QThe Beatles discography's available on iTunes soon. What're your thoughts on that?

PM: I think it's good. We've been through a lot of media. We started off on vinyl -- all our music was only vinyl, because nothing else was available. Then it was the tape cassette: It was kind of "Wow, that's cool," and so we listened to stuff on tape cassette, mainly because it was portable. The feature of that was that if we did a mix in the early days of the Beatles, we would just put one of these little Phillips tape-cassette machines on the board and get a rough idea of the song we'd just done. Going back in the van we'd play it. We didn't put it through speakers, we weren't that sophisticated -- that came later, we did get little jacks and were able to do that. But at that time it was just great to take the mix home to Liverpool. Then you got CDs. They were sort of the new thing, and it was good to hear stuff on that. Now you have downloading, Internet. So, to me it doesn't really matter. To me it's the songs.

Ful interview here. (http://www.stereogum.com/archives/the-stereogum-interview-paul-mccartney.html)

It's amazing how someone who is such a genious can sound so inane in an interview. It's the same thing when talking about bass...

'well, this bloke handed me one, and I thought, well I'll play it a while, and strung it up and thought it was nice.:D'

It's cool in some ways that, as he says, 'it's all about the music', but in some ways, his interviews make him sound a little bit like an idiot to me...

It's amazing how someone who is such a genious can sound so inane in an interview. It's the same thing when talking about bass...

'well, this bloke handed me one, and I thought, well I'll play it a while, and strung it up and thought it was nice.:D'

It's cool in some ways that, as he says, 'it's all about the music', but in some ways, his interviews make him sound a little bit like an idiot to me...

I hear what you're saying. I think it's indicative of a phenomenon that happens on a large scale, though. A large portion of the people who are out there writing, recording, touring, or otherwise doing something substantial musically are so much less concerned with all the finer points of their instruments, their recording gear, their amp settings, whatever, than the rest of the musicians out there.

It's pretty much a recurring theme if you read interviews with famous artists. They begin talking about their gear, and you can instantly tell that they never sat around geeking about the stuff the way everybody does on, say, TalkBass. :hiding: They talk about their guitar, their "custom electronics", and it's usually "yeah man, I used to have a strat and then this guy gave me this guitar to try and man it's just great, i've used it ever since" and "one of my techs added this switch, so now i get this ballsy sound when i need it. It's great!".

Even among musicians I know, the ones who are accomplishing the most are usually the ones least concerned about details. Their instruments are just tools to get the job done, and the big picture is much more important to them. Getting songs written, getting CDs recorded, getting tours set up, whatever... They'll concern themselves with the details when need be, and the great ones probably have a great instinct for all of that stuff, but as soon as the details are taken care of enough to accomplish the larger goals, that's that.

It's a big part of the reason you'll see famous musicians using gear close to the period that they first broke out. They were busy trying to "make it" and in the meantime stumbled around with their gear until they fell into a sound that they liked, and they've hardly touched it since. It's no coincidence that so many musicians who were hitting it big when the new EMG "active" pickups came along use and endorse EMG to this day. The same phenomenon happened with Rotosound strings. Rotosound strings aren't very popular today, yet tons of famous rock star bass players endorse and use Rotosound strings, simply because they were coming along when someone handed them these cool new "round wound" strings...

Alright, done rambling :) Cool interview...

About McCartney's recordings (mainly "Wings".) Some of them sound horrible. Not the arrangement or lyrics, but the actual quality of the recording. For example: "Helen Wheels"-sounds like it was recorded with 2 tin cans and a string. Was he in a hurry? Some of the early Beatles records sounded better.

I hear what you're saying. I think it's indicative of a phenomenon that happens on a large scale, though. A large portion of the people who are out there writing, recording, touring, or otherwise doing something substantial musically are so much less concerned with all the finer points of their instruments, their recording gear, their amp settings, whatever, than the rest of the musicians out there.

It's pretty much a recurring theme if you read interviews with famous artists. They begin talking about their gear, and you can instantly tell that they never sat around geeking about the stuff the way everybody does on, say, TalkBass. :hiding: They talk about their guitar, their "custom electronics", and it's usually "yeah man, I used to have a strat and then this guy gave me this guitar to try and man it's just great, i've used it ever since" and "one of my techs added this switch, so now i get this ballsy sound when i need it. It's great!".

Even among musicians I know, the ones who are accomplishing the most are usually the ones least concerned about details. Their instruments are just tools to get the job done, and the big picture is much more important to them. Getting songs written, getting CDs recorded, getting tours set up, whatever... They'll concern themselves with the details when need be, and the great ones probably have a great instinct for all of that stuff, but as soon as the details are taken care of enough to accomplish the larger goals, that's that.

It's a big part of the reason you'll see famous musicians using gear close to the period that they first broke out. They were busy trying to "make it" and in the meantime stumbled around with their gear until they fell into a sound that they liked, and they've hardly touched it since. It's no coincidence that so many musicians who were hitting it big when the new EMG "active" pickups came along use and endorse EMG to this day. The same phenomenon happened with Rotosound strings. Rotosound strings aren't very popular today, yet tons of famous rock star bass players endorse and use Rotosound strings, simply because they were coming along when someone handed them these cool new "round wound" strings...

Alright, done rambling :) Cool interview...

+1 to the above. I wasn't really doggin' him for not caring about the geeky stuff.... and to your point, most great players don't. It's just that instead of articulately stating that, he thrashes about as if he really does know something about it. No bid deal though, and I'm sure Sir Paul is not going to lose any sleep over this particular TBer's comments about his interviews' quality:D He's done a few things that makes him OK in my book:D

About McCartney's recordings (mainly "Wings".) Some of them sound horrible. Not the arrangement or lyrics, but the actual quality of the recording. For example: "Helen Wheels"-sounds like it was recorded with 2 tin cans and a string. Was he in a hurry? Some of the early Beatles records sounded better.I think that was recorded in Lagos, Nigeria during the "Band on the Run" sessions. That album received the "Best Engineered Album" grammy for Geoff Emmerick's engineering work. Geoff was also the engineer on the late Beatles recordings, I think from "Rubber Soul" through to the end. I think "Helen Wheels" and that whole album sounds just fine. I've bought it five times for various reasons, 4 CDs and one LP. If you have a surround sound system with good matching rears and fronts, I highly recommend the DTS CD of the original 70s Quadrophonic mix. "Venus and Mars" is even better.

Maybe you need to get a remastered version. :)

You'll get no argument from me about Wings lyrics being sub-par, though very rarely a gem came through. "Silly Love Songs" (a bass player's favorite) is lyrically brilliant in its simplicity.