn't always resonate with fans.

Notable Quote:

Robert Rodriguez [27:27]: "It's a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them."

Collaborations with prominent artists like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder are examined. While some partnerships yielded hits like "Ebony and Ivory," others, such as "The Girl Is Mine," received mixed receptions. The duo reflects on how these collaborations impacted McCartney's credibility and artistic direction.

5. The Japan Bust and Its Impact [26:38 - 34:17]

A pivotal moment discussed is McCartney's arrest in Japan, commonly referred to as the "Japan Bust," where he faced legal repercussions for possession of marijuana. This incident significantly influenced Wings' trajectory, leading to a temporary hiatus and introspection within McCartney's band. The arrest not only affected Wings' momentum but also prompted McCartney to reassess his career and personal life.

Notable Quote:

Unknown Speaker [26:52]: "I think he wanted some great weed on his trip. Two things could be true."

The bust marked a turning point, signaling the eventual decline of Wings and paving the way for McCartney's subsequent musical reinventions.

6. Films and Movie Projects [34:04 - 60:47]

Rodriguez and Greenberg critique Paul McCartney's forays into filmmaking during the 1980s, particularly the "Broad Street" film. Described as a chaotic and poorly conceived project, "Broad Street" failed to capture the charm of Beatles' films like "A Hard Day's Night." The conversation highlights McCartney's lack of experience in film production and the absence of strong advisory figures like George Martin in his solo endeavors.

Notable Quote:

Robert Rodriguez [60:17]: "He didn't have a George Martin director around."

Further discussions reveal McCartney's unsuccessful attempts to adapt "Broad Street" into a Marvel comic book, underscoring the disorganization and mismanagement of his creative projects during this period.

7. Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction [65:23 - 87:56]

The episode explores McCartney's absence from the Beatles' Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony due to ongoing legal disputes. This boycott symbolized the deep-seated animosities and unresolved financial tensions among the former band members. The duo reflects on what could have been—a harmonious celebration of their legacy had personal and legal conflicts been set aside.

Notable Quote:

Robert Rodriguez [95:06]: "It makes me sad to think about..."

The discussion emphasizes the missed opportunities for reconciliation and the lasting impact of these disputes on the Beatles' collective legacy.

8. Reflections on McCartney's 80s Creative Choices [88:36 - 104:51]

Rodriguez and Greenberg analyze McCartney's musical direction, criticizing his tendency to chase trends rather than forge an authentic path. Albums like "Press to Play" and singles such as "Spies Like Us" are scrutinized for their perceived lack of authenticity and artistic depth. The conversation underscores a recurring theme of McCartney seeking commercial success at the expense of creative expression.

Notable Quote:

Unknown Speaker [74:28]: "It was a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them."

However, they also acknowledge moments where McCartney's creativity shone, such as his collaboration with Elvis Costello on "Flowers in the Dirt," which marked a significant artistic resurgence.

9. Personal Dynamics and Public Acts [104:09 - 114:56]

The dynamics between McCartney and his ex-Beatles are further explored through anecdotes and personal interactions. Despite public tensions, privately, members like George Harrison seemed more amicable towards Paul, as evidenced by behind-the-scenes interactions during projects like "Free as a Bird." However, public perceptions remained marred by legal battles and strained relations.

Notable Quote:

Unknown Speaker [107:50]: "They don't trust him."

These interpersonal complexities are illustrated through stories of unfulfilled collaborations and the lingering distrust fueled by legal disputes.

10. Conclusion and Future Plans [114:56 - End]

The episode concludes with announcements about upcoming milestones, including the anticipation of the podcast's 300th episode. Rodriguez encourages listeners to engage via the mailing list for exclusive content and participation in future discussions. Additionally, brief mentions of other podcasts and their content serve as interludes before the episode's final remarks.

---

Final Thoughts

Episode 293 offers an exhaustive exploration of Paul McCartney's career in the 1980s, highlighting the interplay between his creative endeavors and the residual tensions from his Beatles days. Through insightful dialogue, Rodriguez and Greenberg shed light on lesser-known facets of McCartney's journey, providing listeners with a nuanced understanding of his post-Beatles legacy.

Highlighted Quotes:

• Robert Rodriguez [02:23]: "New data is always really good when trying to discuss these guys and figure out the history properly."
• Unknown Speaker [13:38]: "They were losing nothing on this. But this was... something was put on the table for him to resign with Capital after being with CBS Columbia."
• Robert Rodriguez [27:27]: "It's a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them."
• Robert Rodriguez [60:17]: "He didn't have a George Martin director around."
• Unknown Speaker [74:28]: "It was a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them."
• Robert Rodriguez [66:16]: "I was thinking, okay, this is a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them."
• Unknown Speaker [107:58]: "They don't trust him."

These quotes encapsulate the episode's critical examination of McCartney's strategies and relationships during the 1980s.

Transcript

[Robert Rodriguez]

When you think about businesses that are selling through the roof, like Skims or Allbirds, sure you think about a great product, a cool brand and great marketing. But an often overlooked secret is actually the businesses behind the business making, selling and for shoppers buying. Simple for millions of businesses. That business is Shopify, it's home of Shop Pay, the number one checkout in the world. You can use it to boost conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going through. To checkout, upgrade your business and get the same checkout Allbirds uses. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com income all lowercase go to shopify.com income to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com income this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations.

[Glenn Greenberg]

I don't have to say much because I'm the quiet beetle. It's unfortunate Paul's not here because he was the one who had the speech in his pocket. Anyway, we all know why John can't be here, and I'm sure he would be. And it's hard really to stand here supposedly representing the Beatles. It's what's left, I'm afraid. But we all loved him so much, and we all love Paul very much.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Hello and welcome to episode 293 of Something about the Beatles podcast. This one was recorded a few months back and it's been in the can. I tend to record them in batches and parcel them out one at a time. I don't think there's anything that's changed relevancy since this conversation was recorded, with Glenn Greenberg returning guest and Beatle author. You know him from the previous shows we've done on George and Paul and George and John and I forget what else we've done, but he's been on the show several times, including the now and Then episode, the Epic one five hours long from a year ago. But this was a conversation that we'd been talking about for a while on Paul in the 80s, and originally we were gonna focus on Paul mistakes of the 80s, which is some rich material there. But really like a lot of things, we started out with one intent and it went in a different direction and in fact starts out discussing that memo. I'm posting this on my socials if you haven't seen it yet, I'm sure a lot of people have. With the Mind Games reissue that came out earlier this year, there was that Note from early in 72, reaching out to Paul, written by John, asking him if he'd be interested in doing a benefit show, seeing as how both of them had just done songs, political songs, in response to the Sunday bloody Sunday shooting, January 30, 1972, of a bunch of protesters in Northern Ireland. And they both reacted to it musically. Give Ireland back to the Irish in Sunday Bloody Sunday between Paul and John, respectively. And so he reached out to him, apparently. Now, as we talk about in the show, we don't know if this note ever got to Paul, because apparently the Lenono archives did existed, or maybe they made a copy or something, who knows? But it was included with the Mind Game set. Unless of course, they reached out to Paul. Paul dug it up and let them use it for this. But in any event, it's pretty cool, something we didn't know about before. So that's always good. New data is always really good when trying to discuss these guys and figure out the history properly and all that stuff. Essentially, we're having a conversation. It begins with that. Which isn't obviously 1980s, but that was the primary goal. So we meander all over the place. But it was a fun conversation. It's always good talking with Glenn. So there is that. Now, some of you responded to my note in the last intro to last show, the one with Jeff Martin, about sending an email to satb2010sapi2010 mail, to get on the mailing list. A bunch of people have done that. You've gotten your first beta test emails by now of the SAPI newsletter and response has been quite positive. So I would urge anybody else that's interested in getting on this mailing list, which would be just sharing of information, upcoming events, things that we're gonna be doing on the show or related to the show, things having to do with maybe guests that have got events coming on, coming out, coming up, to coin a phrase. It's just gonna be an information pipeline focusing on people that actually are hardcore enough of listeners that they want to know this stuff. It's gonna go through this direct pipeline to you, rather than me just shotgunning it out there on social media and hoping the right people see it. Because I know from doing this long enough that not everybody sees everything that gets put out. So there is that. So another thing, by way of announcements I wanted to bring to the attention of you, the listener that is not Sat B directly related. So it's not going to be in the newsletter, but I'm just going to mention this in passing on the show. As you guys know, we connected with the Evergreen Podcast Network earlier this year as a way to get the SATI audience broadened by people listening to other podcasts that are out there in this network. And it works both ways because I've been listening to some of their offerings. There's a particular show I wanted to bring your attention to right now for anybody that's into true crime or cold cases, there's a show called Crime Capsule and there's a new episode out with Jane Ann Terzillo, who's an author interview with her on Northern Ohio Cold Cases, specifically about a couple of murders that took place a while back. The disappearance of Police Chief Mel Wylie and then the tragic death of another police officer, Robert Hamrick. Now, Jane Ann is a local, so she brings to the table this discussion of how having the familiar of the people in the places that you write about adds a layer of depth to the storytelling and this is one that she has personal connections to and with. Working within this historical context makes the work that much more rich. Writing what you know about and having connections to the locale involved, it's full of emotion and complexity. It's definitely in a sense a cautionary tale about the power of misinformation and the importance of seeking the truth amidst the noise. Something that I think we would all benefit from in the age we are living in. Just wanted to bring that to your attention. Crime Capsule episode Northern Ohio Cold Cases an interview with Jane Ann Terzillo oh, and one more note I wanted to add is regarding what you hear at the very end of the show, which is a couple excerpts from this taped meeting held apparently at mpl. Or at least it's Paul Linda in the company of John and Lee Eastman, their attorneys and sort of de facto managers. It's something that's been come to find out. At the time Glenn and I had our conversation we didn't know a whole lot about the provenance of it. I've done a bit of research since that time, found out that it's been in public circulation at least since 2000 quarter century. Based on my own research. There is repeated references to a December 1 meeting that took place between the 3X Beatles and Yoko at the Dorchester in London, coming on the heels of their discovering that Paul had in re signing with emi. Whoever did the negotiating accepted the offer to where among the 3x Beatles in their estate would be getting a larger cut on Beetle product in royalties. And it should be noted that this was not at the expense of the other three. It was coming out of EMI Parlophone Capital's share of the profits. So they were losing nothing on this. But this was. Something was put on the table for him to resign with Capital after being with CBS Columbia for a period of a few years from the late 70s through about 1984. So whatever it was in any event. So that was part of the deal that got sweetened on his behalf. And in re signing with EMI Capital Parlophone he got that boost in his Beatle era product royalties which they found about out about. And so they had a meeting convened in London that Yoko flew over for and it was George, Ringo and Paul. And that was at the Dorchester December 1st. So that meeting must have been fairly fresh at the time this lawyer conversation was taped. Paul does make a reference to something in the news, which is EMI was attempting to buy British Aerospace. And I saw that that was in the news at least through the spring of 1984. So this meeting could be at any point between December and May at least, but that seems to target it. So the Rock and Roll hall of Fame episode when the Beatles were inducted as a group that Paul did not show up for that was in 1988. What you hear over and over again is talk of equalization, which means basically getting Lennon's estate and George and Ringo to match what Paul was getting as well as overrides and promotion fees. Just a fascinating, fascinating conversation that for whatever reason was taped and they knew it because Linda mentions it at one point and they proceed anyway. So I don't know why it was taped and how it got leaked, but there it is. And it's one more fascinating piece of the puzzle. We know of so many meetings that took place, including the famous 44421 and other stuff going on throughout 1969 with Klein, with the Eastmans and all that stuff. When you actually hear their private interactions, it adds so much more to our understanding of what went on. So it's great to have this. Who knows if there's more out there we haven't heard yet. But anyway, we touch on it late in the conversation. Beyond that, we've got a 300th episode coming up, more or less. That's something also that we are planning now. There was a longtime listener friend of the show who had a really good idea of how to put together a 300 satby episode which would involve Input from you, the listener. So again, that's the conversation we will have through the newsletter. So anybody interested at all in being part of that, then that's the place to be. I guess that's about it. I would just point out further that this conversation begins with our discussing that 1972 John letter to Paul. This thing had been making the rounds, that letter written by John to Paul, trying to get him interested in doing this benefit, apparently. Right. And it's early in 72 and it's revelatory in that nobody knew about this. Now, like you and I had talked, I had known that he was trying to interest Paul in playing the one to one show in August, which was months later.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, months later. Right. Hadn't even been a blip on the horizon yet. So this early on, and we do know that they had sort of made their peace after this press war in 71 between too many People, how do youo Sleep? That by Christmas the ceasefire had happened. John shared that bootleg with Paul and they did dinner together. So this is right on the heels of that. So my first question was, well, if John wrote this letter to Paul, how does Lenono have it to include it in this box set? Did Paul give it back? Was it never sent? What happened?

