October 25, 2023 • 22 mins
As a young boy, Paul McCartney soaked up the radio plays his mother listened to while cleaning around their house. They gave McCartney an expansive understanding of characterization, something he’s been able to do astonishingly well in his own work throughout his writing career. The song “Penny Lane” may sound like much of the psychedelic musings that was common by the late 60s, but the song is actually a beautifully abstract description of a Liverpool suburb well-known to both McCartney and John Lennon.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman, Scott Rodger and Paul McCartney.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin under Milk would by Dylan Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My mom would be doing the isling and she'd have
a play on, play for Today or something said her
with her listen, who yes, love?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
What are the neighbor?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Paul? She puts up, never sort of mannaged. She didn't
have to stay with her mother.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
One his mother did the ironing. Young Paul McCartney would
lie in front of the radio and conjure up images
in his mind.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And the characters, you know, they were also well for
trade love Hush, I'm a widow now.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
From listening to the radio came an early understanding of
how to draw a character so precisely that a blind
person could see him.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Do you just get into it? You can see the characters.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
It's as if you're in the room with them.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I'm Paul muldoon. I'm a poet, a lover of not
only the lyric poem, but the song lyric. Over the
past several years, I've got to spend time with one
of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And will you look at me? I'm going on to it.
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book Looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
She is a songwriter. My god, well that crypt homie.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Penny Lane.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I mainly remember it as being where I would I
would get a boss to Penny Lane in order to
go to John's house.
Speaker 6 (02:43):
No anonymous conurbation this but Liverpool, vital city and port
on the northwest Mersey, forty three square miles of teeming life.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Throughout my meetings with Paul McCartney, it's become clear to
me just how important his childhood and Liverpool has been
to his songwriting career.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Has this Liverpool sprung from its people? I have the
people sprung from Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It was a place that featured very much in my
life and in John's life. It was near a church
where I was at Choie Corystal.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
What is there in the Northwest to create this exciting atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
A lot of stuff happened there. I use that terminus
a lot to go to John's, for instance, and in
there it's all it's the scenery. This is quite accurate.
And the nice thing is writing is John knew exactly
where I was talking about Penny Lane.
Speaker 7 (03:44):
There was a barn showing photographs of every.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
Head he's had the pleasure to know, and all the
people back Man Stubborn sell.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
On one level, Penny Lane paints a picture of an
ordinary suburban street with a barber, a farman, a banker,
and a nurse selling flowers. But somehow, just below the surface,
everything is a little strange.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So I'd say, Penny Land, there's a barber showing photographs.
I thought that's rather clever, because it's like a it's
like a gallery showing paintings. It's an exhibition in this window.
And you and I we know that. We just go
by and say, I'll have one of them. I'll have
a Tony Curtis, all have a crew cut or whatever.
But I like the idea that he's showing photographs. So really,
(04:41):
all I'm saying here is there's a barber shop and
he's got photos of hercuts in his window. But that
would be a little too mundane. But there is a
barber shop still there change hands, changed hand. It was
called Bioletti. The guy was Bioletti, mister Italian barber with
the stripe pole outside and everything, and so we knew that.
(05:04):
So when we evoked it later in this song, it
was a pleasant thing for John and I to share again.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Penny Lane was written while the Beatles were working on
the Sergeant Pepper album. The band had stopped during and
was putting all their energy into recording and working in
the studio. John, George and Ringo had been experimenting with
(05:34):
LSD and finally in the fall of nineteen sixty six
convinced Paul to try it as well. The inner pictures
and characters from the street of McCartney's childhood are projected
(05:54):
with hallucinogenic clarity.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
My drive past it to this day, regularly showing everyone
of the barbers, the bankers, the firemen, the church. I
used to sing in and here's where the girls it
with a tray of poppies as I waited for the boss.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Selling puppies on Remembrance Day to honor the armed forces
of the Commonwealth. It was common to see people selling poppies.
The pretty nurse who sells them from a tray is
drawn from real life, but she also has this strange
feeling that she's in a play.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Now she.
