Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before we get to
Speaker 1: this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
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Speaker 1: Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
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Speaker 2: Now, this is a song here, There and everywhere Leader
Speaker 2: letter I've seen described as one of your own favorites.
Speaker 3: He yeah, I'm often asked what my favorite song I've
Speaker 3: ever written is, and I don't ever really want to
Speaker 3: answer it, But if pushed, I would go to here,
Speaker 3: there and everyone.
Speaker 1: Lessen, I'm Paul will do for a while. Now, I've
Speaker 1: been fortunate to spend time with one of the greatest
Speaker 1: songwriters of the era, and will.
Speaker 4: You look at me, I'm going on to I'm actually
Speaker 4: a performer.
Speaker 1: That is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: of our conversations.
Speaker 3: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 3: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1: This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 1: an improvised journey with one of the most iconic figures
Speaker 1: in popular music. In this episode, Here There, and Everywhere, lessen.
Speaker 5: Learning.
Speaker 1: When I asked Paul McCartney, why, out of the hundreds
Speaker 1: of songs he's written, he considers Here, There and Everywhere
Speaker 1: his favorite, he kept returning to the structure of the lyrics,
Speaker 1: where one verse ends, the next begins, only in a
Speaker 1: new context. It's a move he borrowed from one of
Speaker 1: the classics, a song by Irving Berlin.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite songs because house of its structure
Speaker 3: is cheek to cheek.
Speaker 4: Heaven as song by Fred Stair.
Speaker 5: I'm in Heaven.
Speaker 1: And my heartbeats so that I can hardly.
Speaker 4: Spe and I like it very much because starts off Heaven.
Speaker 3: I'm in Heaven literally really really fast forward, and.
Speaker 5: Then d's with me.
Speaker 6: I want my arm about.
Speaker 4: You, a middle late will carry me through, to carry
Speaker 4: me Heaven.
Speaker 3: I'm in heaven. It's like, yes, just the way it
Speaker 3: just resolves up its own tail. I always found wonderful,
Speaker 3: and I think somebody said I do it in this I.
Speaker 6: Wonder everywhere and if she's beside me, I'm the line.
Speaker 7: Knowing Courridge has alignment. And somewhere in the biography, a
Speaker 7: literary or whatever it's called, where he talks about all
Speaker 7: narrative being like a snake with its tail in its
Speaker 7: mouth and in that circularity be relevant here.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know if i'd agree with him about all,
Speaker 3: but I think attractive stuff often does that, and often
Speaker 3: kind of comes back to where it began, and there's
Speaker 3: a little glee arriving there.
Speaker 4: Like I said, Heaven, wait a minute, we just started
Speaker 4: with that, and now we're back there and.
Speaker 3: Very clear, really done, and without me suspecting he was
Speaker 3: going there. So there's just something that's sort of little
Speaker 3: thrill when you do that. I like the fact that
Speaker 3: we think we're on a path off on the moors
Speaker 3: and we're going for a walk, and then suddenly we've
Speaker 3: arrived where we started, and it's not like as if
Speaker 3: we've gone around in a circle. It's magically more magical
Speaker 3: than that, we've come to another beginning of the path.
Speaker 3: It's not just like we run in a circle and
Speaker 3: just come back to the beginning. That's quite boring. But
Speaker 3: it's just this trick where you suddenly where you were, but.
Speaker 7: It's surprising, so something is cheap comes back there.
Speaker 4: Well, you're where you were, but you're not.
Speaker 3: Because you you can see back where you came from,
Speaker 3: and you're definitely not there. You're at a new place.
Speaker 3: But it's stricty and it's got the same scenery again.
Speaker 8: Letter.
Speaker 1: While the song is grounded in this spiraling structure, one
Speaker 1: place it never returns is to the very first two lines.
Speaker 1: They stand on their own, separate from the core melody
Speaker 1: of the song.
Speaker 3: They were to emulate the openings that old songs had.
Speaker 3: John and I were fascinated by this idea that in
Speaker 3: the old days they did this complete ramble that didn't
Speaker 3: appear to be about the song at all.
