#MIke McCartney

[tavolgisvist]

Paul and drums

Our kid was first in a group with John called Quarrymen, and apparently, I’d forgotten the set of drums fell off the back of a lorry, as we say in Liverpool, and landed up in our house. So I was learning drums, and one of the Quarrymen came back and said, ‘I remember you’re coming down the house, and it was great when you played drums for us.’ I said, ‘Did I?’ I’d totally forgotten. But then I realized why I forgot. It’s because I broke my arm in a scout camp, and this hand dropped. It was dead, paralyzed. So it took several years to get it back, and at that time, those drums that I was learning on, first of all, my brother, no wonder the drums on the band on the road are good. That’s where he learned it from my drums. But I couldn��t play anything then. So I’d forgotten that I was even the drummer, and Ringo got the job.

(Mike McCartney)

Mersey Beat Founder and Editor, Bill Harry wrote a guest column for Beatle Fan Magazine in 2019. He stated “For their August 7, 1961 gig, the Litherland Town Hall classified advertisement in the Liverpool Echo carried the message: ‘Hear Pete Best Sing Tonight.’ Best had been talked into performing the song “Pinwheel Twist,” which Paul had written for him to sing. Pete recalled in a conversation with Spencer Leigh: ‘Paul wrote the song and asked me to do it. He coupled it with Joey Dee’s hit “The Peppermint Twist.’ I used to get up and do the twist onstage and Paul played my drums. It was a little novelty act and it went down well with the fans. When The Beatles performed it, Paul took over on drums, George played Paul’s left-handed bass right-handed and Pete sang.”

(Source)

I used to get on Pete’s case a bit. He’d often stay out all night. He got to know a stripper and they were boyfriend and girlfriend. She didn’t finish work until four in the morning, so he’d stay up with her and roll back at about ten in the morning and be going to bed when we were starting work…

(Paul McCartney, Anthology, 2001)

Q: When did you first play drums? A: My first recollection is in Hamburg. You’d get behind the kit to try and show the drummer what you wanted. That gradually grew to messing around on other people’s kits, which were lying around because there were a lot of groups playing in the places we played. You picked up the simplest beats very naturally. I remember one evening when Tony Sheridan’s drummer didn’t show up, so Tony said, “Come on, man, sit in!” I said, “No way! I can’t do this.” And he said, “Yeah, you can.” So I did it and then I was thinking, “Well! I’ve actually done a professional drumming gig!” Later, with The Beatles, there was a period where John, George, and I operated as a trio and picked up little bits of work. I remember playing in an illegal club in somebody’s basement on Upper Parliament Street in Liverpool’s Caribbean Quarter. One day this guy called Lord Woodbine, who ran the club, asked if we’d come in and accompany this stripper called Janine. We said, “Wow! Yeah, man! There’s a job.” He even paid us money. Q: It sounds like you would have paid him for that gig. A: Exactly [laughs]. So she came in and said, “Okay, I need you to play Ravel’s Bolero.” We said, “Oh, gee. Sorry, luv. We don’t read music. But we’ve got ’Raunchy.’ That might do.” I had somebody’s old drum kit, and I sat there with a broomstick between my legs, with a microphone tied to it so I could do a bit of vocals and drum at the same time. It was hilarious.

(Paul McCartney, interview with Robert L. Doerschuk for Drum!Magazine, 2005)

Q: When Ringo joined the band, that must have interrupted your emerging career on drums. A: Yeah, I was completely redundant. We loved Ringo so much. He was our favorite drummer in Liverpool, and when he joined the band, it was an explosion: Every song sounded new and fresh. He could pass what we felt was the true test for drummers, which was to be able to play “What’d I Say” — the cymbal work and the toms.

(Paul McCartney, interview with Robert L. Doerschuk for Drum!Magazine, 2005)

We did do a few little bits and pieces together before we all went our separate ways. John and I and Yoko did ‘The Ballad of John and Yoko’. He enlisted me for that because he knew it was a great way to make a record. ‘We’ll go round to Abbey Road Studios. Who lives near there? Paul. Who’s going to drum on this record? Paul. Who can play bass? Paul. And who’ll do it if I ask him nicely? Paul.’ He wasn’t at all sheepish about asking. He probably said something like, ‘Oh, I’ve got this song I want to record. Would you come round?’ And I probably said, ‘Yeah, why not?’