Speaker 9 (06:37):
Any Funnily, you're not a lot of Americans thought she
was selling puppies.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I say puppies. There's another interesting image, a tray full
of puppies, and now she's signed poppies. I know she
feels as interesting a play she is anyway. Yes, that's
that's very sort the sixties.
Speaker 10 (07:06):
It is, and that's what they would call and polite circles,
a meta text. That is, it's a description of one
fact is happening in the song that she is in
a plane.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There's characters. There's a bunch of characters, and you know,
I'm proud of the way certain lines just fell out,
But in retrospect were sort of good lines, like the
the fireman who's cleaning his fire engine.
Speaker 8 (07:38):
He likes to keep his fire and clean. It's a
clean machine.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's a clean machine. I just you know, those kind
of phrases sort of stick. It's a clean machine.
Speaker 10 (07:55):
Amusing, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It's there's something slightly ominous. So the old stuff that happened,
they actually that the fire station is a little further away, right,
but like any good play, you put it all in
the wrong place.
Speaker 10 (08:14):
But one of the wonderful things here we established the
barber and we leave him, but then we come.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Back to him. Yeah, which is extremely.
Speaker 10 (08:26):
Effective in that we think, well, I know that guy.
So there he is.
Speaker 7 (08:31):
Again another customers. We see the banks the way to
be trendy.
Speaker 10 (08:46):
It's a way of bringing him the listener, I suppose,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I mean, I'm not consciously unconsciously it's it's kind of film.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
It is exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, it's like we are. We thought we'd forgotten
him because we are now going on to the banker.
Now the banker. I mean, I've never seen any children
laugh at him, so's I've never seen him. I've seen
his bank. I had no idea that the children laughing
and the mac and the pouring rain, it's all fiction.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
On the corner is a banker, the moticon, the little
children having him behind his man and the banking them
wears a man in.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The boring rain.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
And here perhaps a brief explanation is needed. A mac
is what the British called a raincoat, after Charles Macintosh,
who patented a waterproof material for raincoats. So the banker
never wears a mac. It's all very strange.
Speaker 10 (09:52):
It's a place, it's so play.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It's a little player, yes, okay.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The stories of Penny Lane appear to McCartney not just
visually but through sound. Penny Lane is not just in
his eyes, but also in his ears. Oral storytelling had
been a large influence on his songwriting ever since he
was a kid and would lie on the carpet listening
(10:32):
to the radio.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You would lie on the carpet and the radio would
be in front of you, and you should be in it.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
One of the plays a twelve year old McCartney might
have listened to was a nineteen fifty four play by
the poet Dylan Thomas called Under milk Wood, which portrays
the fictitious time of Clarigub.
Speaker 11 (10:58):
It is springing, moonless night in the small town star
last and bible black. The cobble street silent, and the
hunch cutters and rabbits would limping invisible down to the
slow bless slow black crow, blessed fishing boat, bubbing sea.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
As the time of Claragub slowly awakens, the narrative weaves
in and out of the thoughts of its inhabitants.
Speaker 12 (11:30):
I must put by pajamas in the drawer marked pajamas.
I must take my cold back, which is good for me.
I must wear my flannel violon to ward off by attic.
I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.
I must blow my note.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In the garden. You've already written eleanor Rigby. Oh did
you feel mean?
Speaker 10 (11:55):
Would you have felt at all that you were maybe
going back a little bit to that territory or no?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I like the rise area.
Speaker 10 (12:03):
There's an under milkwood aspect to both eleanor Rigby and this,
and to some extent, isn't there the character.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Characters characters as a bunch of characters. This is the
kind of thing I liked. It still is.
Speaker 13 (12:15):
I must take my salts, which our nature's braided.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I must spoil the drinking water because the Germans.
Speaker 13 (12:22):
I must make my verb tea which is free from tannin.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And have a charcoal biscuit, which is good for me.
