One of Paul McCartney’s favourite songs was helped by a little-known “genius”
When The Beatles parted ways in 1970, leaving behind 12 albums that changed the course of music history, it was clear that none of the members would simply retire from making music. Each of the Fab Four embarked on solo careers, all to varying degrees of success. While George Harrison found acclaim with All Things Must Pass and John Lennon scored well-known hits such as ‘Imagine’, Paul McCartney received the most commercial popularity.
The musician wasted no time following The Beatles’ split, releasing his debut solo record, McCartney, in 1970. The following year he and his wife, Linda McCartney, released Ram, which was received poorly, although it has been retrospectively praised to high standards. However, McCartney soon found the acclaim he deserved as he continued to release solo records, as well as music with his other band, Wings.
In 1989, he released his eighth studio album, Flowers in the Dirt, reaching number one in the United Kingdom. The record included the song ‘Distractions’, which McCartney labelled “one of my favourites”. Talking to People, the musician explained how a certain “genius” helped the song come to fruition.
“I got in touch with this guy called Clare Fischer, who I thought was a woman with the name Clare,” McCartney explained. “I just knew of the person’s work off of a Prince album [Parade], where I heard a really nice arrangement. When I’d written this song, I thought, ‘It would be really nice to have a really good arrangement, slightly jazz-tinged but not too much.’ So I got in touch with Clare, and I was quite surprised to find out that he was a middle-aged man. But he was great—a bit of a genius. He and I talked about it a lot, and he got the idea. I really liked that arrangement.”
McCartney also discussed the meaning behind the tender track. He said: “Sometimes you hit a lyric that means something to you. For me, if you love someone, you really want to just hang out with them all the time and then just have the best time and the best life. But then you’ve got to go to work, you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that. So I just call all of those things distractions.”
Due to ‘Distractions’ being one of McCartney’s favourite tracks he’s ever written, he’s never shied away from discussing it. In 2017, he took to his website to explain what the beautiful song means to him. “It could just be an ideal – we all love someone and wish we could spend more time with that someone. A romantic ideal!”
He continued: “I know that a young couple won’t hear this about me and Linda, the guy will hear it about him and his girlfriend, the girl will hear that it’s about her and her boyfriend, and I like that. I like that about my songs, that people use them for their own purpose. And I think that’s a very romantic idea.”
Revisit ‘Distractions’ below.
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