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021, about Dear Friend)

Steve Miller happened to be there recording, late at night, and he just breezed in. ‘Hey, what’s happening, man? Can I use the studio?’ ‘Yeah!’ I said. ‘Can I drum for you? I just had a fucking unholy argument with the guys there.’ I explained it to him, took ten minutes to get it off my chest. So I did a track, he and I stayed that night and did a track of his called My Dark Hour. I thrashed everything out on the drums. There’s a surfeit of aggressive drum fills, that’s all I can say about that. We stayed up until late. I played bass, guitar and drums and sang backing vocals. It’s actually a pretty good track. It was a very strange time in my life and I swear I got my first grey hairs that month. I saw them appearing. I looked in the mirror, I thought, I can see you. You’re all coming now. Welcome.

(Paul McCartney in Many Years From Now by Barry Miles, 1997)

I really had to ask myself, “Do I want to give up music, or keep going?” I got a four-track Studer recording machine, like the Beatles used for Sgt. Pepper, put it in the corner of the living-room at my house in London and tried a very simple technique of just plugging directly into the back, not going through a mixing desk. It’s a cool way to record because it’s pure. If, say, I was doing a drum track, I’d play the drums, record it with one microphone, listen to it back, move the mike a little if there wasn’t enough hi-hat or cymbal, and then re-record. Then I’d add bass by plugging the mike into track two and overdubbing while listening to track one through headphones. I’d do that with all with four tracks. It was very hands-on, primitive way of working. <…> It was funky, and still sounds good to me.

(Paul McCartney, “Wingspan” documentary, 2001)

We did not see Ringo until the next night when he arrived at the session. He walked in and went straight to his drums…fiddled with them, then fiddled with them some more. “Somebody did something to my snare drum,” he said irritably. “Paul was here last night. He played them,” explained John. “He’s always fucking around with me things!” It sounded as though Ringo were back in Liverpool and all of them were still teenagers and nothing in their lives had changed. I realized then, that no matter what might happen among them, this was the way they would always relate to each other.

(May Pang, Loving John, 1983)

(Krla Beat, pic by lisamarie-vee)

So, I got into my studio in Scotland and started working, doing the drum track. I normally start with the drums. I sometimes use drum machines, but I like to redo it with real drums. I enjoy drumming. Then I put some bass on it. I was just doing an experimental thing. I was messing around and experimenting. Slowing down tapes, or speeding them up.

(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021, about Coming Up)

Paul and I were in England, having dinner together [along with our wives]. I told him I was making an EP, and I said, “Why don’t you write me a song?” He wrote the song [Feeling the Sunlight] and put bass on it, he put piano, he put the drums on — and I had to take the drums off. [Laughs.]

(Ringo Starr, interview with Rob Tannenbaum for AARP, Nov 2023)

George was the first one to make a solo album [Wonderwall Music], and I was the drummer. John started the Plastic Ono Band, and I was the drummer. Paul likes to play drums himself, or I would’ve been on his albums too.

(Ringo Starr, interview with Rob Tannenbaum for AARP, Nov 2023)

Q: As strong as you are on bass, keyboards, guitar, and as a singer and writer, is it frustrating to play your drum parts at a more limited level? A: That never intimidates me, though it probably should. I just have so much enthusiasm when I do things that I don’t even consider it. I’m lucky, because some people would wrack themselves with doubt, but when I came to this project I was like, “Man, let’s just have a bit of fun!” It didn’t occur to me that I was some idiot jumping on the kit. I know that a lot of drummers can play rings around me, but as long as I keep it simple and don’t get too flash, I can play with a steady, swampy feel, and that’ll do the job.

(Paul McCartney, interview with Robert L. Doerschuk for Drum!Magazine, 2005)

@i-am-the-oyster, I hope you will enjoy :)

+ this

[crepesuzette2023]

I love the picture of young George, with Paul blurred and pensive in the background. (Photo: Mike McCartney)

[undying-love]

"When John and Paul got down to their earlier collaborative songwriting sessions together, Mike would be bribed with “a couple of bob to go to the pictures” so that he didn’t interfere."