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, that's an excellent question.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I want to ask chip Mattinger, because Mr. Lenonology, that would be something. I wonder if it was new to him, if he had any inkling about this history, because I just wonder, was the cooperation of Paul to get this thing together.

[Unknown Speaker]

They didn't have color photocopiers back then, did they?

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'm not really sure. Yeah. So they'd have to be the original, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

It'd have to be the original, yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And what's even more odd is if you think about it, it has nothing to do with mind games. Right. This should have been in the Sometime In New York City box set, which never came. Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

And probably never will.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right. I don't think they're gonna be able to negotiate a way out of that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I never even considered that. Like, how did they get the original? Did he even send it? Did Paul know about it? Right, that's a really excellent point. And maybe that's why, because he didn't send it, maybe that's why it's still in the archive. Right. And that's why John had no qualms about approaching Paul again for the one to one concert.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But it had that little aside in there about if it's uncool, Alan Klein.

[Unknown Speaker]

Won'T be There won't be there. Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Which is what we were told for the August invite. The reason that Paul, who was available because Wings had just finished their tour in early August of 72, he could have flown over and done something with Jon for the one to one, but he didn't. And the reason we're given just like Bangladesh the year before was that anything involving Klein, count me out.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. So it was both. Klein was the fact with both things. So yeah, that is a weird offer in the telegram or whatever is the note. AK won't be there if it's not cool.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Fascinating. It's all just really, really fascinating.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. That they would be united in this pro Irish sort of cause, you know, they both did their little polemics musically at that time. So what a thing to unite over.

[Unknown Speaker]

But also the fact that John had no qualms about just reaching out to Paul about doing something like that, you know, being in the same venue at the same time as part of the same show. Would one have come out and perform live with the other? I mean, that's certainly open to question, but how could they not? You know what I mean?

[Robert Rodriguez]

The audience would have demanded it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Which might have made them dig their heels in even a little bit more. Don't necessarily give the people what they want.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

But just the fact that John would be sending out that. It just says a lot. It just says a lot that his animosity or his resentment or whatever negative feelings he was feeling about Paul. It was only to a certain point.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. And I think that we can really draw from this is the sort of brotherly nature of their relationships.

[Unknown Speaker]

Absolutely. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

You can get mad at your brother and not talk to him for months and all that sort of thing, but in the end, your brother's right. And in this situation, he was reaching out to him like a brother. And this is before he got the blowback over New York City. That hadn't come out yet. That hadn't happened yet. Although his activism is still in full swing. He did the John Sinclair thing in December of 71 and then early 72. That's when they aired that David Frost show and he does the week of Mike Douglas. This is like probably the crescendo is political activity until the Nixon administration starts coming down on him. So for that cause, bringing in the star power of a McCartney at a point where he must not have been too insecure to share a stage with him.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

As I think next time you hear them talking about possibly doing something, it's 74. And I think only after John is no longer the poor relation. He's got a number one album and a number one single, so now he can reach out. And it's not like, Please help me, Mr. String of number one hit singles, McCartney.

[Unknown Speaker]

It puts a finer view of their relationship during that time. It deepens what we already knew that they were talking again. The war was over, basically. But just the fact that they were talking more than we knew, they were thinking about each other more than we knew.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yes. And being more open to that because I think a lot of people carry around the perception that because the Beatles never reunited in John's lifetime, that there was just too many issues, that it just was that bad relations wise. And we know that they went up and down. We know about they're watching SNL together, but the next day it says call me first. And they don't see each other again. But it was extra weight to these actions. If John had had more years, then maybe the next show up at the Dakota would be accepted. It played out the way it did, which sort of limits our grasp of what could have been within the reality.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, the other thing is clearly John and Paul are hanging out. They watch snl, Paul shows up the next day. I mean, it is an act of love on Paul's part. He wants to be back with John. And regardless of when John turned him away the next day. And this does jump us into the 1980s. Now you get to the fall of 1980, and Paul gives that interview to Peter Brown and Stephen Gaines, which is in that new book, all youl Need Is Love. And he's talking about the relationship between him and John and Yoko circa fall of 1980s. We're talking weeks before John died. So it's really the last time that you really get Paul's unfiltered. What would be the right word, not so much honest, but forthcoming.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. And this was. He's giving the interview. He's not like before a TV camera. This is something he's saying to a writer who's then going to turn it into a book. You don't know how much of it's meant for public consumption, but it is unburdened with every perception people are going to have going Forward after come December 9, 1980.

[Unknown Speaker]

Absolutely. And once again, the tragedy of it creeps back in. And that's Paul's mindset. That's how he feels about John at the time John dies. So you can see why he's done such a tremendous job since 1980, trying to paint a picture about where he and John were at the time that John died. He has maybe not so much exaggerated, but maximize the positive.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Sure. Which is his nature.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which is his nature, but he talks about. I mean, again, this was the fall of 1980. He said he hadn't really spoken to John since Christmas of the previous year. So Christmas of 79. And that was really the first time that they had a phone conversation that didn't degenerate into an argument. Because Paul consciously did not bring up Apple.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

They had a great conversation. John put Sean on the phone to talk to Paul. So Sean would have been like, what, around 4 years old at that point. And that was really it. So we're talking maybe 1, 2, tops. Great phone conversations that they had where they didn't descend into arguments about Apple.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right? No, fuck off, Kojak.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. And also, even besides the whole Apple thing, Paul is very forthcoming about the fact that if you want to be friends with John, you have to live in John's world. And you cannot disagree with Jon and Yoko. You have to laugh at all of their. You basically have to be a sycophant completely.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Which is completely different from what had historically defined their relationship. They were equals, they were brothers. That was his collaborator that he chose and sustained for the years that he did. The closest you see to that type of Paul behavior is what's documented in the Get Back film and more importantly on the Nagras, because there's a lot more there where he's sort of walking around eggshells not to alienate John and in fact is defending John Nyoko's relationship to everybody else who has a problem with it so as not to lose him.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So, yes, you very much get that sense. He's sort of. Back to that point with the John of 1980. 79. I got to be careful here because if I'm going to have a relationship with, it's gotta be on their terms.

[Unknown Speaker]

And I think you and I once had this conversation about Paul's role in bringing Jon and Yoko back together. And John and Paul were like, sort of reconnecting at that time. So John and Yoko reconnect and then Paul's out in the cold. And I think you made the comparison of, like you said, what did he expect? Because the story about the frog and the scorpion.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it sort of like plays into the 1980 anecdote from Paul again. It's like they're just being who they are. That's who they are.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's their nature. Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's Their nature. They're suspicious of him. They don't trust him. They always think he's out to get them. And he just wants them to get along. He just wants everybody to get along. And they don't trust him. And he has to kowtow to them. They basically. I don't know if you wanna cut this part out, but they basically wanted him to be Elliot Mintz, you know, the consummate sycophant.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And we should point out that this is the John we get when he's with Yoko.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

This is not the John we got. Circa 73, 74, early 75, when he's with May.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Very different guy, very different tone. Entertaining this notion publicly of going down to New Orleans.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right, exactly. And I think that, again, bringing it back to the 80s and where Paul was supposedly. There is an account. There is an account in one of the bios where the evening after John died, when Paul was in the studio with. I guess it was George Martin and Denny Lane. And he said something to the effect of. I'm never going to let anybody die on me again without making peace. Making peace. Resolving all the issues. So in his mind, they still had a long way to go. Things weren't completely hunky dory.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, clearly, if he's got a dance to John's tune, just to have the door be opened. And as we know, this was something. I remember coming up with it somewhere, that somebody somewhere had written or had said that besides the phone call In January of 1980, I got some dynamite weed for which he was rebuffed. And there's been other accounts of calling John when he's in the studio for Double Fantasy and he's blocked and rebuffed. But that there were other occasions where he tried to physically show up despite John's admonition about calling first. Maybe he felt, Sean's a little bit older now and I've got kids, so I know it's okay. But not until I had Michael Medeiros Mike Tree on the show did we get a living witness saying, I know because I ran into Paul in the foyer of the Dakota, that he was turned away. And that's circa 1978, I think he said, because he started working there in 77. So that is the status he held when John slash Yoko. That's the place they were at during that period.

[Unknown Speaker]

It is. And who knows if John even knew that Paul was even there.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Good point.

[Unknown Speaker]

That was always one of the suspicions. That was always one of the suspicions that Yoko was intercepting calls and John didn't even know about them, the firewall. So that's where he is. Oh, and the other thing is in that same book, the Brown Gaines book, the new one, he's not talking to Ringo either.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, that's a weird thing. I don't know what to make of that. I know that they had just done some work for the Ringo album in Prague, like in the summer of 1980. Did they have a falling out by the end of the year or something? What happened then?

[Unknown Speaker]

Right. It was this random comment that Ringo made and neither Brown nor Gaines followed up on it.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Which to me is like, how could you let that just pass without jumping, seizing upon that. But they did. But that's his state of mind in 1980, going into 1981. And this is post Japan and post McCartney too. So that's a good way to sort of dive into the 1980s.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. And one more point. You talked about the phone call in 79 and 4 year old Sean being on the call. It was the autumn of 79, if I remember this correctly. I want to say September, October, November, something like that, where Paul gets the Guinness Award. It's like beyond platinum, the most successful composer of the 20th century, or something like that. On Wednesday, October 24th of this year, the editor of the Guinness World Book of records presented Paul McCartney with a rhodium record to signify all his musical achievements in the record industry. Incidentally, Rhodium is said to be twice as valuable as gold, silver and platinum. Here are some facts and figures. Paul is in the Guinness World Book of Records for the most successful composer of all time. He wrote 43 songs between 1962 and 1978, each of which sold over 1 million copies.

[Unknown Speaker]

He holds the record number of gold.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Discs, 42 with the Beatles, 17 with Wings and one with Billy Preston. He is also the world's most successful single recording artist. That's hard to say. As well as imagine, he has sold 100 million singles. That's estimated record sales. 100 million singles which each sold 100 million each. That is an awful lot of entertainment and an awful lot of records. So he couldn't be riding any higher in terms of status and professional validation and all that sort of thing. And yet in interacting with John, he's reduced to this status of Elliot Mintz, as you say. It came down to that.

[Unknown Speaker]

I feel a little bit bad about naming that name, but I just.

[Robert Rodriguez]

We get the metaphor.

[Unknown Speaker]

He might be a very nice guy.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'm sure he's a very nice orange guy.

[Unknown Speaker]

But yeah, as we know, 1980 didn't start off great for Paul to begin with.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So what is your take on the Japan bust? I think that Paul, at least at some point in some interview, sort of musing out loud, thought that it was his passive aggressive way of ending Wings.