Speaker 13 (12:28):
I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixtures in the woodshell.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
At the time of writing Penny Lane, Paul McCartney had
become very interested in the London art scene. He was
also dating the actress Jane Asher, which might have influenced
the theatrical nature of the song. One of the people
in their circle was the great playwright Harold Pinter, Pinter
(12:59):
whose characters often have such complex psychologies.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I think it was this ear or two in our
lives when if you're going to write a play like
these characters, I'd rather have it be like a Pinter
play than something a bit straighter, right, you know, I
like the idea that they're a bit wonky, all these characters.
(13:25):
There's just something a little bit strange about them.
Speaker 10 (13:27):
And you would have seen already some Pinter.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, you know, by the time we've written this, we've
been down in London for a while and I was
going out with an actress, so we would go regularly
to the National Theater. How would you have met Pinter
at that time? Chance he was on the social She
was on the scene with Vivian merchant Is actress wife. Yes. Yeah,
(13:53):
we went to a party at third place we lived
in Regis Park, and enduring image.
Speaker 9 (13:59):
Was the bathtub was filled with bottles of champagne. So
and people like Kenneth Tyne and very luminarus like that.
Would there be pinted Wesker would be there.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It was very nice just talking to these sort of
people on the London scene because I was one of
those people on the under see me and James, She
being the actress, May being the musician. It was a
nice time to be around. With an invite, you would
get painters, sculptors, actors, comedians, musicians, playwrights and just that
(14:40):
all these people who just were in on your scene.
Speaker 10 (14:45):
Would do you think you would have been conscious as
you were writing this that this is maybe something that
Harold Pinter might read.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Maybe maybe certainly influenced by all of that. Yeah, and
I think not not that specifically.
Speaker 10 (15:01):
No, I understand someone like someone like that, someone smart musically,
someone smart.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
While Paul McCartney aspired to be recognized by the serious
artists and writers of the day, the Beatles also nurtured
a sense of playfulness in the studio which to this
day seems totally original.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And you're playing, you know, it's very important to play.
People say to me why he works so hard to
(15:47):
say I don't work music. I play it. And you know,
whilst that is a kind of kind of clip statement,
I say it because it's really true. Sure, I mean,
obviously in the two meanings of playing music, playing an instrument,
but playing it is really important. The ones who can
play almost success.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
I mean playing the sense of playing playing games.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Look about mucking about it. You know, it's a good
thing us.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
Somebody could do that, you know, if they suddenly decide
that it needs it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
There So this idea of just playing around it's good.
And in the music too, you know, we've had a
very sort of cavalier attitude to a lot of things,
very sort of from offhand thing. I mean, I just
(17:01):
what came to mind that. I was just thinking when
I do Petty Lane, there's this lovely solo that I
knew I want to too. And I talked to George
Martin about a piccolo trumpet that I'd seen in the
Brandenburg Concerto the night before, and I said, what was that?
(17:24):
And he said, and so we got the top player.
I called David Mason in the studio and I just
remember thinking that we didn't know what he was going
to play. We hadn't written it, but he was booked
and he was sitting there, so you'd better get something together. Mate.
(17:45):
So we just I just Saidee said, wait a minute
and wrote it down.
Speaker 8 (17:51):
I just did a little.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I played a ridiculously high note, and then David Mason said, well,
that's out of the range of even the piccolo trumpet,
which is a high, high high trumpet, sets out of
the range, and I wish we had a little play
for moment. We just looked at each other and he's
sort of I'm giving him a kind of yeah, but
(18:14):
you could probably do it. Smile, and he's given me back,
you passtward smile kind of yeah, I probably could.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Even though the song took a lot of its inspiration
from the non visual medium of radio, in early nineteen
sixty seven, Penny Lane was one of the first songs
ever to have been accompanied by a music video. The
Swedish director Peter Goldman, using techniques from underground filmmaking, took
(19:01):
the promotional film format.