— “The Other McCartney.” Beatles Book Monthly Magazine, No. 263 (March 1998)

[harrisonarchive]

Photo by Mike McCartney:

“On board the Royal Iris just before the boys performed on the all-night Riverboat Shuffle [presumably on July 6, 1962]. They’re in the second-best dressing room — Acker Bilk had the star’s room — behind the captain’s bridge. We’d heard of something called an ouija board. We knew you turned a glass upside down on a table and somehow it would connect you to the supernatural. So the boys held each other’s wrists to create a magic circle. The only thing we didn’t know was that you had to put your hand on the glass!” - Mike McCartney, Remember: The Recollections and Photographs of Michael McCartney (1992) “We once did a Ouija board thing when we were kids, it was just me, George… and John, I think… So we weren’t really into all that, but somebody just said, ‘Let’s do it.’ So we’re touching the glass, you know, saying ‘OK, nobody push it, OK?’ So then, suddenly… whoa, it’s moving! Now, my mum had died a couple of years before and it says, ‘Congratulations… son…’ And we’re going, ‘NO!’ ‘Congratulations… son… number one… In NME!’ And so we were all, ‘Oh, f**k off! There’s no way she would know what NME was’. And there’s George, you know (laughing). He’d been pushing it all the time! Bad boy!” - Paul McCartney, NME, October 2010 (x)

[underthecitysky]

I finally watched the Rupert and the Frog song (We all Stand Together). I still see people (mostly older, mostly on Facebook) dunking on “the frog chorus” and it’s just so clearly an outdated notion for it to be lame for a musician to make content explicitly for children. It’s so common now for artists who’ve become parents to make something their kids will enjoy. Jack White sang a song with the muppets on Sesame Street because he loves his fucking kids. It’s so normal now.

I get where Mary Had a Little Lamb released as single by a rock band went down wrong .. but this is creative, whimsical content explicitly *for* kids. The SONG, in particular, is beautifully composed, imaginative. Lovely! I keep listening to it.

He was 20 years into his career. The Beatles were never Led Zeppelin. It’s hard for me to wrap my head around people still being so weird about this. He such a well rounded musician; it’s all like an exploration in another part of his creativity. There are elements of the classical composing that would come later… and the playful, experimenter who made Robber’s Ball (my beloved), McCartney II, the Fireman records.

But anyway, watching this today reminded me of this moment from Behind the Scenes of BBC Radio where someone presented Paul and Mike with their childhood Rupert book. The title page filled in by their parents reads “This book belongs to Paul McCartney and Michael McCartney”.

It was either Paul or Mike who said they didn’t get many gifts as kids and for Christmas they’d usually get one toy addressed to Paul and Michael from Father Christmas. It makes me really consider why this Rupert project was so important for him that he held onto it for 15 years, always sort of considering ideas for it. There were those RAM era songs that were specifically for the “Rupert project”. It comes up so much in the McCartney legacy book.

Then there’s the element of the frogs and his history with frogs, from growing the tadpoles in his own hand made frog pond in the backyard and checking on them every day until one day they were frogs that hopped away. Then there was the dark, frog killing episode that shocked his brother and he probably felt some shame about.

But here, in this story, there are guard frogs on duty protecting their mostly undisturbed world. Happy and content, it’s the frogs that create this magical chorus.

There’s even a father and son frog pair who’ve come to see this event that only happens every couple of hundred years.

The father is rather Jim McCartney-esque with his pipe and 1940s style hat and manner. There’s a moment where the son inadvertently annoys his father and instantly recoils like he’s about to get hit and momentarily it looks like the father is considering it but gets a hold of himself.

But later, wrapped up in the music together, the father hugs his son.

I don’t know what I’m saying exactly but I think there’s some exploration of his childhood here and something about Rupert and the frog chorus that’s particularly meaningful to him.

Maybe he’s reconciling the dark, frog killing episode of childhood with the vegetarian, animal lover he’d become by giving the frogs their own hero’s story. Rupert, Jim, the threat of violence, the presence of love, the frogs he loved but also was violent toward.. and music at the center of everything. Unifying, healing. We all stand together.

For anyone interested, the full BBC clip is here

The full Rupert short is here

[ljblueteak]

From Mike McCartney's twitter account September 27, 2024. Post reads: "Whilst in London for Pascal's 40th we popped into the National Portrait Gallery where Ro spotted this 60's painting by Sam Walsh entitled 'Mike's Brother.'"

