The singer Paul McCartney called his dream collaborator: “Sort of paranoid”
Almost every musician has a dream collaborator; even one as longstanding and legendary as a certain Sir Paul McCartney.
From an outsider’s perspective, it looks like our Macca has done just about everything he’s ever set his mind to. Aside from the obvious, like performing as part of the world’s greatest-ever rock band in history and coming out of the other end with one of the most successful solo careers, McCartney has become a more deeply ingrained facet of modern culture than most of his peers.
Moreover, he has also pulled off the impossible job of remaining immensely respected throughout his entire career. It’s an incredibly impressive feat to be able to maintain relevance and respect when you’ve been in the game for six decades, even more so when you got your start during one of the most societally turbulent times in the history of music.
It’s also impressive that McCartney has managed to sustain himself artistically and musically in a way that works around modern culture without hinging too heavily on nostalgic buzz, but that’s precisely what he does – proves that you can keep marching forward while also celebrating the past and everything that you got into music to begin with.
And while McCartney isn’t exactly the perfect embodiment of a well-respected musician without flaws, he’s pretty damn close. Even better is that he’s also still a massively coveted figure that everybody dreams of crossing paths with, whether casually or in a more professional manner, which is also why you’d be hard-pressed to find literally anyone who would pass up the opportunity to make history with him in the studio.
From McCartney’s perspective, however, it isn’t all that simple. The singer has rubbed shoulders with many a legend over the years, from Michael Jackson to Rihanna. He’s also led some of the best interviews and musical discourse of the past and present, alongside names ranging from Bono to Harry Styles.
But one name he isn’t all that sure of when it comes to potentially working with in the future is Radiohead’s own Thom Yorke. The reason is simple – he adores Yorke’s music just as much as the next person. But he’s slightly apprehensive when it comes to actually making the move and asking him whether he’d be interested, purely because of the one thing we all experience from time to time: fear of rejection.
As he reflected to NME, “[My daughter] keeps saying to me, ‘Ring Thom and just go into the studio and just see what you come out with. I’m a bit sort of paranoid to just ring him up. ‘Hey Thom, it’s Paul here. What do you fancy, what are you doing? Do you fancy writing something?’ Just in case he says, ‘Er, actually I’m busy.'”
While it’s anyone’s guess why McCartney felt he couldn’t take the plunge, you could easily suspect that it had something to do with the fact that Yorke had rejected an offer from him before, when in 2006 he’d asked him to perform the track ‘Mr Bellamy’ on the album, Memory Almost Full. Yorke had said it was because he couldn’t play the piano, but it seemed a little futile an excuse considering the person asking was, well, one Sir Paul McCartney.