Speaker 10 (19:04):
To a new level.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Fast montage editing shows Lane and the band members dressed
in red du licks riding horses through a dreamlike landscape.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But it's the.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Enduring power of radio to allow listeners to create their
own images. The shimmers at the heart of Penny Lane.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What I love is you get your own picture. This
is why when they came to film Sergeant Pepper with
the Beg's, I said, this is never gonna work because
everyone has their own image from Sergeant Pepper the album,
and so if you select one.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Image, it's never going to be enough because your vision
is different from mine. I often think this from my
audience is I think every single person in those forty
thousand people is having a different experience.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I'm singing this song. Someone thinks it's sad, someone thinks
it's dramatic, someone thinks it's funny, and fascinated by the
idea that everyone's perception is completely different. Now behind the eyes.
Speaker 11 (20:19):
And secrets of the dreamers in the street Rocked to
Sleep by the Sea, Steve tip.
Speaker 13 (20:25):
Bits and Topsy turveys, bobs and button tops, bags and bones,
ash and grind and dender for nail perries, sliva and
snowplates and bolted beads.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
The breed for the imagination radio was great and as
I met friends like John George, we all harked back
to that it was very much our period. We grew
up without television.
Speaker 8 (20:51):
Teddy Skies, I said.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
A Penny Lane was released in nineteen sixty seven on
a double A single along with Strawberry Fields Forever.
Speaker 14 (21:43):
We're so sorry, local elms. We're so sorry if we
caused you anything.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
In the next episode, Paul McCartney pays tribute to his
Liverpool origins.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It was a cut up from me. It was so
rich and I think a lot of what I am,
a lot of what I write. What I think is that.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Uncle Albert the pis artist. Next time on McCartney A
Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a
co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries.
Pushkin under Milk would by Dylan Thomas.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
My mom would be doing the isling and she'd have
a play on, play for Today or something said her
with her listen, who yes, love?
Speaker 3 (00:44):
What are the neighbor?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Paul? She puts up, never sort of mannaged. She didn't
have to stay with her mother.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
One his mother did the ironing. Young Paul McCartney would
lie in front of the radio and conjure up images
in his mind.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
And the characters, you know, they were also well for
trade love Hush, I'm a widow now.
Speaker 4 (01:10):
From listening to the radio came an early understanding of
how to draw a character so precisely that a blind
person could see him.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
Do you just get into it? You can see the characters.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
It's as if you're in the room with them.
Speaker 4 (01:38):
I'm Paul muldoon. I'm a poet, a lover of not
only the lyric poem, but the song lyric. Over the
past several years, I've got to spend time with one
of the greatest songwriters of our era.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
And will you look at me? I'm going on to it.
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book Looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversation.
Speaker 2 (02:10):
She is a songwriter. My god, well that crypt homie.
Speaker 4 (02:14):
This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Penny Lane.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
I mainly remember it as being where I would I
would get a boss to Penny Lane in order to
go to John's house.
Speaker 6 (02:43):
No anonymous conurbation this but Liverpool, vital city and port
on the northwest Mersey, forty three square miles of teeming life.
Speaker 4 (02:54):
Throughout my meetings with Paul McCartney, it's become clear to
me just how important his childhood and Liverpool has been
to his songwriting career.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
Has this Liverpool sprung from its people? I have the
people sprung from Liverpool.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
It was a place that featured very much in my
life and in John's life. It was near a church
where I was at Choie Corystal.
Speaker 6 (03:21):
What is there in the Northwest to create this exciting atmosphere.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
A lot of stuff happened there. I use that terminus
a lot to go to John's, for instance, and in
there it's all it's the scenery. This is quite accurate.
And the nice thing is writing is John knew exactly
where I was talking about Penny Lane.
Speaker 7 (03:44):
There was a barn showing photographs of every.
Speaker 8 (03:48):
Head he's had the pleasure to know, and all the
people back Man Stubborn sell.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
On one level, Penny Lane paints a picture of an
ordinary suburban street with a barber, a farman, a banker,
and a nurse selling flowers. But somehow, just below the surface,
everything is a little strange.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
So I'd say, Penny Land, there's a barber showing photographs.