Speaker 6: The only exception, I know, where's the kid when I'm
Speaker 6: out on a quiet spreeze fighting vainly the old one we.
Speaker 5: And I suddenly turn.
Speaker 6: And see your fabulous face. I get no kick from Champagne.
Speaker 4: An intro. It was an intro, they called it verse.
Speaker 3: We call versus the sort of first main body, and
Speaker 3: of course then the second main body.
Speaker 4: They called that word. Yeah, so we like that. We
Speaker 4: liked you know.
Speaker 3: I was walking around Manhattan. I had my scarphone and
Speaker 3: then I came to the corner of so I new thinking.
Speaker 3: First I looked at the deceited I didn't notice that.
Speaker 3: But then suddenly you came over the corner. Heaven, Oh
Speaker 3: there's the song, you know.
Speaker 5: Learning Speak happ Someone is speaking, but she does.
Speaker 3: Someone is speaking, but she doesn't know he's there. I
Speaker 3: don't know who it is, probably the Telly.
Speaker 4: It's like that. It's kind of a romantic idea.
Speaker 3: We are just us, not listening to him knowing. MIS
Speaker 3: remember writing this song whilst waiting for John all day.
Speaker 1: Paul McCartney wrote much of Here, There and Everywhere one
Speaker 1: morning while sitting poolside waiting for John Lennon to wake up.
Speaker 9: I would go out to his house in Weybridge for
Speaker 9: a writing session, and he wasn't always up, so I
Speaker 9: would often have twenty.
Speaker 4: Minutes half an hour. Someone told him I was here,
Speaker 4: and he would get up.
Speaker 1: Each In the song's leisurely tempo, it's almost as if
Speaker 1: we can hear McCartney's patience.
Speaker 5: Everywhere.
Speaker 4: And I remember sitting out by his swimming.
Speaker 10: Pool in his house in Weybridge, which is a sort
Speaker 10: of golf suburb of London, and I had a guitar
Speaker 10: because I was ready for the writing session.
Speaker 4: So he sat out and started something.
Speaker 3: And it was here he lived in here, and yeah,
Speaker 3: I just sort of went quite nice and smoothly, so
Speaker 3: that by the time I came to write with John,
Speaker 3: the time he deigned to get up and have his coffee,
Speaker 3: I would have something to go.
Speaker 5: Watchings and helping. I'm always watching rins and helping. I'm always.
Speaker 1: The slow, steady pace and the way the verses spill
Speaker 1: into each other. It's mesmerizing, like water rippling across a pool.
Speaker 1: Is it possible that Ringo Star hits his snare just
Speaker 1: a fraction after the beat, as if the song is
Speaker 1: trying to slow itself done, making.
Speaker 5: Changing.
Speaker 3: I like the line changing my life for the wave
Speaker 3: of a hand. You know, I look at those kind
Speaker 3: of lyrics now and sort of.
Speaker 4: Think, where did that come from? What was it?
Speaker 3: Do I think of the queen waving out of a
Speaker 3: royal carriage? Or you know, just my love can just
Speaker 3: do it by hardly doing anything, waving a hand, and
Speaker 3: oh my god, she's changing my life. It says a
Speaker 3: lot in a line.
Speaker 1: The picture of a royal hand waving from a carriage
Speaker 1: the pinnacle of effortlessness. It's a McCartney trademark, this rare
Speaker 1: ability to assemble lyrics and melodies with the ease of
Speaker 1: strumming a few chords on his guitar. He seems to
Speaker 1: fool himself into thinking there's nothing at stake. He trusts
Speaker 1: that the right lyrics will find their way to them.
Speaker 3: Even when you get lyrics like this, the purpose of
Speaker 3: the lyric is to support the song rather than be
Speaker 3: a lyric. So it's quite liberating. You can sort of
Speaker 3: just kind of experiment as you go along, you know, so,
Speaker 3: so things slip out like.
Speaker 4: They would in a.
Speaker 3: Session with a psychiatrist and everywhere.
Speaker 4: I like it when that happens.
Speaker 3: I think, you know, that's the idea of the word
Speaker 3: dancing idea.
Speaker 4: You know, you just.