[Unknown Speaker]

The interview that I know he said that in, he was talking to his daughter Mary. He was being interviewed for Wingspan.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't know. It's one of those things where in retrospect he looks back and says, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense. But I just think he wanted some great weed on his trip.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Two things could be true.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's like he always kind of got a slap on the wrist before. At that point in his life, he was, you know, I'm Paul McCartney, everything will be okay. And that's personally my take on it. I think that had he not gotten busted, I think Wings probably would have gone on a little bit longer.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, they had a plan. They had a full slate that year. They had an agenda, for sure. It's interesting when you see Linda's commentary, I want to say in 84, when they did the Playboy interview, and I believe importantly, Paul was out of the room when she said, basically paraphrasing, those guys weren't good enough to play with Paul.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's pretty close to what she said. Word for word.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Pretty close. They weren't on his level. Something along those lines. And some people would argue that that might have been the most musically accomplished iteration of Wings there was with Lawrence Juber and Steve Holly. I don't have a dognet fight. I like every iteration for different reasons, but it seemed like they were very well placed. Now, I know that Back to the Egg did not do the gangbusters business that Paul had wished for it. And we're sort of framing this conversation of mistakes of the 80s and that's 19. If we want to reach back a little bit, which we already have done, maybe leaving both sides of that concurrent single, Good Night Tonight, Daytime, Nighttime. Suffering off that record is something he might have rethought, but that is a pattern throughout his post Beatles career. Poor judgment of material. To us, the fans and the listeners, it's like you left this in the can or you farmed this out as a B side or non album track and you gave us this on the record. What the actual fuck?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, you know, I was giving this a lot of thought. And he had to be reassessing his life and his career during those. Was it 10 days when he was in that prison not knowing what was going to happen to him. I think that probably brought a lot of clarity to him that Wings, regardless of who was in it at that moment, it wasn't working. He had wanted Wings to be. And you know, again, he's in jail for 10 days. He's got a lot of time on his hands to think about things and pure speculation on my part. But fact of the matter is, Wings was never what he wanted it to be, if he's to be believed. He wanted Wings to be a stable unit, a band, a regular band, where it was going to have the same lineup permanently. And it wasn't. It ended up being kind of like what John Lennon did with the Plastic Ono Band. It was an ad hoc band, conceptual band. Yeah, exactly. And I think that Paul probably would have been a lot better off and a lot more satisfied if he just accepted that Wings is basically his plastigono band, it's completely ad hoc, and just.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Keep it going that way, rather than his hand puppet.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. And so going into the future, you know, maybe, yeah, it's called Wings, but maybe come up with another name. I don't know, just to separate it from Wings. And so you got Eric Clapton or you've got John Entwistle or you've got Stevie Wonder. You know, anybody could be part of this group. He did what he did. I mean, it worked out okay.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, that's pretty much exactly what he did with Tug of War. Right. He did the conceptual thing. Who best will serve this song? So he's got a whole stream of guest stars on that record. You know, everybody from Steve Gad to. Who's the bass player?

[Unknown Speaker]

Stanley Clark, Carl Perkins.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Carl Perkins, Yeah, yeah. Guests and things like that. It's funny that he was so rigidly married to the band concept going back as far as 69 when we know that George and John are floating. What about Billy Preston as a fifth Beatle? And you know that George was wanting to bring in Clapton or Dylan or somebody to like, as John says, Beatles.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Uncomfortable.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Which would have been a fabulous, progressive, forward thinking concept for a band. And Paul just flat out rejects it.

[Glenn Greenberg]

I just don't. Because it's just bad enough at four.

[Robert Rodriguez]

In the same way that he may have with Wings. Because I'm trying to think apart from like Howie Casey and Dave Mason and Tom Scott, there's only a handful of guest appearances on Wings records by people that are artists in their own right. So that sort of rigid thinking, if he was having this hankering for, well, damn it, I would love to collaborate with Stevie Wonder or whoever. But I can't do it in Wings. But he began his career post Beatles, and that year with McCartney 2 went outside of the box of Wings to do something that was not Wings appropriate. He could have done it then and kept Wings going, if that's what he wanted to do.

[Unknown Speaker]

Do you think it was a mistake to disband Wings?

[Robert Rodriguez]

I think that it was sort of circumstantial. Just the way that the Beatles split, it was sort of irrevocable. Like they never did get back together. But I also think that they all sort of shied away. Like, on a good day, they might want to work with the other Beatles again. But calling it Beatles or touring as Beatles, that was something they saw as sort of a third rail. It's like, we don't want to do that. And you hear them explain it. It's like because of pressure, the expectations would be too high. Not that people would have the same thing for Wings, like, if they wanted to reform his Wings, all this pressure to be great because people didn't have that, the esteem was completely different. But doing a departure. So McCartney II, that is his departure from Wings before Wings had called it a day. And the account that I understand, and maybe Mr. Sinclair and Cozen could hit me to a different set of facts if that's the case, is that McCartney 2 only came out because of the Japan bust. If they'd gone ahead with the plan for the worldwide tour, that it might have just sat on the shelf until such time, you know, like a thrilling 10, or maybe just for his own personal consumption. But he filled that space that would have been filled with probably a new Wing single and possibly another album and touring and all that stuff. That's what he put into the marketplace. So I'm just saying is that working with the last lineup of Wings, that he apparently was committed enough to do those shows in Britain, do the Campochea benefit, and then tour Japan and the States, whatever else after that. Did he see another album in them? They were working on material that would surface years later, of course. So I don't think that he. At least as of the Japan bust and for a time after, because I think it wasn't until, like, April of 81 that they officially disbanded. Right. That he was still working with these guys for the cold cut stuff throughout 1980.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But didn't George Martin have, like, influence on. You don't need these guys. I haven't read that because I thought Tug of War might have begun as a Wings record till George Martin said, well, if you want to work with me, I don't want to work with them.

[Unknown Speaker]

Wow, I never heard that.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Okay. Luca Pirasi, Alan Cozen, Adrian Sinclair. You could set it straight if that's wrong, but that's my perception.

[Unknown Speaker]

Interesting that, number one, George would say that to him, and number two, that Paul would, What is it, 1962 again? And Paul's like, okay, you're all fired.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. You have to also factor into that. It's like, did this happen before or after December 8th? Did he see what he needed to deliver as an artist after John died differently than what he saw before? I'm just wondering. That had to have affected his thinking about his own legacy, his own status, and what would be worthy of a Paul McCartney album going forward. Enough of this messing around stuff. Maybe Wings gave him a certain amount of latitude to not be completely serious all the time, or at least push himself the way that he pushed himself, clearly, with Tug of War, or George Martin pushed him.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, the other thing is, and I've seen this written in so many places, everybody considered every Wings album that came out a McCartney solo album. People still refer to the wings albums as McCartney solo albums. So maybe he just got some clarity either during or after the Japan bust, that he was like, you know what? Let's just pull a pin on this already. Just sort of, like, acknowledge. It's just like, everybody thinks of them as my solo albums anyway. Let's just make it official kind of thing.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And that maybe presupposes that he came up with this band identity in the first place, in part to have a separate identity, not competing with the other. At least John. If Wildlife came out as a Paul McCartney album, especially on the heels of Imagine, he would have been looked at, I think, probably more critically than he actually was. But if you put it behind this facade of, well, this is my project, this is Wings, it's not me, it's these guys. Yeah, that better give him a bit of distance to. Almost like a sergeant Pepper light.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. So I don't know if that entered into his thinking at all. And I think we're well past the time we could ask him and get an answer to. It's worth anything. But it's fun to speculate, isn't it?

[Unknown Speaker]

That's most of what I do is speculate.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Half of what we say is meaningless.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. But it's fun. So as far as an actual error in judgment, I think he could have had both, and maybe Wings would have been a nice entity to have Trotted out every once in a while. They racked up so many hits. Do that tour of 1983 or 1984 and had December 8th not happened. I think by every account, his safety in public was a big part of his thinking from not touring for that decade between 79 and 89.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he said as much. I don't remember if it was in the Playboy interview or there's a 1986 interview that he did with Rolling Stone that hit me like a ton of bricks because he was like. It was the first long form interview that I read with him. He just seemed so forthcoming. It might have been that one where he said, for a while it seemed like nobody was going to tour anymore because it was just too frightening. What could possibly happen after John died?

[Robert Rodriguez]

And he loves an audience, as he's proved like the last 30 years or so. He just won't stop.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Do you remember the Simon and garfunkel concert of 1981, when Paul Simon was singing that song, the late great Johnny Ace, and he sang the line about, I heard the news that John Lennon died and a fan jumped up on stage and rushed him. Do you remember that?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

So it's sort of like. Yeah, it's like. I can understand why poor McCartney might not be too fond of the idea of touring at that time.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Absolutely. We were speaking a minute ago about collaboration and working with other people outside of the framework of Wings. And I can remember thinking in real time, and this is. I don't want to. You know, when we're trying to characterize certain moves as mistakes, you sort of drift into a subjective area. Well, I don't like this record. Well, a few million people bought it, so you're wrong. It was a good record, or at least it was popular in its time. I personally never cared for his collaborations with Michael Jackson. And that might be just my personal distaste for Michael Jackson, that I loved him in the Jackson 5. I never cared much for his solo stuff. There's a couple odd tracks here and there, but for the most part, I didn't like that kind of music. And I thought, what is the stunt casting? Paul McCartney, you don't need to do this. You don't need to hitch your wagon to the most popular star on the planet. And especially if the end result is the Girl Is Mine, really. It's one thing for John. He's going through this fallow period and works with Elton John, creates whatever gets you tonight, which pulls him back into that arena of being respected as an artist. Gets a Number one album and single out of it. But at least I didn't think it was poor art. I thought it was a fun, great collaboration between the two, sonically, and it worked. It wasn't cringy. And I can remember however young I was when the girl's mind came out thinking, oh, God, this is awful.

[Unknown Speaker]

Literally, you took the words right out of my mouth. I liked Ebony and Ivory before it was so overplayed and became such a just part of the tapestry. It's like it got to be too much already. But when it first came out, I bought the single. I still have it from 1982. I enjoyed it enough. I like Stevie Wonder.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I love Stevie Wonder. And I think that's a great idea of somebody that's kind of peer level, he could work with. But I remember my first impression was, this song is so white. It's like you're trying to do something. Can you move a little bit in that direction? If they'd done it as a soul ballad, I think I might have liked it a little more, because I don't hate the lyrics, but the production. And I lay that at the feet of George Martin, because I'm sure he must have arranged it, but it just seems to have his fingerprints all over it. And I remember thinking at the time, this is so light rock, mortal. Not my kind of music. There's nothing rock about this. And I appreciate the sentiments, but I don't think you're selling it unless there's a different audience entirely you're going for. Remember years later, when, in the wake of 9 11, he does freedom, I remember having this sort of deja vu. It's like, oh, Paul, whenever you try to do something grandiose politically, more often than not you fall on your face and this is not gonna age well. And sure enough, it didn't.

[Unknown Speaker]

It sure didn't. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So I don't want to sound too much like I'm hating on Ebony and Ivory. I respect the intent. I just didn't care for the finished record. But like you, I bought it dutifully anyway, because I was still a completist then.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I was 12 also.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

I was about 12 years old. And this isn't making a joke or being facetious or anything. My musical tastes and my critical abilities were not quite as well honed as maybe they are now when I was in my 20s. So, yeah, if that came out when I was in my 20s, I probably would have laughed at it. But it came out at the right time.

[Robert Rodriguez]

You were his target audience.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

He's going for the 12 year olds.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly, exactly. But the important thing was, even at that time, I was never a fan of Michael Jackson. I didn't dislike Michael Jackson, but like you said, he was not of Paul stature. So I was wondering too, yes, he's the biggest star right now, but what's Paul doing working with him? Does he really need to try to glom onto this kid who's the hitmaker right now? He doesn't need the credibility. Plus, I thought he was a little creepy. Even back then, even before all the stories started coming out, I thought Michael Jackson was creepy.

