“Everything I’ve never been allowed to do”: the recording session that liberated Paul McCartney
Having been a core part of some of the most legendary, world-changing record sessions in music history, it is difficult to imagine anybody questioning the instincts of Paul McCartney. Yet, according to the former Beatle, there are still some rules that he, like every other musician, must adhere to within the confines of a studio.
During his earlier years, of course, the mop-topped McCartney was responsible for revolutionising the recording process with The Beatles. Throughout their tenure, and particularly following their exploits with LSD, the band tore down the expectations of music production, introducing the world to a litany of never-tried-before techniques that made their output sound utterly otherworldly. By the time they came to record Abbey Road, Macca and the rest of the Fab Four had liberated countless musicians across the globe.
In the years that followed the dissolution of that iconic outfit, McCartney’s studio habits only seemed to become more experimental and innovative, particularly on the woefully underrated experimental masterpiece McCartney – his first post-Beatles LP. Even still, it wasn’t until the early 1990s that the songwriter felt truly free within the recording booth.
Back in 1992, Macca united with Youth, the stage name of The Killing Joke’s Martin Glover, to form the unlikely supergroup Fireman, whose output came as something of a revelation to the veteran songwriter. “I did Fireman with Youth, and we had a lot of fun doing that because, for me, it was like everything I’ve never been allowed to do in the studio,” McCartney told BBC Radio One in 2005.
You would perhaps assume that, having been in the greatest band of all time, and having taken part in more recording sessions than some people have had hot dinners, Paul McCartney would already have carte blanche to do whatever he wanted within the studio. As he explained, though, he never experienced true freedom until The Fireman arrived.
“What I mean is, you go in a studio, and you try and sing and play properly, trying to actually play the chords right, and you try to just sing a song and be in tune,” he explained of any typical recording session. “On the kind of album I was making with Youth, you’d sort of say ‘Just go in there and just give it a bit of a rant on the thing,’ you know.”
Seemingly, that is exactly how The Fireman’s three studio albums came to be, from little more than fast-and-loose studio improvisation. Once a beat was laid down, McCartney would simply rant and ramble in front of a mic, and whatever came out would be cut down to the best bits and put on the final track – “It was just having fun,” as he put it himself.
It speaks to the unparalleled musical mastery of Paul McCartney that his “having fun” is still more musically innovative and incredible than albums that artists spend years poring over.
Either way, it was that sense of freedom and no expectations that made The Fireman so much different from anything else that Macca had done before, and seemingly why those studio sessions were such a revelation for the veteran songwriter.