Speaker 3: You play with things like that, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: I think a lot of this comes naturally from Liverpool
Speaker 3: for me, Like jokes often have that, you know, just
Speaker 3: there's a little you think you're going one way and
Speaker 3: then there's a little surprise and it takes you another way.
Speaker 3: And I like to be able to do that because
Speaker 3: I think it keeps it moving it keeps you interested,
Speaker 3: dancing round words, shuffling them like a deck of cards basically.
Speaker 3: You know, I always say when I'm writing a song,
Speaker 3: I'm kind of following a trail of bread crumbs. Someone's
Speaker 3: thrown out these bread crumbs, and I see the first few,
Speaker 3: and you just, you know, we go along and I
Speaker 3: feel like I'm following the song rather than writing it.
Speaker 5: Everywhere. And if she's beside me, I a line need book.
Speaker 8: Do you ever look ahead and plot on it with
Speaker 8: the phrase or two versus down the road?
Speaker 3: Not versus, but the lines. I will will, I will
Speaker 3: think of the line that's coming and think of how
Speaker 3: to get in it. Yeah, like stepping stones kind of thing,
Speaker 3: you know, just think well, I've got to do that
Speaker 3: to get there.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I quite enjoy that. It's an interesting process. I like
Speaker 3: that about writing that it's it's a puzzle. I often
Speaker 3: liken it to crossword puzzles.
Speaker 4: You know. My dad loved crossword puzzles.
Speaker 3: And if you put that together with that, you twist
Speaker 3: that word around, then you get that And my answer
Speaker 3: is that you form.
Speaker 8: Yes, I mean it is it is about filling in gaps.
Speaker 4: YEA.
Speaker 1: The structural and rhetorical tricks of here, there and everywhere
Speaker 1: are obscured by the song's apparent spontaneity. It's flowing melody,
Speaker 1: it's gentle vocals. McCartney's singing on the track is reminiscent
Speaker 1: of an earlier era, which brings us back to fred Astare.
Speaker 6: Oh, I love to go out fishing in the river.
Speaker 1: Are a Greek, but I don't enjoy you have as.
Speaker 5: Much as that.
Speaker 4: I speak.
Speaker 3: Fan of Fredista, I still have, And unlike the studio
Speaker 3: executive thought he could dance a little, has no voice.
Speaker 3: I always loved his voice. I still do, and I
Speaker 3: actually use it often as an inspiration. I did an
Speaker 3: album of standards, and.
Speaker 4: That's what of heaven.
Speaker 3: That little place for your voice is a lovely place
Speaker 3: to sing from. It's not there, it's sort of heaven.
Speaker 1: And here, there and everywhere. Has inspired many other vocalists
Speaker 1: and has itself become one of those classics McCartney was
Speaker 1: trying to emulate. Even John Lennon, rarely wanted to give compliments,
Speaker 1: was impressed when he heard the song and said it
Speaker 1: was his favorite track on the album Revolver in nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: He even told a reporter from Playboy Magazine that it
Speaker 1: was one of his favorites from the tire Beatles cattalog.
Speaker 1: So did John Lennon when he did get up, did
Speaker 1: he contribute?
Speaker 4: I'm well, I'm not sure he did.
Speaker 3: Actually I suspect he did, but it does sound like
Speaker 3: something I might have sort of just done by the
Speaker 3: pool side, sort of just delivered to him because it
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like anyone else is working now.
Speaker 4: Sounds like one head.
Speaker 5: He's to share. Each one really never dies. Watching Rise
Speaker 5: and Hoping. I'm all Always and everywhere.
Speaker 1: And here, there and Everywhere, released on the Beatles album
Speaker 1: Revolver in nineteen sixty six. In the next episode, have
Speaker 1: said throughout the Day that they hope to use minimum force,
Speaker 1: an unusually sharp political song written in response to Bloody
Speaker 1: Sunday To.
Speaker 4: The Yis make them take it away?
Speaker 5: In to the Yis, Iisday.
Speaker 1: Give Ireland back to the Irish. That's next time on
Speaker 1: McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
Speaker 1: is a co production between iHeartMedia and pl and Pushkin Industries.