[Robert Rodriguez]

See, so I'm not alone in my perceptions, you know, it's not an active hate, but it's like a distaste for sure. I didn't care for the musicality. And people go, what about say say, say? The demo's okay, I guess in some ways preferable to the finished record. But no. I could safely live the rest of my life and never hear that record again. But you look at Tug of War and what's that you're doing? A thousand times, yes. Yeah, you should have sat down, maybe given another 30 minutes to come up with some better lyrics. And that could have been killer. It's such a great melding that doesn't sound forced.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. I've always liked that song. And I think nowadays I much prefer it over Ebony and Ivory. But yeah, the whole Michael Jackson thing, I mean, I get it. Say, say, say. Sold. The Girl Is Mine was probably one of the weaker tracks on Thriller. It's one of the songs that nobody talks about anymore on Thriller.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Did I ever like anything by Michael Jackson? I'm trying to think. No, I don't think so.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'm glad because it seems like there's almost a stigma to anybody who says you don't like Michael Jackson. And this is prior to all the later stuff, but in its time it was so universal. I never owned Thriller. There's plenty of zillion selling albums. I never owned either. Cause I just didn't connect with them. Like a Hootie and a Blowfish, I'm happy to say. Never owned, never gave a damn about. Okay, I never owned the first Boston album. Not cause I didn't like some of the music, but because it was everywhere and never went away. So I didn't feel the need. But Michael Jackson, one of those people. I remember. It's funny that I liked the early stuff. I liked some of his. I don't know if it was solo or group, but Rockin Robin and Ben, they were all right. I liked them, okay? I was a top 40 fan. But I think the last thing I wholeheartedly. And maybe it's before sort of self consciousness enters your musical criteria. I liked Dance and Machine. And then it wasn't until I heard a Pete Townsend interview where he's talking about shake your body down to the ground, which is Jackson's. And up until then, I'd shut it out with anything else I thought was remotely disco. It's like, when he praised it, it's like, all right, I'll give this a second listen. So now I could tolerate it and not puke. But that was probably the last gasp. Like when off the Wall Rock with you. I hated that stuff. That's terrible.

[Unknown Speaker]

I have to make a confession. Every single one of my friends had Thriller. So I broke down and I bought it just to be part of the crowd. I maybe listened to it from start to finish once or twice. And then it went back into my collection and I never played it again. And I didn't hold on to it. So it was the album to have at that time. And I was 12.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And you're forgiven. I will tell you that I liked Billy Jane. The first few times I heard it. I thought, this is a cool track. But I didn't care for the Van Halen one. You know, it's funny that what sticks in my head is the Weird Al parody of Beat it instead of, yeah, over Beat It. I think about that when I think about it at all. But the Thriller I thought was an overblown thing. You know, the whole Vincent Price and the video that they hyped so wildly. And then maybe that's part of my innate resistance to any of that stuff. It's like, if you're gonna shove this down my throat, I'm not gonna tune you in.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I also do remember it's after Stevie Wonder and then after Michael Jackson. I remember wondering, who's he gonna team up with next? Barbra Streisand?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right. Neil Diamond?

[Unknown Speaker]

It's like, hey, she teamed up with Barry Gibb. Why not? And I didn't think that was right for Paul, you know? And I was hoping that that was gonna stop. Luckily, it did. But again, I mean, I'm sure McCartney would argue back. And how many copies did say, say, say sell, you know?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

And you can't argue with that. But I'm also about the credibility. And I did not like that song. And I did not like the album that it came off of. We could talk about that, too.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, Pipes a piece.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, it's funny, that one. In my head, I relate that album to Tug of War the way I relate off the Ground to Flowers in the Dirt. It's like the Rejects to me. It's like stuff. Rightly or wrongly, I associate it as like, you put together a monumental album and you follow it with the also rounds that you had access to the first time that you didn't use for a reason. Which is not to say I hate every track on it so bad. I actually still kind of like. I remember the first time I saw the video and oh, there's Ringo. It's like, yeah, it was all right. I'm cop to that if you think it's stupid that you're entitled to. But I never liked from the previous album, Take It Away. I thought, oh, this is just sloppy mush.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, really? Wow, okay.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. But then when Peter Jackson came calling, I'm like, okay, just give it a little bit of respect. You never know who's listening to you. So it had some meaning for me after that. But as a song, I still kind of like.

[Unknown Speaker]

I loved Tug of War. I thought it was a fantastic album. I thought it was exactly what I needed and what I think a lot of Beatles fans needed when it came out. This was Paul's first major musical statement after John's death. And I went into Pipes of Peace thinking, you know, hey, listen, more of the same, great. I remember getting it as a gift. Probably got as a birthday gift or a holiday gift that year. 84, I think it was 85.

[Robert Rodriguez]

83.

[Unknown Speaker]

83. Oh, wow, okay.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, because 84 was Broad Street.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay, 83. And I remember making it to the end of side one and thinking, well, flipping it over and thinking, well, maybe side two will be better.

[Robert Rodriguez]

You gotta work your way up to it.

[Unknown Speaker]

To be honest with you, I don't know if I ever finished the album because by like two or three songs into side two, I was like, this isn't getting any better. I may be tried again one more time over the years, but I can't guarantee that I ever listened to it all the way through because I found it so utterly boring or just as lame, you know? So, yeah, that's one that big red X over that one.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Now, speaking of collaborators, this is. Now we're entering into the Eric Stewart era. So I remember being aware of that at the time and thinking, oh, cool, the guy from 10cc.

[Unknown Speaker]

10Cc?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. I mean, they're both pop masters, right? This has got to be good. And feeling a little Underwhelmed and thinking, well, they're just getting warmed up. This is his new Danny Lane. Maybe it'll get better next time around. But on the other hand, do you ever have a perception of, well, maybe I misjudged. I'll have to go back to it now with my mature ears and see if there might be something I was missing after all. Because I will tell you, that Tug of War I thought was very uneven the first time I heard it. There was stuff I liked a lot, and there was stuff I was like, what the hell is this shit? And it's grown a little bit more solid in my mature years that, like, okay, maybe I misjudged this. It's funny that. And this leads to a sidebar. If we're talking about mistakes and Paul's judgment and all that. Do you ever get a sense that maybe he didn't release the best singles? There was stronger single material that stayed. Album tracks. Individual albums in general, you mean? Yeah. Cause I remember thinking, surely Ballroom Dancing is gonna be a single. And it never was. They showcased it in Broad Street. But I thought, this is a strong, catchy track. And he sings the shit out of it. And it's something that you recall around that era. The Kinks Come Dancing, yes, was a big hit. And then Don't Forget the Dance followed that up. So it just seemed like something in the air that it would have worked. Especially MTV is coming to its own now. It would make a good visual presentation. I remember thinking, well, how come this isn't the single? And I still feel that way. Because anytime I burned a cassette or a CD comp, I would always stick that in there as my Paul greatest hits. And I thought it was a little baffling that he didn't rate that higher. But then if I look at every one of his albums, there's always a track on there. I thought that should have been a single. That wasn't.

[Unknown Speaker]

The thing is, is I so rarely bought singles, I was more of an album person. So I didn't think in those terms.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, to put it another way, maybe just like a radio track. It's like, I would like to hear this on the radio. Rather than if I hear the opening notes of Ebony and Ivory. I'm tuning in station.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I'll tell you, we're jumping a little bit. But off of Broad Street, I thought no Values was a really good song that deserved more attention. Far more than no More Lonely Nights. But that's me. It's very sappy. It's very sappy. Sappy. It's just like, you know.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So you're not a fan of no More Lonely Nights?

[Unknown Speaker]

That's not the McCartney stuff that I really lean towards. For the most part, I can take it or leave it, but when he pushes it too much, and at that point, I think, especially after Pipes of Peace, the album, I thought, you know, this is just kind of more of the soppy, you know, I put in like the so bad category, the song. So bad. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's interesting to me because I'm a fan of both of those tracks, which is great. You know, I actually. I find myself moved when I listen to no More Lonely Nights. I think part of it is the David Gilmore contribution.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Which is amazing. Yeah. And then down the road we got married, those two. There's a collaboration that should have happened. And I guess he did Run Devil Run as well.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And I agree. It's a shame we didn't see more.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Of that great musical rapport, those two.

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't know. Again, I can't say I dislike no More Lonely Nights. It's just like, come on, Paul.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. And it's fine. I hear you. I'm not pushing back on you all. I get that. Because God knows there's plenty of stuff he does. I never was that big a fan of My Love, but for the Henry McCullough solo, that's like my favorite part of the song. And the rest of it's like, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

See, I like My Love. You never know. It's a crab shoot here.

[Robert Rodriguez]

That's why he's so brilliant, is somebody's gonna like it if it's not you, this guy will.

[Unknown Speaker]

But like, for example, when I've put together compilation lists or playlists of songs from each era of McCartney, no values is on there. No More Lonely Nights is not.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, And I get it. That's. First of all, it's got going for it. The fact that it is underplayed. It doesn't have a whole lot of attention. I remember this could kind of be like a two tiered discussion of if we're going to pivot to Broad street is the album and the film and the album. And I think the story is that Ringo balked when he wanted to remake the Beatle tracks. Like, well, I'm not doing that. Right. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

In fact, they make a joke of it in the movie.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Do they? I can't remember.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. When Paul is doing, I think, here, there and everywhere, Ringo can't find his drumsticks. So he spends the entire time during that number looking for his sticks so he doesn't play on it. And at the end of the song, if I remember correctly, it's been a long time since I've seen that movie. I think at the very end of here, then everywhere, he finds the drumsticks.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So it's passive aggressive. Totally. That's great.

[Unknown Speaker]

And they put it in the movie. It's part of the movie.

[Robert Rodriguez]

He saves face. Yeah, full. I have no idea. The Helping Friendly Podcast explores the music and fan experience of Phish through interviews and deep dives on shows and tours.

[Glenn Greenberg]

For more than 10 years, we've created.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Insightful and fun discussions about our favorite band, and with the help of our guests and thematic series, we're still discovering new angles of appreciation for fish.

[Glenn Greenberg]

And when the band is on tour.

[Robert Rodriguez]

We provide a review of every show the following day. As one of our listeners said, any.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Fish fans that enjoy meandering conversations and.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Incredible insight on new and old Fish shows? This is for you. Highly recommend. It's not just about the band and the shows, it's about the journey getting there. Throughout 2024, we're going to be running down the top 25 fish tours of all time, and that'll be interspersed with show reviews and regular episodes. Join us and check out the Helping Friendly podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

[Unknown Speaker]

Hi, I'm Christina Yurling Biro, host of the podcast Pop Culture Confidential. Join me as I go way behind.

[Robert Rodriguez]

The scenes with some of the most.

[Unknown Speaker]

Influential people in entertainment and media. Here, actors such as Succession's Brian Cox talk about his favorite characters to play.

[Glenn Greenberg]

There always has to be a mystery. The audience have to be in a situation where they want to know what's going on.

[Unknown Speaker]

Meet studio execs like Pixar chief Pete Docter and learn his secret on how he makes us cry.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Emotion is our first language, and so.

[Unknown Speaker]

Many others who are defining popular culture, from Obama speech writer David Litt to Top Chef host Padma Lakshmi.

[Robert Rodriguez]

We don't often think about food politically.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Or we don't want to, but it really is.

[Unknown Speaker]

Join me Search for Pop Culture Confidential wherever you get your podcasts, but I.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Remember being a bit underwhelmed with the album in terms of I thought the performances were good, but that the material was very spotty. Not such a bad boy, I thought was pretty good.

[Unknown Speaker]

That was. Yeah, that was all right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. But it's like, does it stand up to other such rockers from him? No, no.

[Unknown Speaker]

Whereas I did think that no Values did. I don't know what it is about that song, but I Latched onto it in 1984, and I still have a lot of affection for it. I haven't really analyzed it, and I.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Don'T believe he's ever played it live, has he?

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't think so. He doesn't like to refer to anything having to do with Broad Street.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I guess not. Did he ever play no More Lonely Nights Live?

[Unknown Speaker]

No, he wasn't touring at that point.

[Robert Rodriguez]

No. But he's digging up in spite of all the danger. You know, it's like he's got the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Catalog, but that has the Beatles history to it. And so he'll always play into that Beatles connection there. Whereas. No, I mean. And I think the other thing is, no More Lonely Nights is so orchestrated in such a big. Unless David Gilmore is there to play that guitar part. It's like, why even bother?

[Robert Rodriguez]

That's both.