I thought that's rather clever, because it's like a it's
like a gallery showing paintings. It's an exhibition in this window.
And you and I we know that. We just go
by and say, I'll have one of them. I'll have
a Tony Curtis, all have a crew cut or whatever.
But I like the idea that he's showing photographs. So really,
(04:41):
all I'm saying here is there's a barber shop and
he's got photos of hercuts in his window. But that
would be a little too mundane. But there is a
barber shop still there change hands, changed hand. It was
called Bioletti. The guy was Bioletti, mister Italian barber with
the stripe pole outside and everything, and so we knew that.
(05:04):
So when we evoked it later in this song, it
was a pleasant thing for John and I to share again.
Speaker 4 (05:13):
Penny Lane was written while the Beatles were working on
the Sergeant Pepper album. The band had stopped during and
was putting all their energy into recording and working in
the studio. John, George and Ringo had been experimenting with
(05:34):
LSD and finally in the fall of nineteen sixty six
convinced Paul to try it as well. The inner pictures
and characters from the street of McCartney's childhood are projected
(05:54):
with hallucinogenic clarity.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
My drive past it to this day, regularly showing everyone
of the barbers, the bankers, the firemen, the church. I
used to sing in and here's where the girls it
with a tray of poppies as I waited for the boss.
Speaker 4 (06:14):
Selling puppies on Remembrance Day to honor the armed forces
of the Commonwealth. It was common to see people selling poppies.
The pretty nurse who sells them from a tray is
drawn from real life, but she also has this strange
feeling that she's in a play.
Speaker 2 (06:36):
Now she.
Speaker 9 (06:37):
Any Funnily, you're not a lot of Americans thought she
was selling puppies.
Speaker 2 (06:49):
I say puppies. There's another interesting image, a tray full
of puppies, and now she's signed poppies. I know she
feels as interesting a play she is anyway. Yes, that's
that's very sort the sixties.
Speaker 10 (07:06):
It is, and that's what they would call and polite circles,
a meta text. That is, it's a description of one
fact is happening in the song that she is in
a plane.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
There's characters. There's a bunch of characters, and you know,
I'm proud of the way certain lines just fell out,
But in retrospect were sort of good lines, like the
the fireman who's cleaning his fire engine.
Speaker 8 (07:38):
He likes to keep his fire and clean. It's a
clean machine.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It's a clean machine. I just you know, those kind
of phrases sort of stick. It's a clean machine.
Speaker 10 (07:55):
Amusing, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It's there's something slightly ominous. So the old stuff that happened,
they actually that the fire station is a little further away, right,
but like any good play, you put it all in
the wrong place.
Speaker 10 (08:14):
But one of the wonderful things here we established the
barber and we leave him, but then we come.
Speaker 2 (08:22):
Back to him. Yeah, which is extremely.
Speaker 10 (08:26):
Effective in that we think, well, I know that guy.
So there he is.
Speaker 7 (08:31):
Again another customers. We see the banks the way to
be trendy.
Speaker 10 (08:46):
It's a way of bringing him the listener, I suppose,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
I mean, I'm not consciously unconsciously it's it's kind of film.
Speaker 10 (08:54):
It is exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
You know, it's like we are. We thought we'd forgotten
him because we are now going on to the banker.
Now the banker. I mean, I've never seen any children
laugh at him, so's I've never seen him. I've seen
his bank. I had no idea that the children laughing
and the mac and the pouring rain, it's all fiction.
Speaker 7 (09:16):
On the corner is a banker, the moticon, the little
children having him behind his man and the banking them
wears a man in.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
The boring rain.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
And here perhaps a brief explanation is needed. A mac
is what the British called a raincoat, after Charles Macintosh,
who patented a waterproof material for raincoats. So the banker
never wears a mac. It's all very strange.
Speaker 10 (09:52):
It's a place, it's so play.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
It's a little player, yes, okay.
