Macca’s crackers

Paul talks More through some of his favourite post-Beatles songs

BAND ON THE RUN (1973)

‘I wrote it as a story to sum up the transition from captivity to freedom. When the tempo changes at (sings), “The rain exploded with a mighty crash,” I do that in my concert and that always feels like a freeing moment.’

DEAR BOY (1971)

‘That was inspired by the fact that I’d married Linda, and I knew her ex-husband (Joseph Melville See Jr, who committed suicide in 2000), who was a kind of nice guy, but I was so enamoured of Linda that I felt that he’d really missed out. ‘Keith Moon would say, “dear boy”... “Would you like a snifter, dear boy?”’

EBONY & IVORY (1982)

‘Those of us who love music, we have such a high respect for Stevie, because through his whole career he’s just done some staggering work. ‘Stevie doesn’t just do music. He is music.’

LET ’EM IN (1976)

‘Sister Susie is Linda. When we went to Jamaica on holiday, a lot of the local guys used to call Linda “Susie” for some reason. And we kind of liked that. Then “brother John” – I would be thinking either of John Lennon, or Linda’s brother, John. But the weirdest thing is, my wife now, Nancy, has a sister Susie and a brother John.’

LIVE AND LET DIE (1973)

‘A lot of the time I just write completely freely, about anything I think about, but this time I had a brief of the title. I couldn’t get away from that, so I ended up reading the book. It’s quite a nice James Bond book. It’s a quick read.’

MULL OF KINTYRE (1977)

‘I go there [Kintyre] just a little bit now. Nowhere near as much as I used to. My kids sometimes get back up there. With the song, I thought that it was time somebody wrote something praising Scotland. It only had to have a couple of chords, because it was going to be accompanied by bagpipes, and they can’t go through more sophisticated chords. So that was quite a nice boundary that was imposed on me.’

NO MORE LONELY NIGHTS (1984)

‘I love it when you happen upon expressions like ‘“Everything aflutter”. Saying something everyone experiences but in an interesting way. I like it when those creep into my songs. English literature was the thing I did best at school. I had a very good teacher. It was like, “Can you think of another word for that?” and I was exposed to a lot of good writing that stuck in my head.’

‘It’s funny, I don’t do that song live. I keep thinking of doing it, but I haven’t got round to it. Maybe I should, you know.’