[Unknown Speaker]

But the thing is, by the time he started touring again, you really wanted to focus on whatever the new album was and his favorite Beatles songs and his favorite Wings songs, and that was it.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Did you see him in 89 90? Oh, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

That was the first time I saw him. It was a thrill.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, me too. But what a ballsy move, opening with Figure of Eight. I thought that was fantastic. Kudos, because that's a Paul I don't think we've seen much of since, because we're talking about the 80s here. But when I think about. I'm not a fan on the run. I'm not one of these people that follow him around from city to city and see his every show. It's either that or have a house. But I did get the sense, and I've heard this from other people, that his patter is so scripted that you can mouth along to it if you go see a Paul show anymore. And I never liked the fact, too, that with all due respect to Wicks, have a live horn section, for God's sake. You can afford it. There's nothing like live brass. He did it in 76. I don't know if he's done it since, but I don't like canned brass and strings, so that would be something I'd criticize him for. But hell, alongside. Well, he's on stage for three hours, never took a drink once, and he knows how to entertain and he knows how to put on a show and engage the crowd. I'm glad he can do that stuff. But there's room for improvement in terms of spontaneity and looseness and not such a tightly scripted performance.

[Unknown Speaker]

Agreed. And he talked about that at Some point in the 80s, actually, when he was talking about touring again. Or maybe it was when he started touring in 89 90. And he supposedly felt very sort of. He was lamenting the fact that. That the show had to be so structured. But given, you know, the light show and what the audience expects and all that. But the way he presented it is like. He'd love to do a more loose, loosey goosey kind of show. With a little bit more spontaneity.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But these people won't let me.

[Unknown Speaker]

Pretty much is basically what he said.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, the man's keeping me down.

[Unknown Speaker]

He's really the underdog in this story, right?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. That's funny. That's interesting. So Broad street, the movie. You probably have a better memory of it than I do. I just remember thinking when I saw it, oh, man, I so wanted to like this. And to be sure, it's great to see him on the big screen. It's great to see Ringo, all that stuff, especially the further we get from that time. We don't have Linda anymore, and things have changed. And now he's this, you know, this much older guy. I'm glad that he did it in that sense that we've got this nice little time capsule. But I think we talked the last time we did a show. We talked about George wanting to help him as the guy in the movie business, give him some good advice. But you don't give Paul McCartney advice, not if you want him to take it.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he didn't ask for it. He didn't ask George for it. And I think that's what it kind of irked George. I've only been in the movie business for, like, at that point, it was like five years and produced several movies. And it's like he didn't pick up the phone and say, how do you do this?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right. This is like the Mount Everest of his mistakes. I would say. Right. Broad street, the movie, it's right up.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, what it showed is that he hadn't learned anything from Magical Mystery Tour and let it be in that. He just thought that he could just kind of breeze in and this magic would unfold. The magic would unfold. Exactly. And it was not planned out. It was not thought out. It was not well conceived. And the cameras started rolling. And you don't make movies that way.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And there's nobody strong to tell him no, Paul.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

He didn't have a George Martin director around.

[Unknown Speaker]

No. In fact, the guy that directed it, he was not a guy of particularly high stature. It started out As a TV project, it was like going to be like an hour long TV special. I understand. And then they bumped it up to it to a movie. And they use the same director, and he's like, all of a sudden, I'm directing a major motion picture. I don't have that kind of experience. And Paul was critical of him, too. Supposedly he showed up not knowing where the wardrobe was, and he didn't think that they were going to have costumes for him or anything like that. And they had to explain to him, I'm mangling the story, but it was so haphazard and so out of control. Right down to you. And I have talked offline about this. I'll tell you the story now. So McCartney and his people wanted Marvel Comics to do a comic book adaptation of Broad Street. And so I worked at Marvel in the 1990s, so I wasn't there for this. But the guy who was involved in this was the editor in chief when I was at Marvel. So I heard this all firsthand from him. Okay, Tom DeFalco. So they're making Broad Street. Tom DeFalco is the number two editor at Marvel at this time. He was the executive editor. So he flies over because he was in charge of a lot of the movie adaptations that Marvel did at the time. And I know what you're probably thinking is, why would you do a comic book adaptation of a musical? But there was a precedent for that. Marvel had adapted the Sergeant Pepper Slowly Hearts Club Band movie in 78. It never saw print in America, but it saw print in, I think, France. Marvel decided not to sell it in America, but they also did comic book adaptations of Xanadu and the 1982 version of Annie.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Okay, so Paul would have been familiar with this stuff enough to think this was a good idea.

[Unknown Speaker]

Presumably. Presumably. So Tom DeFalco goes to England and meets with the McCartney people over broad street. And he's expecting them to give him the script to read, you know, so that he knows how to. How it can be adapted into a comic book. And they said, well, we don't have a script. Then they said, do you want to write the script? And he said, you mean for the comic book, Right? Yeah, we would write the script for the. They said, no, no, no, for the movie. And Tom's like, what now? The movie had already been shot. I actually spoke to Tom about this a few days ago, just to get my facts straight. The movie had already been shot. McCartney's concept for this is that Tom would stay in England. In fact, I think they Invited him to stay with the McCartneys, believe it or not. And he would watch the movie over and over and over again for a couple of weeks and literally just write the script. I guess they meant a transcript, right? Not like a full script or a movie script. And then from there he would adapt it into a. And Tom was like, no. In Tom's head, knowing Tom, his thought was probably like, when can I get the first plane back to the States after this meeting. But what it all indicates is just how haphazard this thing. They did not have a shooting script that they could give Marvel to then adapt into a comic book script. And they wanted Marvel to do a comic book version of it.

[Robert Rodriguez]

This is so bizarre. It's so hippie dippy. And you would think at that point in his career, he's surrounded. He's still got the Eastmans with him. He's got professional high caliber people. He should have guardrails.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But I guess what it speaks to is one of the biggest raps people have on his solo records that are not particularly held in, well, regard is that he doesn't listen. It's very rare with the Beatles. He had John and he had George Martin. And maybe he intuited that when it was time to make the important record, that tug of war became, I need George Martin on board for this to be worthy of my reputation. And come film, he thought he had it down. I mean, this is the era of mtv. Maybe he thought you have good popping visuals. Who the hell needs a story, right? And that seems to be the biggest rap on it is there is no. The story is paper thin and it looks great, I guess.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And the musical numbers are good. Ballroom dancing was certainly. Even George Harrison cited ballroom dancing as a bright spot in the movie. But, yeah, I mean, from what I've read, the movie company, I can't remember who released it.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. I wonder if it's Sony, just because he was on CBS at the time.

[Unknown Speaker]

But from what I've read, the movie execs thought they were getting Another Hard Day's Night. And then they saw the movie and they were horrified.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It was 20th Century Fox.

[Unknown Speaker]

It was 20th Century Fox. Yeah. They thought they had Another Hard Day's Night on their hands. And then they saw the movie and I remember it came out in the fall of 84 and it got trounced at the box office and straight to.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Video wasn't like an appropriate response at the time.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, I don't think they would have at that time. I don't think it would have been a straight to video. I mean, straight to video. I can't remember when that became a thing. I mean, certainly by the mid-80s, straight to video. I don't know if that was an option or if they would have taken it or. I mean, think of the insult that would have been to Paul if they ever wanted to do business with him again.

[Robert Rodriguez]

He could have been on the cutting edge. He could have been democratizing cinema. Yeah, it is interesting because it makes me think about. Okay, so Magical Mystery Tour. Largely his baby, Broad street, entirely his baby. And wasn't this, like, while being limo driven back and forth to the studio, he was writing the script, such as it were. At least. I don't know if he had a pie chart. But whatever he did, that was some sort of foundation for this film. But it made me think about the two Paul solo scenes from Hardy's Night and Help. Both ended up on the cutting room floor. And Dick Lester's diplomatic way of accounting for it was he tried too hard. And so somehow he still had that sort of. Well, there's no guardrails now. And now I've got the freedom to enact every fancy, every thought, every idea bubbling up in my head. And maybe since he's not done it again since convincingly made the case so I would not point to that as something, as a misstep. There's plenty of other things you could point at, but that maybe shows what his ideal role is if it comes to film. Score it. Keep it to animation, maybe. I don't know.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, because we're talking the 80s and not the 70s, but that wings concert film with the mice.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, that would have been a mistake if it ever saw the light of day.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's like the visual equivalent of what Glyn Johns complained about for the making of Red Rose Speedway. Just the weed haze, the weed fever dream he was living in back then. Everything is a good idea.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Oh, hello. How are you? Good. Well, you're about to see a film of a live concert we made. We, the Wings, had been doing a few concerts to get tightened up and played in. And one day we arrived at this funny old town. Now, the way you're about to see it is exactly as it happened. Would I tell a lie to you? No. Right. Little did we know at the time, but underneath the stage, there was a whole different scene going on.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Hey, people, the Wings is here and.

[Glenn Greenberg]

I'm ronying for them.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Not the Wings of Fame from the World's Fair? No, dad, the Paul McCartney wings.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Freddie McCartney's little land.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, I knew he'd make it in the trapeze act. I think that movie actually has trickled out and I've tried to watch it and it's ridiculous.

[Robert Rodriguez]

You know, there are dumber ideas that make it to film. As far as a concept goes, I'm wondering what it would have taken to make it successful. If you just go for broke entirely. Target to children under the age of 10. Is that what makes sense? It's funny, this mice fixation, because you had. What was the ringo project in 77? A mouse like Me. You know what I'm talking about?

[Unknown Speaker]

No.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, Scouse the Mouse.

[Unknown Speaker]

Scouse the Mouse. No, that never made it onto my radar.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Probably for good reason.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Hello, everybody.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Have a listen to my song if it's not too short I hope it's not too long I feel real cute in my brand new suit But I'd feel even better if you sang along. Cause I'm the scout that scout's a mouse he's the greatest. No, ordinary I an extraordinary mouse and I'm a Scouse, A Scouse, A mouse What a mouse. I'll bet you've never seen a mouse like Scouse in your house. Now, I had a home in Liverpool.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Donald Pleasence was the guy behind it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, my gosh.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I think it's entirely animated. But Ringo starred as Scouse the Mouse. He voiced it. He didn't appear in it. But there is on Polydor, an album of holo songs which. Then he repurposed A Mouse Like Me into A Man Like Me for the Bad Boy album. Okay, so it didn't go entirely unsalvaged.

[Glenn Greenberg]

And A mouse like me just sings for the world that goes round and.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Around for free A house like me.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Belongs to the world and the world.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Is a great place to be.

[Glenn Greenberg]

And a man like me just sings for the world that goes round and around.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I don't think I ever saw any kind of US release, but that came out in 77ish, I want to say, so it might sound the brain with these guys.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay, yeah, for sure. All right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I have to work for Walt.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, but then after that we all stand together. Then he leaves Colombia and resigns with Capital. And you want to take it from there.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's funny, because now I'm envisioning it being a capital single. So it must have been post press. I'm not going to look it up right now. Fans will know. But it's funny, we talked earlier about revisiting things that you judged Harshly at the time. Press to Play, I thought, had a beautiful cover. I love that cover image of Paul and Linda, whatever the Hollywood photographer was they used. Yeah, there are clearly things in there that's him. There's no Michael Jackson involved or any Ocarin star, but he's absolutely hopping on that bandwagon of Human League, that sound. Hugh Padjam producing and still with Eric Stewart. And Hugh had to say later he was still in his 20s, which I didn't realize because.

[Unknown Speaker]

Me neither.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, he's having these hits with Sting and the Police and Genesis and Phil Collins and XTC and Human League, all that stuff. So he's a hot producer. So McCartney's like, okay, work your magic on me. I could use the boost after Broad Street. And from what I've read, Hugh Padjam talking. He said, you know, my gut was telling me this is bad news. These guys will not listen to me. But what do I know? I'm 20 something and these guys have had all these hits between them. And he's saying, for the current perspective or a latter day perspective, I was right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I remember when that came out. I believe it's the first McCartney album that I bought on opening day, you know, like the release date. Because at that point I was 86, so I was like 16 or 17. So I had some pocket money at that point. The best I could say about it is that it was better than Pipes of Peace.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

I mean, I made it through the whole album okay. They had a listening party on the radio, actually, I believe the night before it hit the stores. And I listened to that, bought the album.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So you heard it on the radio before you bought it, and that didn't dissuade you?

