Paul

In January 1988 I had the good fortune to come into close contact with an individual who, growing up, had been a huge influence in my life. Someone who I suspect might have also affected others in profound ways.

One cold Saturday I’d driven through the mid- winter wonderland of Richmond Park to my recording studio in a futile bid, yet again swearing through chattering teeth to wait for Paul, Hounslow’s-own elusive playboy plumber to turn up.

After several times going AWOL, he’d faithfully promised once and for all to come and fix the boiler. But to my extreme & frozen irritation it was beginning to dawn that Saturday was possibly not the best day due to his regular Friday night alcoholic excursions and glandular pursuits in the dark fleshpots of south London.

Love Me Do

I usually loved coming in to my studio on a weekend as the phones were quiet, enabling me finish off a few bits and pieces without constant interruption. The previous week I’d been working on a ‘hush-hush’ project for Paul Simon and Billy Joel’s producer, Phil Ramone, re-arranging classic Lennon & McCartney songs from a list his office had forwarded. I was told to choose one title only and not to ask too many questions. However a couple of songs instantly jumped off the page: “Love Me Do” and “PS I Love You”.

These were huge favourites of mine, and the soundtrack to much college boy smooching and earnest philandering under piles of coats in the bedrooms of blissfully unaware parents in Sutton Coldfield, circa 1963. (I wish!) With a sharp intake of breath I remembered something drastically pleasant happening during “She Was Just Seventeen” along the lines of Jonathan Miller’s description of teenage lust and palpable desire at parties in the dark of “being severely interfered with.”

Wistfully and with a degree of reluctance I managed to prize myself back to 1988, and noticed that out of all the songs, these two alone were published, not by ATV/Northern Songs who controlled Lennon and McCartney’s unbelievable catalogue, but by MPL, Paul McCartney’s own company. This was apparently due to a typist’s error when the rights were sold to Michael Jackson, these two titles being left out of the list. Amazing!

Anyway putting two and two together and having a few clues about publishing, it seemed obvious to me (and a ‘fait accomplit’) that sly old Macca’ had ‘nabbed them back!

My own cunning inclinations therefore suggested one of these might be worth looking at, but which one to choose? Working late into the wee small hours, at a bleary-eyed moment my keyboard sequencer made the choice for me by somehow merging the two tracks into one. Or more likely, I had simply pressed the wrong button! In any event, I immediately liked the unintended “medlification” of these two great songs and christened the arrangement “PS Love Me Do”. The result was very contemporary and the verse of “PS” seemed to quite naturally go into the “Love Me Do ” chorus. I posted it off to Mr Ramone and keenly awaited his response.
Fast-forward to the present Arctic conditions however, by this time so cold and angry I’d decided any further waiting around for Paul the plumber was futile, on the very point of locking up, low and behold the telephone rang. Hesitatingly, a voice spoke:

“Hi Phil, it’s Paul here….” but before any further words could leave his lips, a supercharged torrent of thermically-challenged abuse rained down on the unfortunate caller until, pausing for breath to reload both verbal barrels, he found a split-second to interject:

“No Phil, I think there must be some mistake mate, it’s Paul McCartney!”

I would have cried out on the spot with shame and embarrassment if I hadn’t just actually swallowed my tongue whole.

Throughout late childhood and into my teens and early music career I’d grown up in complete awe of this guy. An almost spiritual worship of an individual who was possibly the century’s most important composer- and a genius to boot.

And I just loved his taste in Cuban boots, Carnaby suits and gorgeous arty-looking women!

Paul and his soul buddy John had obviously revered all the same writers and artists I had, Buddy Holly, Elvis, Don and Phil Everly, Lieber and Stoller, even good old Lonnie Donegan, and together set about changing the course of modern music.

In the process they also changed history, putting England back on the map after it’s grey and stingy post-War years.

Paul McCartney was my hero, and inspiration for changing the course of my life and becoming a songwriter. And he was on the other end of my phone:

“Loved the arrangement of ‘PS Love Me Do’ Phil. It’s great! I’m making a record with Duane Eddy and the Memphis Horns soon. How’dya fancy coming down to my place in Rye and playing piano?”

That ever-so familiar mid-Atlantic scouse lilt.

As one might imagine, the ‘phone incident’ certainly broke the ice over what would otherwise have been a rather stilted and nervous exchange with my greatest hero had I actually been expecting his call. I suddenly became aware of what must have seemed barefaced cheek in totally re-arranging and even re-titling songs written by one of the most successful composers of all time. Thankfully though, he didn’t seem to mind;

“I’ve been called lots of things in my time but never a plumber!’”