Speaker 4 (10:10):
The stories of Penny Lane appear to McCartney not just
visually but through sound. Penny Lane is not just in
his eyes, but also in his ears. Oral storytelling had
been a large influence on his songwriting ever since he
was a kid and would lie on the carpet listening
(10:32):
to the radio.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
You would lie on the carpet and the radio would
be in front of you, and you should be in it.
Speaker 4 (10:42):
One of the plays a twelve year old McCartney might
have listened to was a nineteen fifty four play by
the poet Dylan Thomas called Under milk Wood, which portrays
the fictitious time of Clarigub.
Speaker 11 (10:58):
It is springing, moonless night in the small town star
last and bible black. The cobble street silent, and the
hunch cutters and rabbits would limping invisible down to the
slow bless slow black crow, blessed fishing boat, bubbing sea.
Speaker 4 (11:21):
As the time of Claragub slowly awakens, the narrative weaves
in and out of the thoughts of its inhabitants.
Speaker 12 (11:30):
I must put by pajamas in the drawer marked pajamas.
I must take my cold back, which is good for me.
I must wear my flannel violon to ward off by attic.
I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.
I must blow my note.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In the garden. You've already written eleanor Rigby. Oh did
you feel mean?
Speaker 10 (11:55):
Would you have felt at all that you were maybe
going back a little bit to that territory or no?
Speaker 2 (12:00):
I like the rise area.
Speaker 10 (12:03):
There's an under milkwood aspect to both eleanor Rigby and this,
and to some extent, isn't there the character.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
Characters characters as a bunch of characters. This is the
kind of thing I liked. It still is.
Speaker 13 (12:15):
I must take my salts, which our nature's braided.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
I must spoil the drinking water because the Germans.
Speaker 13 (12:22):
I must make my verb tea which is free from tannin.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
And have a charcoal biscuit, which is good for me.
Speaker 13 (12:28):
I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixtures in the woodshell.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
At the time of writing Penny Lane, Paul McCartney had
become very interested in the London art scene. He was
also dating the actress Jane Asher, which might have influenced
the theatrical nature of the song. One of the people
in their circle was the great playwright Harold Pinter, Pinter
(12:59):
whose characters often have such complex psychologies.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I think it was this ear or two in our
lives when if you're going to write a play like
these characters, I'd rather have it be like a Pinter
play than something a bit straighter, right, you know, I
like the idea that they're a bit wonky, all these characters.
(13:25):
There's just something a little bit strange about them.
Speaker 10 (13:27):
And you would have seen already some Pinter.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
Well, you know, by the time we've written this, we've
been down in London for a while and I was
going out with an actress, so we would go regularly
to the National Theater. How would you have met Pinter
at that time? Chance he was on the social She
was on the scene with Vivian merchant Is actress wife. Yes. Yeah,
(13:53):
we went to a party at third place we lived
in Regis Park, and enduring image.
Speaker 9 (13:59):
Was the bathtub was filled with bottles of champagne. So
and people like Kenneth Tyne and very luminarus like that.
Would there be pinted Wesker would be there.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
It was very nice just talking to these sort of
people on the London scene because I was one of
those people on the under see me and James, She
being the actress, May being the musician. It was a
nice time to be around. With an invite, you would
get painters, sculptors, actors, comedians, musicians, playwrights and just that
(14:40):
all these people who just were in on your scene.
Speaker 10 (14:45):
Would do you think you would have been conscious as
you were writing this that this is maybe something that
Harold Pinter might read.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Maybe maybe certainly influenced by all of that. Yeah, and
I think not not that specifically.
Speaker 10 (15:01):
No, I understand someone like someone like that, someone smart musically,
someone smart.
Speaker 4 (15:07):
While Paul McCartney aspired to be recognized by the serious
artists and writers of the day, the Beatles also nurtured
a sense of playfulness in the studio which to this
day seems totally original.
Speaker 2 (15:26):
And you're playing, you know, it's very important to play.