[Unknown Speaker]

No, no, because I was loyal. I was a loyal fan and I figured maybe some of these songs will grow. And to be fair, there were a couple of songs that I liked upon first listen. I liked Only Love Remains. I liked however absurd.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I liked Pretty Little Head right away.

[Unknown Speaker]

Pretty Little Head I thought was cool.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I can't remember if that was a single or not, but it seems like that got a little radio play in Chicago at least. Mm.

[Unknown Speaker]

I will say that the more I listened to it, the more I felt like that was a textbook case of McCartney following trends instead of trying to set them. And it sounded like he was chasing too much rather than just trying to be himself.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right. And see, I give Hugh Padjam credit for being a capable guy, but in this instance, he wasn't listened to. Eric Stewart probably would say the same thing about working with Paul. It's like, you know, I tried to rein him in. I tried to steer him in the right direction, but there's no talking to this guy. And I think that clearly not all of the material was up to par. But, yes, that conspicuous, because when Press got issued as a single, and nowadays I can listen to it and get a little twinge of nostalgia. The 80s is not a period that I feel hugely nostalgic toward. And if I do, there's other things I listen to. It's not like the bottom drawer McCarty albums, but press, I was listening to it fresh not long ago, and I was thinking, okay, I can remember where I was when this came out. And, you know, he meant well.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, I remember I was like so put off by the opening lyrics. Darling, I love you very, very, very much. You couldn't come up with a couple of other words besides very.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, and that's the thing, that's one of the biggest raps on him is that. I don't know if I could say he doesn't think lyrics are important. I think that he knows the power of impressionistic imagery that scans. Well, a song like Jet, he's proven that over and over again. Doesn't add up to anything. But it sounds amazing on the record. But, yes, you're pointing to something that absolutely sounds lazy. But then George saying, I dig love. I love dig John in the middle of the bath, in the middle of a shave. And, you know, they're both absolutely capable of throwing out nursery rhymes.

[Unknown Speaker]

Absolutely. And I would take George and John to task for those songs, and I have many times. Which has gotten me in trouble with the Leninistas, but sure.

[Robert Rodriguez]

How dare you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. I'll tell you offline a story about that. But, yeah, there was that and the really low budget video. It was a cheap video and it looked it. You know, him riding on the subway.

[Robert Rodriguez]

The Underground.

[Unknown Speaker]

The Underground, yeah. You know, and Angry. Angry was supposed to be him. Like, he's really stripping down, he's getting tough now. And he even brought in Pete Townsend to play lead guitar on that. And it just sounded very contrived. It sounded very plastic to me.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And Phil Collins was on drums for that. And it just seemed like, this should be cool. He's playing with Townsend and Collins. This should be a great song. And it wasn't.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So you're saying it lacked authenticity?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's how I kind of like chalk up that whole album for the most part. I remember listening to the Listening Party on The radio the night before him. They were playing however Absurd, which I think was the last song on the album, if I'm not mistaken. And my older brother, he's the original Beatles fan, he's the first generation Beatles fan. And he just kind of, like, snorted, and he was like, saying how bad, how much Paul was trying to make it sound like I am the walrus kind of thing. I didn't have that sort of negative reaction to it. I was like, as long as it sounds good, I don't care if he's going to rip off anything, let it be a Beatles song. If anybody has a right to rip off the Beatles, it's him.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

So my brother was kind of, like, put off by it because it was such a 1967, 68, psychedelic Beatles kind of sounding song. Whereas at that time I liked it. And I still do. I still do.

[Robert Rodriguez]

That's a really good point. It's like they're allowed to revisit. And I think that they've shown they can do it and pull it off with that modicum of authenticity because they were there. As he would sing later on. I think of George on Goentropo doing Circles.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So it's a cool track. I don't begrudge him that at all, but it is. I think that was the sort of, in my young mind, the same way I didn't care for him hitching his wagon to Michael Jackson when he was doing that. Stylistically with this album, it's like, geez, Paul, you don't need to do this. Why are you doing this? Is being popular and selling records that important to you? Clearly, it was.

[Unknown Speaker]

It is. It still is.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, right. Yeah. That pattern, that has not changed, but I don't think there's any song on that album. It's like, I'm either indifferent or I like it. Okay. But actively hate is the song that came after that, which was Spies Like Us.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, boy. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Which sold. It was like, What, a top 10 record or something?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. I don't remember what number it reached, but I barely remember it because I had such contempt for it. I really had such contempt for that song. But just to get back to press the play for a second, I know that Hugh Padgett felt, you know, he's looking back like they. You know, I was right. What I would ask him is, well, what's the direction you wanted to take it in? Did you want it to have more of an authentic sound? Did you want better songs? Would you have pushed him to write better? Like, what was Hugh Padjam's vision for that album that he didn't see happen.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I think the beef was in the material. But certainly if you're hiring Hugh Padjam, then clearly you're signaling you're a okay with Human League.

[Unknown Speaker]

See, but why not the Police, though? That's the thing.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

I wouldn't have thought Human League. I would have thought the Police. The Police had balls. You know what I mean? That was a rock band.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

They were genuine.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, yeah. Night and day. Absolutely. But it's funny that Human League comes up as another negative connotation just a few years down the road when he's working with Costello. You know that story, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It's in my notes.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. The Human League is like. I don't know what term you would call it. That is like. That's the dividing line. That's like he wants to run toward it and the people around are like, no, no, no.

[Unknown Speaker]

Right, but I interrupted. Let's get back to slagging on Spies Like Us.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I don't know what else to say other than I remember. It seems so cheap because, okay, it's done in the service of a film, which, thank God he wasn't the director and writer of, but it almost doesn't matter, right? Because, I mean, nobody regards that as like an 80s film classic, do they? No, I never even saw it, actually. I just remember the video. There's definitely this common thread whenever he gets around a film studio or something. It doesn't bring out his best. And when he has shown his songs can be used intelligently and appropriately in film. Vanilla sky was used effectively in the Cameron Crowe film with the same name.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I like that song. There was a Robert De Niro movie, I can't remember the name of it, that he contributed a song to called I Want to Come Home, which.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Do you know what film that is?

[Unknown Speaker]

I wish I could remember the title of the film, but the song is called I Want to Come Home. I thought that worked.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, I'll find it.

[Unknown Speaker]

And it was a terrible movie, the remake of the In Laws, but they Used A Love for your in that movie. And I liked that song very much.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, you're talking really recently, 2009's everybody's fine with De Niro and Drew Barrymore and Kate Beckinsale and Sam Rockwell. I never saw it completely off my radar and much less knew there was a Paul McCartney song in it.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, I never saw the movie. But the song is really good.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's good.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's a very touching song, actually.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Okay. Does it appear on a McCartney album?

[Unknown Speaker]

Not that I know of. Not that I know of. And even A Love for your, which, like I said, was in the awful remake of the In Laws that had been around since 71, I think it was for the Ram Sessions.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's a Ram outtake.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And McCartney didn't put it out on one of his albums until, I think, the Ram box set, which I have. The deluxe box set.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. All right. So that's when it got discovered and subsequently used for the In Laws.

[Unknown Speaker]

No, it got used in the movie first.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, yeah. So how did the producers know it existed?

[Unknown Speaker]

That's a good question. Maybe they went to McCartney and asked him to write something. Maybe, you know, he figured they probably never heard of this song. I never put it out, so he gave it to them. I really don't know. I don't know.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Huh. You know, back in the day, they would have made a made for TV movie out of oh Woman. Oh. Why?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It tells a story, right? Exactly. You got Gunplay. Americans love that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. So he's got a checkered history when it comes to movies. And the 80s was a real downtime for him in terms of his music. With movies.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Yeah, most certainly. But then he, in general, I don't think too many fans would disagree. Does this great comeback with Flowers in the Dirt, specifically the collaboration with Elvis Costello.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, Well, I think he knew he was in dire straits at the time. I mean, he really.

[Robert Rodriguez]

His credibility and Mark Knopfler said, what are you doing here?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I mean, he was really. I probably still have it somewhere in my closet. But he was on the COVID of Musician magazine. Remember Musician magazine?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

1987. He was on the COVID The headline was McCartney gets hungry again. And he had just started writing songs with Elvis Costello at that point. Which is why I thought it was really odd that he allowed a greatest hits album to come out, like, right in the midst of all of that. Because you think, like, when you're trying to rebrand yourself and you take your career in a new direction, you don't want to be competing with your old stuff.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, that's interesting. You're Beach Boys guy. Do you have the same take that other people have on Endless Summer? That it utterly derailed them and turned them into a nostalgia act? Just when they were building off of Holland and they had this new mojo with the guys they brought into the band, then all of a sudden it's like a major regression that they never, ever Pulled out of.

[Unknown Speaker]

I think that there's something to be said for it. I think the blame is in how they handled it at that point. You look at the albums that they've been putting out, as good as most of them are. You're talking Sunflower and Surf's up, two great albums. You're talking Carl and the Passions and Holland, two very good albums. But they weren't selling great. No, they just weren't. Endless Summer sold gazillions. Gazillions and put them back on the map. They could have taken that opportunity and capitalized and tried to continue to be progressive while not breaking with their past, but really trying to keep the progressive part in there. But unfortunately, they went all in on the nostalgia stuff. And so they succumbed because they saw the dollar signs and any ambitions that they had of continuing on and saying, hey, here's who we are now. I think there is something to be said that Endless Summer. But then the other thing was, is here's the key thing. At the time Endless Summer came out, the Beach Boys didn't know what they were doing. They didn't know where they were going.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It's very schizoid. I remember thinking that when I saw Carl and the Passions as a double album with Pet Sounds.

[Unknown Speaker]

Pet Sounds, yeah. That was a huge mistake. That was a huge mistake.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It'd be like George putting out Dark Horus coupled with what, Revolver or something.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, that was a huge mistake on their part. But also, the difference between the Beach Boys analogy and the McCartney analogy is when they put out Endless Summer, the Beach Boys were not going in any particular direction. They tried to put out an album in 74. It completely collapsed. They didn't have the material. They didn't know which way to go. McCartney, at the time that all the Best came out, was sort of, like, hunkered down, trying to revive his writing and his credibility. So he was definitely going in a direction where he wouldn't want to be competing with his old stuff. Where the Beach Boys had no choice but to compete with their old stuff. Because they didn't have really great new stuff to offer at the time.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And it should be pointed out that there is an aspect of sort of flailing with Paul. And that he's desperately not looking backwards at that time. Notwithstanding this. All the best. But there's the aborted Phil Ramone sessions during this period.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Where he's got some perfectly good songs like Ivan, that just become surplus to requirements. Return to Pepperland. This project that maybe someday we'll get some kind of proper Smile, like Treatment. I don't know if he can conceive a way to make it fully realized, but it just shows. He's sort of like, what do I do? What do I do? Phil Ramone working with Billy Joel at the time, having hits and mining, sort of similar landscape. So, yeah, right on the heels of Hugh Paget, I believe it was after.

[Unknown Speaker]

Although, you know what? Billy Joel wasn't working with Phil Ramon anymore at that point.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So he was available.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. 86 87. Billy Joel had come out with his album. I can't remember the name of it anymore, but he was working with the guy from Foreigner, Mick Jones. Mick Jones produced his 8687 album, the Bridge. That was the name of the Billy Joel album, the Bridge.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

And so, yeah, so Phil Ramon wasn't working with Billy Joel anymore, but he.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Had worked with Julian Lennon.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yes, he had. Yes, he had.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So I would love to hear that conversation.

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So I heard what you did out of a lot.