Later, when finally time to go home, I locked up the studio realising I’d completely forgotten how cold it was.

Phil Ramone came out to greet me on arrival at The Mill Studio at Rye overlooking a diamond- bright English Channel. In England’s spring lanes on the way down from London I’d actually stopped and got out of the car a few times taking deep breaths of the crisp April air trying to convince myself this was all really happening. Phil was followed out of the studio by Paul who, walking over to my car held out his hand and greeted me with a winsome smile:

“Hello Phil. How’s your heating mate?”

A barely-perceptible trace of confusion flickered across Ramone’s face until the reference was explained. Paul was interested in everything. Asking me where I’d bought my coat, commenting on my shirt, wanting to know all about Culture Club and how they’d split up. How long had it taken to write “Karma Chameleon?” All that kind of stuff.

Band talk.

Now more relaxed, the exhilaration meter went up a few notches on the mixing desk, the fear factor down. Linda appeared with cups of tea and “fake-bacon butties”, the real item apparently being the last thing Paul struggled to give up on becoming ‘veggie’. We set up our equipment and slowly began learning the arrangement to “Rockestra”

There are few people I know that might overcome the sense of shy gaucheness which I suspect that in meeting McCartney would be the case for many, especially of my generation. But playing music together, chatting about the Beatles - something he likes to do a lot, and as a ‘southpaw’ myself, playing the finest collection of left-handed guitars anywhere on the planet, seemed to transcend the impenetrably high walls of such a rarefied fame and universal celebrity. At least temporarily.

Over the course of the next two weeks we developed what I took to be, if not exactly close, then a warm friendship, nurtured, as is often the case between musicians just having a laugh, doing their job away from all the ‘ego’ and hype. The world’s most famous left-handed bassist would often go and make you a ‘cuppa’, “Jasmine or PG?” just like ‘one of the lads’.

One day upstairs in a long room above the studio recording area, he proudly showed me row upon row - a veritable phalanx of left-handed guitars, all neatly standing to attention like toy soldiers on their stands.

I admired an immaculate black Gibson in row 2, right–hand side.

Hands in pockets, a father looking down at his offspring said, proudly:

“Solo on “Taxman’”

“Wow, really?” I said. “Did you play that then?”

“Yeh”

I was in 7th (& 8th 9th and 10th!) Heaven.

“What about this one?” I revered.

“That was a birthday present from Les”

It had “To Paul McCartney from Les Paul” in immaculate mother of pearl along its sleek immaculate ‘Holly Golightly’ neck.

“Hang on”, I thought to myself, “This one’s got to be the most famous of all, the old ‘Hoffner Violin’ bass”

It was up on a three-pronged stand with a red Rickenbacker and black Fender Jazz Bass guitar.

“Is that ‘the one’?” I said, “Can I have a go?”

“Yeh, sure. Look out though, it’s still got the last Beatles set list on the top”

The faded card was precariously held on by the barest old and brittle cellotape, and aeons ago had obviously been hand-written on the back of a ‘No 6’ fag packet in true ‘muso’ style.

Picking up the fragile, feather-light and originally very cheap bass felt like picking up a plywood model aircraft, but knew it had to be the most valuable guitar in the world.

“You played with this at the Birmingham Odeon in 1966” I said, “I was there!”

That was 22 years ago.

The Maharishi

One Sunday a few months after working with Paul on the “Diamonds” album, I called the studio from home; surprised I could actually get through. I’d agreed to pass on a message, something I’m usually quite wary about. But as it was on behalf of the Maharishi, I gave my word. An emissary, on discovering I was ‘in the loop’, asked me to inform Paul that an Indian holy man, Dr Treguna, was coming to London and was wanting to meet Linda for a consultation. Apparently at some former time she’d expressed interest in the highly venerated 5000 year-old tradition of Vedic medicine.

“Look, I’ve promised I’ll try, but he has a lot of people around him and gets asked a lot of things” I explained to Steven Benson, leader of the Transcendental Meditation Movement in the UK at that time, “But I give you my word I’ll let him know”

Calling just after Sunday lunch at around 3pm, Trevor, Paul’s driver picked up the studio phone. I explained the nature of the call and asked would he pass the message on, secretly relieved a third-party request was being honoured and I’d done my job.

