Paul McCartney celebrates 50 years of ‘Live and Let Die’
‘Live and Let Die’, one of the most important post-Beatles releases for Paul McCartney, turns 50 this week. The song was originally recorded for the Roger Moore-starring James Bond movie of the same name in 1973 but has since become a cultural flag post and a highlight moment of McCartney’s live show, as thousands of fans saw at Glastonbury 2022.
‘Live and Let Die’ is also unique in being McCartney’s first post-Beatles track produced in full by George Martin. The longtime Beatles producer was helming the score for the Bond movie and worked closely with McCartney on the dramatic orchestral arrangements, which the latter once described as a “perfectly stated balance of grandiose, without being over the top.”
In celebration of the anthem’s 50th anniversary, ‘Live and Let Die’ has been mixed in Dolby Atmos by Giles Martin, the son of George, and Steve Orchard. This special mix will allow fans to hear the track in a more immersive setting, placing them in the three-dimensional midst of the action.
“I don’t believe it, do you? I’m only forty-five,” McCartney said in a new interview with paulmccartney.com, reflecting on the anniversary. “But no, it’s always very weird when you get these kind of anniversaries because I don’t keep count. I have no idea if it’s coming up for fifty or sixty years or whatever. It’s shocking really, but in a nice way. I think, ‘Where did the time go?’ It’s nice that the song has lasted though, and people still enjoy it.”
“It felt like an important historical thing, writing a Bond song,” the former Beatle continued. “The idea was suggested to me by Ron Cass, who was a guy who ran Apple Records at the time. He said, ‘Have you ever considered doing a Bond film?’ And I said, ‘Well, I would. But no one has asked!’. So, he spoke to the film’s producers, and then they came back and gave me the title ‘Live and Let Die’.”
“I went away and started thinking about that phrase. To me, obviously what happens is you think of the usual saying, ‘live and let live’. And then think about how you’re going to get to the opposite which is, ‘live and let die’. It was a little conundrum, but I enjoy those; it’s like putting together a short story or something. I got the book the film was going to be based on, read it, and did the song the next day. Ever since then, we’ve played it in our live shows, and we have these big pyrotechnic explosions that make people jump,” McCartney said. “Because of that, I now think of it as this big performance piece, and I do enjoy shocking people with the first bang! So, it’s definitely taken on a new meaning for me beyond the Bond film.”
Asked whether he always thought the song would lend itself to such a dramatic pyrotechnic display, McCartney replied candidly, “No, not really”.
“I thought it would just end up on the soundtrack of the film, as it did,” he divulged. “But when we started performing it to big audiences, we got a bit creative and thought of all the explosions in Bond films. That’s what they’re all about! So, we got our pyrotechnics guy – who is amazingly called ‘Shaky’ – and together we worked it up. He did the explosions, and then we got our lighting guys to come in and add some sympathetic lighting to it, then our stage designer did the film that comes up behind us where we kind of blow up the Houses of Parliament and stuff like that. It all came together as a really nice moment in the show”.
The iconic musician concluded: “By adding these big explosions, you know it’s going to make people jump out of their seat, and what we all love to do as a band is watch the front row. You can see the people who haven’t been to the show before because it shocks them! If it’s a couple, they look at each other, and go, ‘Oh my God, did you see that?’ Which amuses us.”
Listen to the classic James Bond theme song below as performed at Glastonbury 2022.
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