[Unknown Speaker]

But here's the thing. The thing is, Smile deserved to be released eventually. From what I've heard of the Phil Ramone sessions and the Pepperlands, the return to Pepperland stuff that might be best to stay in the archives because what did make it out had been reimagined. Made it out on the later albums. Those versions are infinitely better than what I heard from the Ramon sessions.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. I guess I'm thinking about Yvonne because that's a great song.

[Unknown Speaker]

That's a good song.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And he should have done something with that.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, that was all right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But you're right, that's the thing that's kind of amazing to me. The Costello new collabs aside, Flowers in the Dirt is a bit of a hodgepodge when you look at the track history of when these songs first surfaced. And the aforementioned We Got Married featuring David Gilmore with something go back to, I think, the Year of Broad Street.

[Unknown Speaker]

Okay. I thought that We Got Married was part of the Return to Pepperland stuff.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'm not sure. I just know it predated Flowers in the Dirt by a couple of years, Predated Costello. So it's part of this, the flailing period, where he's got individual cool tracks that he doesn't quite know how to present them. Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because, yeah, the arrangements that I heard are pretty weak or sappy or just not as good as what we ultimately got. I mean, the whole thing with Costello was they wrote an album's worth of songs. The original idea was they were going to put out a duo album, and it Obviously did not happen because they couldn't agree on a direction. And the other thing that I heard is that Paul got cold feet because if the album was a hit, people would have said, oh, you see, he needs Elvis Costello to prop him up.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right, exactly right. And it's too bad.

[Unknown Speaker]

They're part of the Flowers in the Dirt box set. They were a part of a free download. If you buy the album, you get a code and you could go to, I guess it was Paul McCartney.com and you can download the WAV files.

[Robert Rodriguez]

You can't buy it as an individual album. Off the shelf, though. No, he should do that. But maybe he's still kind of weird about it, about, oh, they're buying it for Elvis, not me or something, I don't know. But those are fantastic performances. In some ways, I prefer them to the finished ones. I mean, it's nice to have both, I guess, but. But when I first got that stuff, I was like, holy cow, this is amazing.

[Unknown Speaker]

And there's two songs that were never properly recorded by either of them, and one of them is. I consider it a masterpiece. Tommy's Coming Home.

[Robert Rodriguez]

She was counting out.

[Glenn Greenberg]

The window of an outbound train all the poles of the teletraft and the rocket bi Rhythm in the Song of the rails Couldn't make the sleep alive down, down, down so deep down, down Drowning in his. Tommy's Coming Home Again.

[Unknown Speaker]

The fact that he didn't record it with Elvis as a sort of Everly Brothers or John and Paul kind of duet.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Nerc Twins.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, exactly. The Nerc Twins is a crime, you know. I mean, yes, if you get the bootleg, you've got it, but I'm talking about a proper, produced.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

Releasable, releasable version of that song. It's a tragedy that they never did it and I don't know why. I know Elvis is fond of it. He said as much. He was trying to push McCartney into a more stripped down, more authentic sound. And McCartney, it took him too much out of his comfort zone. And that's the case where you alluded to earlier, where McCartney mentioned something, maybe something like the Human League, and Elvis Costello was so horrified that he stormed out of the studio and had to walk around the block a few times to calm down, because he didn't want to say anything back to Paul that he would regret.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. Or put his fist through him, you.

[Unknown Speaker]

Know, the huge mistake. So, Flowers in the Dirt. If you're going to have one duet with Elvis Costello and you've got Tommy's Coming Home in the mix and you stick us with you want her too, which it's not a bad song, but it's not Tommy's Coming Home.

[Robert Rodriguez]

No. And I just wonder if they were thinking at the time, well, we got this little gem, let's keep it in our pocket for the next go round or something like that, and just fell through the cracks because I could see they're thinking, you want her too is maybe fitting more the vibe of the album. But they surely recognize Tommy's Coming Home was too good to waste. Do something with it. Not album, single, something. And they didn't. And that's something that I'm hoping someday we'll get a proper attention. Shined on it, if I remember correctly.

[Unknown Speaker]

Because it's been a while since I've listened. But the box set, the deluxe box set of Flowers in the Dirt does have an attempt at a produced version of Tommy's Coming. I think what they might have done is took the demo and just added proper music tracks to it and it was completely the wrong arrangement. I mean, quite frankly, if they had stuck to just the demo, just cleaning up the demo or doing a version, a proper recorded version that cues to the demo, just cleaner, neater, more formal, I think it would have been great. But they overproduced it. Like I said, it was never commercially released until the box set as an extra. But I was kind of like. I was like, oh, I'm glad they didn't go any further with it if this was the way they were going to go.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, you never know. New stuff pops up that we didn't suspect existed. Maybe they do have a decent take somewhere because they were working in proper studios with good equipment and maybe they couldn't find it and someday they'll surprise us with it. But I'd like to think so.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, after many years of listening to the bootlegs, I am glad that he did put out cleaned up versions of the demos. Nice clean. We've got that. And I'm happy enough with that. I just don't know why he didn't put it out the same way. I don't know why he didn't put out his own version of on the Wings of a Nightingale, which I think is probably one of his top three songs of the 80s.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right, right.

[Unknown Speaker]

And he gave it away.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. I mean, if it was conceived for those guys and he wanted to pay tribute, I could see where it has a different sort of cachet than just one more song for one of his records. But there needs to be scooped up all these little gems and just put together. He's been threatening cold cuts for 50 years now, right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And it's never happened, but we know that they worked on this stuff.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And why, why, why, why, why didn't he just put it out already?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, he just now put out one hand clapping, so maybe there's hope, Right? You know, if he's got all these gems sitting on the shelf that he forgets about. He just dug up his pictures from 1964. So you never know what you're going to get from him. But clearly, stuff that you didn't know or you didn't think about anymore, you thought because it didn't come out, he must not have it. Well, maybe he does. He could be doing this forever and ever. On the other hand, you compare it to the Harrison estate First takes volume one or something. How old is that record now? Where's volume two?

[Unknown Speaker]

Exactly. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And we know that Danny's an industrious guy. He's been working on other stuff. And George, even his lifetime, alluded to a mountain of demos that someday he would like somebody to work on and put out. So I would love to see that happen.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Speaking of George and around that time, if you want to point to low hanging Fruit of mistakes in the 80s, the Broad street film, but have you a take on the Rock and Roll hall of Fame induction and his boycott? We know, yeah, Rock and Roll hall of Fame's a joke. But just for that moment, getting to celebrate their legacy together as the three guys standing these ephemeral concerns of the legal squabbles they're having at that time trumps something that's going to be out there forever. It makes me sad to think about, not that he could have known George had so few years left, but I would have thought, and we've alluded to earlier in the conversation, that observation by Paul, you don't know how much time people have got left. Make your peace with them. And it would have been nice. George at least got that nice line about, we hoped Paul was going to be here because he had the speech in his pocket. The best spin you could of reading it with humor, which must have been, on some level, I would think, a little bit hurtful.

[Unknown Speaker]

A couple of things I actually wrote about, I made sure that to include this in my Paul McCartney bookazine that I wrote for his 80th birthday that I did for Time. It was just one of the first times I was on your show, but I remember the week of the Rock and Roll hall of fame. Somebody wrote into the Daily News because they had an entertainment writer, I think it was named David Hinckley or something like that. And they said, what do you think? Are we going to get that Beatles reunion? Because everybody gets together at the end and it's going to be our chance to see the remaining Beatles. And this writer said, I doubt that George will show up because George always tries to distance himself from the whole Beatles thing. And this isn't going to mean anything to him. It is unthinkable that Paul McCartney would not go to this thing and be celebrated and embrace the whole Beatles thing. And I was like, oh, makes sense to me. And then literally, it was like a day or two later was when Paul issued that press statement. It was the day of the awards, the day of the honors, I think, that he issued. He wasn't going to be there, which shocked everybody. I mean, it shocked everybody when you do the backstory. And again, I wrote about this. He was apparently being sued by the other guys and by Yoko because he was getting a higher royalty rate on the Beatles albums from Capital, because that was part of his deal when he resigned with capital in 85, 86. And Paul's position was, look, these people are not my partners anymore, altogether one and all. And so I don't owe them a heads up that I'm getting a bigger royalty rate. If they want a bigger royalty rate, let them go to Capitol and make a deal for a better royalty rate. And so they sued him. And he was really pissed off about it and really, really hurt. It was a genuine thing. It was a genuine gesture on his part that he didn't want to stand up there with them and pretend that everything was hunky dory. When he was really pissed at them and really hurt by them, he probably.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Shouldn'T have said to them, alan Klein, how's that working out for you?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And he and Yoko had, by that point, gone several rounds. He in part blamed her for the fact that Michael Jackson ended up owning Northern Songs.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, for Michael Jackson taking the advice that he gave him.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, yeah, But Paul at the time was trying to team up with Yoko to buy Northern Songs. And I think Yoko realized that she stood to make money no matter what, because after a certain point, she, as John's widow, would start getting a percentage of that stuff long before Paul did.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right.

[Unknown Speaker]

So she kind of shiv them in the side and all that.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Why should I partner with Salieri?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, that was a little bit later, that remark. That's a whole other conversation. But No, I understand where McCartney was coming from, but in the eyes of the public, or at least in the eyes of the public that already blame and that still blame McCartney for the breakup of the Beatles, this just fueled it for them.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, and he should have had professional PR type image managers around him to tell him exactly what a bad look this was. Bad optics, as they say now. But I remember thinking at the time, okay, this is the excuse he's given us as the public. And you're right, he had reason to feel that they had screwed him and making him look bad and picking an unnecessary fight. But it seemed like they conspicuously avoided all three of them being in the same place for a long time. Because I remember thinking to myself, here's Paul, who just worked with Carl Perkins. Why isn't he with the other two? For the Carl Perkins TV special where you have Clapton and Roseanne Cash and Dave Edmonds, these other people, or the Prince's Trust concerts, he shows up in 86, the other two show up the next year. It's like, would it kill you all to be in the same place at once? And maybe, if not consciously, maybe subconsciously, it was something they just steered clear. For whatever reason, they contrived to not do it. But that seems to be what was going on around then, certainly in public.

[Unknown Speaker]

But you've seen the photographs. They posed together at Clapton's wedding, they posed together at Ringo's wedding. I think it was a public thing, right?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Is it a hangover from that same. We've got all this to live up to as Beatles, that we want to sidestep this because they're expecting. God, it could be.

[Unknown Speaker]

It could also be that once you do that, then as bad as it is with people always asking when you're going to work with the other guys, that would just make it even worse that they would never hear the end of it. Come on, you guys, you just got together for that. Come on, give us more, give us more, give us more. I'm sure that that played into it.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I wonder if a rise in status is what made it more amenable. Because again, the circle back to John off the heels of Imagine, to go back to the beginning of our conversation, is willing to work with Paul and then he sidesteps it for the next several years until he gets his number one with Walls and Bridges. And then suddenly they're on par with each other. There's parody. He's willing to do it again. You look at in the late 80s, not until flowers in the Dirt and then off the ground. Paul sort of regains some stature. George has his moment with Cloud 9, followed by the Wilburys and then 89. You got Ringo starting the All Star tours and then getting back some status. Time takes time. Only after they've all had these individual successes coming out of the troughs of the 80s did they get together for Anthology and play together and do John's demos. It's like, up until then, would they have but for the fact that nobody wanted to be seen as the needy guy?

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, depending on who you talk to, the reason why George participated in Anthology because he was the needy guy.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well, he was monetarily, yeah, for sure, but not public status wise. I mean, nobody knew the Dennis O'Brien Lyne O'Brien rating of his bank accounts to that point. Clearly he felt it. But I think it took a while for that to filter out to the public. And even then, I think by the time he did, he was basically on his deathbed when the full extent of how he'd been swindled and this case was being dragged out and dragged out till he was too ill to attend a court hearing or something. And they said, well, it defaults to Dennis then.