“Why don’t you tell him yourself, he’s right here” he said passing the phone to Paul.

To my astonishment the mere mention of Maharishi’s name seemed to unblock a kind avalanche of fond memories from what seemed to be a lost time in his life.

“How is Maharishi?” he enquired with obvious affection.

“He was great to us when Brian died” he said, recalling the train trip to Bangor at George’s request to meet the Maharishi for the first time, on the same day the band learned their manager had died from an overdose.

“John fell out with everybody in Rishikesh though which was a shame,” he said. “We nearly blew the whole thing for TM, but the Maharishi’s a really cool guy”

He intimated that John’s problems and misconceptions arose out of doing intense meditation around the clock in India whilst trying to cope with the emotional and deep psychological ‘fall-out’ from having ‘tripped-out’ on LSD hundreds of times.

The messenger seemed to become an unwitting catalyst to an outpouring of intimate and fascinating details about everything. John. How they met. John’s death and how he found out. Paul’s introduction to John of the ‘avant garde’ Art movement. Songs. Who wrote what, when, where. Bachelor days in St John’s Wood, his relationship with Yoko, George Martin – It all seemed to flood downstream like the sudden unexpected release of a logjam in a river of stories and words.

Prompted by the well-informed questions of a lifelong fan, the caller couldn’t believe the details he was hearing about his hero’s life and times, and moreover the trust which ‘Macca’ seemed more than comfortable to place in his erstwhile devotee and recent professional colleague.

I finally placed the receiver down at nearly quarter to nine at night!

Ann poked her head around the door for the umpteenth time.

“Sweetheart, how many more cups of tea are you going to want?” she said. “Do you realise what time it is?”

It was pitch dark in the kitchen and the longest phone call I’d ever made to anyone in my life.

I recall the time spent at ‘Waterfalls’ with great fondness and excitement but also with a degree of sadness, as in the end realised it could only ever be a brief glimpse of friendship with an idolised hero, perhaps even an ‘idealised’ friend.

“This is about as big as it gets Phil,” Sinatra’s and Streisand’s soundman Phil Ramone quietly confided one day, as I sang John’s back-ups with Paul on ‘‘PS’. After a while I even started to get quite used to the rarefied atmosphere of working at the immaculate studio in Rye.

Finally on leaving day, the genuine warmth of our farewells abruptly seemed to end as the limo’s darkened window snapped shut on the world, it’s occupant cocooned in the cool silent air-conditioned interior, a hole in the polar ice suddenly freezing over. The huge blue “Dallas-and-then-some” Mercedes crunched off rapidly down the gravel drive disappearing into the lanes.

Epilogue

Two years later I was a little down on my luck due to a slight altercation with the Inland Revenue, which had tiresomely led to a repatriation of our beautiful Knightsbridge Duplex by “The Friendly Listening Bank.”

In a rented house in Strawberry Hill, I was up very late watching TV in the den to avidly find out which song Paul was going to perform in John’s memory at a special Liverpool Anniversary “Live” Concert being broadcast via satellite to untold millions throughout the world. It was the 8th of December 1980 and 10 years since John’s untimely death between car and gutter outside the Dakota Building.

There was much speculation as many adoring artists including Madonna, Lenny Kravitz, Elton John and George Michael all magnificently gave heartfelt renditions of some of the greatest hits of all time. But which song was Paul going to do as his tribute to his closest ever friend, soul mate and musical partner?

We couldn’t even guess, but knew the choice was getting smaller after every artist had completed yet another classic.

Paul with his band Wings for obvious reasons were always going to be the “Grande Finale” however, finally running out on stage with customary ‘scouse bravado, thumbs up shouting: “How are ya?” camouflaging the underlying intense emotion of the occasion.

The band struck up.

I couldn’t believe my ears!

It was obvious through the distinctive introduction and arrangement it was “PS, Love Me Do.”

The previous stressful few weeks had taken their toll on me however and was apparently overcome with pride and joyous affirmation.

“Have you got something in your eye?” Ann said walking in from the other room:

“You alright?”

Then she realised.

“Hey, that’s the arrangement you did for Paul isn’t it?”

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The last time we met was at Lieber and Stoller’s table, a ‘matey’: “Hello ‘Philly’ - how’s it goin’?” at the Ivor Novello Awards in 2000, where I offered condolences over the loss of Linda, met his son James, and congratulated him on the Knighthood.