People say to me why he works so hard to
(15:47):
say I don't work music. I play it. And you know,
whilst that is a kind of kind of clip statement,
I say it because it's really true. Sure, I mean,
obviously in the two meanings of playing music, playing an instrument,
but playing it is really important. The ones who can
play almost success.
Speaker 10 (16:10):
I mean playing the sense of playing playing games.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Look about mucking about it. You know, it's a good
thing us.
Speaker 7 (16:30):
Somebody could do that, you know, if they suddenly decide
that it needs it.
Speaker 2 (16:33):
There So this idea of just playing around it's good.
And in the music too, you know, we've had a
very sort of cavalier attitude to a lot of things,
very sort of from offhand thing. I mean, I just
(17:01):
what came to mind that. I was just thinking when
I do Petty Lane, there's this lovely solo that I
knew I want to too. And I talked to George
Martin about a piccolo trumpet that I'd seen in the
Brandenburg Concerto the night before, and I said, what was that?
(17:24):
And he said, and so we got the top player.
I called David Mason in the studio and I just
remember thinking that we didn't know what he was going
to play. We hadn't written it, but he was booked
and he was sitting there, so you'd better get something together. Mate.
(17:45):
So we just I just Saidee said, wait a minute
and wrote it down.
Speaker 8 (17:51):
I just did a little.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I played a ridiculously high note, and then David Mason said, well,
that's out of the range of even the piccolo trumpet,
which is a high, high high trumpet, sets out of
the range, and I wish we had a little play
for moment. We just looked at each other and he's
sort of I'm giving him a kind of yeah, but
(18:14):
you could probably do it. Smile, and he's given me back,
you passtward smile kind of yeah, I probably could.
Speaker 4 (18:39):
Even though the song took a lot of its inspiration
from the non visual medium of radio, in early nineteen
sixty seven, Penny Lane was one of the first songs
ever to have been accompanied by a music video. The
Swedish director Peter Goldman, using techniques from underground filmmaking, took
(19:01):
the promotional film format.
Speaker 10 (19:04):
To a new level.
Speaker 4 (19:06):
Fast montage editing shows Lane and the band members dressed
in red du licks riding horses through a dreamlike landscape.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
But it's the.
Speaker 4 (19:19):
Enduring power of radio to allow listeners to create their
own images. The shimmers at the heart of Penny Lane.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
What I love is you get your own picture. This
is why when they came to film Sergeant Pepper with
the Beg's, I said, this is never gonna work because
everyone has their own image from Sergeant Pepper the album,
and so if you select one.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Image, it's never going to be enough because your vision
is different from mine. I often think this from my
audience is I think every single person in those forty
thousand people is having a different experience.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
I'm singing this song. Someone thinks it's sad, someone thinks
it's dramatic, someone thinks it's funny, and fascinated by the
idea that everyone's perception is completely different. Now behind the eyes.
Speaker 11 (20:19):
And secrets of the dreamers in the street Rocked to
Sleep by the Sea, Steve tip.
Speaker 13 (20:25):
Bits and Topsy turveys, bobs and button tops, bags and bones,
ash and grind and dender for nail perries, sliva and
snowplates and bolted beads.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
The breed for the imagination radio was great and as
I met friends like John George, we all harked back
to that it was very much our period. We grew
up without television.
Speaker 8 (20:51):
Teddy Skies, I said.
Speaker 4 (21:24):
A Penny Lane was released in nineteen sixty seven on
a double A single along with Strawberry Fields Forever.
Speaker 14 (21:43):
We're so sorry, local elms. We're so sorry if we
caused you anything.
Speaker 4 (21:55):
In the next episode, Paul McCartney pays tribute to his
Liverpool origins.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
It was a cut up from me. It was so
rich and I think a lot of what I am,
a lot of what I write. What I think is that.
Speaker 4 (22:17):
Uncle Albert the pis artist. Next time on McCartney A
Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a
co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries.
Host
Paul McCartney
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