[Unknown Speaker]

I seem to remember being somewhat aware around the time it might have been after the dust settled, after Anthology, knowing that George had been having financial difficulties. I seem to have known about it for a long time. I mean, long before he passed away, so I don't know.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I remember hearing stuff after anthologies like, well, the only reason he did this was because he needed the money, but not before or during. And if I did hear anything about Dennis O'Brien, it was more related to Handmade. And I don't think I associated with the actual Harrison fortune has been robbed.

[Unknown Speaker]

And that was the case. Right. It was more than Handmade.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I think he was going to lose Friar Park. Yeah. Because he'd been mortgaging this stuff to finance Bomb Films past a certain point. Right. And in Shanghai Surprise, of course.

[Unknown Speaker]

Oh, yeah, for sure.

[Robert Rodriguez]

That was his Broad Street.

[Unknown Speaker]

Although, if you do watch the full anthology stuff and you see how uncomfortable George seems around Paul, I mean, you can also understand why they might not want to be out in public together, especially on George's front. There's some really uncomfortable moments between them on the anthology stuff.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But we should point out, as we've mentioned earlier, privately, they seem to be okay. It just seems that a lot of for public consumption stuff, certainly from George's side. I don't think Paul ever bad mouthed George except for a couple occasions like when they're getting ready to work on Free as a Bird and he sees George take out the slide like, oh God, here we go. My sweet Lord.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

But for the most part, he seemed to be the one at least posturing how much esteem he felt for George. Whereas George would diss Paul at every turn. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

At every opportunity. And yet there are those clips when they are recording Free as a Bird, you see Paul coming over and hugging him, Right.

[Robert Rodriguez]

And the lighthearted banter between them, you know, is that a vegetarian leather you're wearing?

[Unknown Speaker]

Which is great. I mean, Paul had to laugh at that. I mean, that was a great line. But on the same token, I'm sure you saw the clip where they're talking about. I guess it was the medley on side two of Abbey Road and they.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Can'T remember who's playing bass.

[Unknown Speaker]

Well, George says, what album is this on?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And they start cracking up. And Ringo says, I'm Ringo, you're George, he's Paul. And so George laughs at that. And then Paul, who's sitting behind George, says, ladies and gentlemen, noted Beatles expert George Harrison.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Right. Yes.

[Unknown Speaker]

And then George glares at the camera, he's not laughing.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Does an Oliver Hardy breaking the fourth wall.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, yeah. And so it's like he'll take the gentle ribbing from Ringo, he won't take.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It from Paul, he'll take his first wife from Ringo.

[Unknown Speaker]

But supposedly on personal terms, they were okay. On a personal level, they were okay.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, that's what you keep hearing over and over again. But boy, did he definitely never waste an opportunity to get that blow in publicly with Pa. I remember it being bad form, at least that's how I took it. It's like, you don't need to do this. Come on, it's not 1969 anymore.

[Unknown Speaker]

Here's the other thing, though, and you and I talked about this a while back, that recording, either in the very early or mid-1980s, a conversation between Paul and the Eastmans, you know, his father in law and his brother and his lawyers, and Linda was there too, where he just kind of like broke down. What the situation was, was that Yoko is just on a completely different wavelength. She just doesn't think the way normal people do. Ringo is just too simple to understand all of the ramifications and all of the permutations of what they're dealing with in terms of just resolving all of their legal affairs. And George does not trust him, just does not trust him. Just thinks that Paul always has a card up his sleeve or some kind of angle. And All Paul says he wants on this recording is he just wants everything to be resolved. He doesn't want any of their kids to be fighting about this decades from now. He just wants the peace between all of them. And George is like no, come on Paul, what are you really after? And that's where they were in the 80s.

[Glenn Greenberg]

They have the idea that I'm so desperate to settle the Apple thing that I will go along with the.

[Unknown Speaker]

Paul is desperate like a home.

[Glenn Greenberg]

I just got it from Dennis that Harrison one doesn't know about Ringo Yoko is you know, it's the general, she's always looking under the bed. But Harrison has this idea that there's something lurking in there that requires Paul.

[Robert Rodriguez]

To settle the capital Apple. He doesn't know what it is but.

[Unknown Speaker]

That oh it's just he doesn't want.

[Robert Rodriguez]

His kids being hung up with Apple.

[Glenn Greenberg]

And Paul was willing to flow I'm.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure said that to him.

[Glenn Greenberg]

But you know what?

[Robert Rodriguez]

They don't believe it.

[Glenn Greenberg]

No, they don't.

[Unknown Speaker]

Sure you say this is the truth.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Traditional. Yeah.

[Robert Rodriguez]

In fact they, they threaten me on.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Say I said look, this, these are the facts.

[Unknown Speaker]

Last night.

[Glenn Greenberg]

No, no, this was these are the facts said you can take it to the bank. Take it to the bank.

[Unknown Speaker]

These are the facts.

[Glenn Greenberg]

How long have you known me? Have I ever said anything in any of these meetings that at the end.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Of the they you open the book and they. So they don't trust Paul.

[Glenn Greenberg]

You saying they don't trust me? They no, I think, I mean you know what happens when you get playing Monopoly on chess or whatever. You have to assume that your enemy quotes might have something up his sleeve and I think they know.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well you know what?

[Unknown Speaker]

Cuz they've had so much up their sleeve.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Exactly.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So much up her sleeve.

[Unknown Speaker]

She's.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Well the answer is this though.

[Glenn Greenberg]

They want listeners who you said they had no canes.

[Robert Rodriguez]

That's right. That's right. I know it's amazing that we have this thing. It's so really, really inside baseball. I mean this is him unless come to wonder, well how did this tape come to be made and how was it leaked? Was this one of these things like the conversation at Twickenham when John doesn't show up and he's defending John and Yoko in the face of all these people not that are going after them. One of these things show I'm really the good hearted guy with everybody's best interests at heart.

[Unknown Speaker]

But it took 40 years to come out.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah. So something slipped up. Just wasn't according to plan. Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

I don't know, Honestly, I don't think Paul would have wanted it out there that he called Ringo stupid or any of the. If he called them all, he goes, they're too stupid to understand. I don't think he would have wanted that out. In fact, Linda interrupts him and says, you're being recorded, you know, so I don't know how it got out. I mean, it's genuine. I'm willing to bet my non existent fortune that this thing is genuine. Why it was put on record, I have no idea how it got out, I have no idea, but it's out there. I'm going to go with the notion that those were his genuine feelings at the time.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, I agree, but I have to pick everything apart.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, and maybe that played an important role as to why he couldn't go to the Rock and Roll hall of Fame.

[Robert Rodriguez]

It would be very telling if we knew the date of this, like where is it in relation to that event?

[Unknown Speaker]

I was trying to determine whether or not it was before or after John died, and there aren't enough context clues.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'm pretty sure it's after. I'm pretty sure you're right in the timing. And it might have been about this very legal issue. The enhance royalties from capital.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Thing did not understand it. I'm telling you. I sat down with him and he said, you don't want me to sell this thing, period. And I said, no, no, no, if you sell it, you must offer it to George. And I. He said, well, you know, I do that. I said, could you say that into this tape? You know, could you say that again? So could you tell Hillary? And then I said, can I go to your people? And I said, barbara, I want you to get this straight. He's just said he would offer it absolutely, unequivocally to me. And George, Ringo said, yeah, but that's not what you're after. He said, you just don't want me to sell, do you? And I said, before you do allow George and I to match his offer. He said, well, you know, I'd do that. We were drunk by this time. He said, you know, I do that. I said, ringo, I'm going to ring them right now. I'm going to tell them just what you just said. Barbara, did he say this? It was no longer. And the point I'm making is Ringo did not have half a finger on grasping that issue. And I'm telling you, this new thing that you just put that we just said then in a nutshell, that they're willing to spend double of double that 600,000 to get less back each year if they win that lawsuit.

[Unknown Speaker]

They don't get it.

[Glenn Greenberg]

To get, to get less. Even if they win the lawsuit, lo, they get nothing. I mean, to win this lawsuit, this. We're talking about, the American lawsuit, you've got to keep paying for another year. By the way, remember, this is another, it's another heavy lot of fees now. It doesn't make any sense whatsoever. It's insane.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Something about the Beatles created and hosted by Robert Rodriguez, executive producer Rick Way, title song performed by the Corgis. Something about the Beatles is an evergreen podcast.

[Unknown Speaker]

We didn't get into drag, isn't it?

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, I'm not going to crucify him too much for that.

[Unknown Speaker]

But you know that he spoke to a disc jockey that night or that morning after? Right. He got on the phone with this jockey or a radio show host for the BBC, somebody that he had known. And he said that supposedly he and John were supposed to get together soon, that they were looking to book some studio time and all that. And he confided in that guy.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah, yeah, I have heard that story.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah. And I think this might have been the guy from the BBC who had interviewed John just recently. Andy Peebles, maybe it was Andy Peebles and he told Paul that John loved him.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Uh huh. Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

I want to make sure about the disc jockey that Paul spoke to right after John's death. About 50 minutes we hear about John tried to diss Richard Skinner, who at the time, maybe it was Richard Skinner.

[Robert Rodriguez]

I know the name.

[Unknown Speaker]

BBC Radio Richard Paul McCartney on the phone. I went to the back office. Yes, Richard Skinner. He was so upset. We talked about John, we talked about plans that he tells me in the phone call he and John had to get together and try and write music again. That would have been happening in December. The studio they wanted to use was booked. So they didn't get together. We're hoping to get together in the new year. So John Lennon shouldn't even have been in New York on the 8th of December.

[Robert Rodriguez]

That's weird.

[Unknown Speaker]

So Richard Skinner, huh?

[Robert Rodriguez]

I'll have to look into that. I wonder if he's still alive because December 9th he was supposed to be interviewed by Ray Connolly, who was literally on his way to get to New York. Right?

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, I know about that.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Yeah.

[Unknown Speaker]

And Jack Douglas has previously confirmed that Paul tried to ring John during the Double Fantasy sessions and Yoko did not relay the messages to John. He was the guy working at BBC that Paul called to talk to. According to former Radio 1 DJ Richard Skinner. He spoke at length with Paul on the day John died, and he admitted they would do to meet up and. Yeah, it was Richard Skinner that was. It wasn't Andy Peebles.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Okay, okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'm getting old. It's hard to remember all this stuff.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Oh, I know, man. I used to pride myself in being able to give every year of every record when they came out, it's like, you know, they're all a blur.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah, me too.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Hey, everyone, it's Chris Pandolfi inviting you.

[Unknown Speaker]

To check out the new season of.

[Robert Rodriguez]

My podcast, Inside the Musician's Brain, with new episodes airing now. Hearing it in that room, these guys playing this thing and trying to figure out how to play this song was mind blowing. It's so inspiring to know there's so much more to it than you ever thought, and it just opened another door. But when people find faith, because they.

[Unknown Speaker]

Need to, in terms of just filling.

[Robert Rodriguez]

A void to feel better without actually being better, that's when it becomes a crutch. Much like, you know, drugs and alcohol do. Man, I don't have all the time in the world here if I want to be a professional bluegrass musician. I felt like I had to take a very, like, strategic approach, just trying to get rid of the barriers and figure out what those barriers were.

[Glenn Greenberg]

The feelings still come, and I have.

[Robert Rodriguez]

To reckon with that, but I think I have better ways of moving forward and not being stuck, which I think was the killer for me. Catch all that and so much more on the new season of Inside the Musician's Brain. Hey, what's up, you guys? This is Reid Mathis. I made a podcast called the Gifts.

[Glenn Greenberg]

Of Improviser, the gifts of improvising that's coming out on Osiris. We talked to all your favorite improvisers.

[Robert Rodriguez]

Natalie Cressman, Marco Benevento, Tom Hamilton, Aaron Machner, Holly Bowling, Bill Kreutzman, and Jay Lane.

[Glenn Greenberg]

So what, you're doing a podcast? Yeah, doing a podcast.

[Robert Rodriguez]

So don't fear if you hear a foreign sound to your ear. We need the gifts of improvising.

[Unknown Speaker]

Gifts of improvising. Improvising.