[exhausted-think-bucket]

When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their souls

– Ted Grant

Paul, through the lens of Mike McCartney

[ludmilachaibemachado]

June 8th 1968 - Paul McCartney attends his brother Mike's wedding as best man🌺🌺🌺

From The Beatles Monthly Book, July 1968, N°60: Paul motored north in his Aston Martin for the wedding, taking Jane [Asher] with him. Jane got a day off from her rehearsals especially to attend🌺🌺

After the three o'clock ceremony everybody popped over the road for a quick celebration drink before driving back to "Rembrandt", the Gayton, Cheshire, home of Paul and Mike's father. More than 50 guests gathered for the reception - including Mike's fellow Scaffold friends John Gorman and Roger McGough and the Fourmost, who stayed a couple of hours and then dashed off to play that night's engagement🌺

The champagne party went on well into the night with fireworks on the lawn and a bit of a nuptial sing-song around the grand piano. Unfortunately, Jane had to leave early to return to London for Saturday morning rehearsals but Paul was able to stay on an do all the conventional Best Man duties, like reading out the greetings telegrams and sticking tin cans and toilet rolls to the back of the car which was talking Mike and Angela away on their honeymoon. [...]🌺

Frederick James

Via Beatles and Cavern Club Photos FB🌺

[m1ssunderstanding]

New Fic!

I was going to wait until it was officially Christmas time to post this but this is what it looks like out my kitchen window so I'm feeling Christmasy today. It's a little angsty as everything I write is, but it's also cozy if you're feeling like a warm holiday read.

[paulic]

Fuuuuuuuuckkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

[kinsfaun]

Paul McCartney getting ready for a gig, 1962. Forthlin Road, Allerton, Liverpool.

[tavolgisvist]

[crepesuzette2023]

Was paul made fun of because of being fat? I’ve heard about john in his beatles era, but was about young paulie?

Thankss 🥹

I LOVE UR PAGE

Hi Anon,

Interesting question. I'm aware of only two instances of people commenting on Paul's weight: His brother Mike mentioned a couple of times that Paul was going through a "chubby" period when he was around 11 or 12, and was mocked for it by other kids, and Mike himself.

(Mike loves to show off that, unlike 99% of the world, he doesn't see Paul, the star, but Paul, his brother. This anecdote, imo, is part of that.)

The other instance is Francie Schwartz, his girlfriend for a few months in '68, who comments on his curves & bachelor-cuisine-induced weight gain in her memoir. I don't know if she mocked him at the time, to his face, but her description of him fits her overall portrait of him as a wreck on the brink of ruin, who was 'meh' in bed.

(I like her book; it's interesting in many ways. But it's not fond.)

How Paul himself felt and feels about his body (this is still that body) and his weight specifically--that, I can't tell you.

[beatsfornone]

[harrisonarchive]

Scan - George in Liverpool, late 1950s:

“A young George Harrison with his Tony Curtis haircut, bright fluorescent green wasitcoat (under the towel), and skintight jeans. He’s carrying flippers, so he must be off to the swimming pool or the sea. This would be around 1958 or ‘59, when George, Paul, and John were in the Quarrymen skiffle group. I though I’d taken this photograph, but Paul rang up to complain, ‘Hey you bugger lugs! I took that one!’” - Mike McCartney, Remember: The Recollections and Photographs of Michael McCartney (1992) “When we lived in 12 Ardwick Road I vaguely remember a lad who lived in Upton Green, a couple of roads away from us. The next time I saw the same lad was in and around the ‘Inny,’ but as he was a year ahead of me, he was immediately classified as one of the ‘big lads’ and therefore unapproachable. He was obviously one of those working class rebel chaps and toward the end of our school days together he got more and more outrageous. The compulsory school uniform was outvoted by his extrovert dress sense and his hair was the longest anyone could possibly get away with in the Inny, all ‘Tony Curtis’d back,’ with a school cap perched on the top rear like a rabbi’s skull cap. When his guitar playing affinity with Paul was established in the end of term skewl koncerts, he’d visit our new Forthlin home […]. His dress by this time was even more interesting… full length, skin-tight drainies down to his bright fluorescent socks, even brighter lime (Upton) green waistcoat under his blazer which he would flash at me in the school corridors (followed by a wink). He had the first blue suede, winkle picker shoes which together with incessant chewing of gum all became his trade marks. My Sweet Lord knows who he was, but his Mum must have loved him.” - Mike McCartney (writing about “George Handsome”), Thank U Very Much: Mike McCartney’s Family Album (1981) (x)

[underthecitysky]

From instagram (x)