Mccartney 3,2,1
With anticipation surrounding the release of Peter Jackson’s Beatles documentary series in November, this brilliant six-parter has, so far, flown completely under the radar – yet is mandatory viewing for Beatles fans (which should be everyone, frankly). Paul Mccartney joins renowned record producer Rick Rubin in conversation over a mixing desk, where they listen to Beatles songs and anatomise them. Rubin quizzes Macca on how the Fab Four came up with this or that sound and Mccartney obliges, recalling how song ideas came to him, how the band thrashed them out in the studio, what part their producer George Martin played, and how they tried to find new sounds.
A lot of the chat is a music-oriented discussion of harmonies and tape loops and Moogs, which will give you a new appreciation of The Beatles’s genius. But alongside that Mccartney shares dozens of anecdotes about his bandmates: for example, how stage fright prevented him becoming a lead guitarist, how a furniture store
advert inspired a song he composed with school friend George Harrison, and how his and John
Lennon’s childhoods shaped their famed songwriting dynamic.