The following interview to Life Magazine. The interview would be published in their April 16 1971 issue.
Paul took this opportunity to explain what had happened with Allen Klein and the Beatles’ disintegration. The article would be entitled, ‘The Ex-Beatle Tells His Story.’ The interview was conducted by Richard Merryman in Los Angeles.- and Jay Spangler,
"But the interview didn't bug me. It was so far out that I enjoyed it, actually. I know there are elements of truth in what he said. And this open hostility, that didn't hurt me. That's cool. That's John."
"I can't really describe what direction I'm going in musically, because it's ever-changing -- and that's what it's all about. I have my personal influences, and they come from everywhere, from age nothing to today. Sounds I heard on the radio. Sounds I heard my father play on the piano. Sounds I found myself in rock and roll. Sounds that the group made. My music is all that -- very personal -- especially now that it's one person putting it down instead of four. I do what I feel. Make myself comfortable. It's a good job to have."
"Linda and I have been writing songs together -- and my publishers are suing because they don't believe she wrote them with me. You know, suddenly she marries him and suddenly she's writing songs. 'Oh, sure -- wink, wink -- Oh, sure, she's writing songs.' But actually one day I just said to her, 'I'm going to teach you how to write if I have to just strap you to the piano bench. I'm going to teach you the way I write music' -- because I never write music anyway. I just write by ear. And I like to collaborate on songs. If I have to just go out in another room and write -- it is too much like work -- like doing your homework.
If I can have Linda working with me, then it becomes like a game. It's fun. So we wrote about 10 songs and then we discovered that it was becoming too much like work. We were getting serious about writing. And I've never been serious."
"When we decided to do the new album, we wanted to make it fun, because it isn't worth doing anything if you can't have fun doing it. The album will be out early in May, and then I'm thinking about getting a band together -- another band -- because I don't like to just sit around. I really like to play music."
"My musical direction -- I'm trying for music that isn't too romantic, yet contains a romantic thing. I personally don't like things to be too cute -- except babies. My music comes off best, I think, when there's hard and soft together."
"The best things are often the free bits, and that gets very tricky. I go out into the studio and I know I'm going to ad-lib. If I announce I'm going to ad-lib, I can't ad-lib because I'm no longer ad-libbing. So I've just got to go out there and improvise, and someone's got to be in there in the control room very cleverly thinking, 'He's going to ad-lib now, I'd better tape it.' It's very hard because good things get missed.
Last night I was doing a real ad-lib and I was in a great mood and I was exploring what there was to be done -- and they missed it. The next time around when they tried the tape, I wasn't exploring any longer. I was trying to repeat past glories, and that doesn't work. But there are compensations. Sometimes you don't want to share those moments. Okay, the record-buying public didn't hear it, but you and I did. That's beautiful. That's real. The moment was temporary like everything is. Nothing in life really stays. And it's beautiful that they go. They have to go in order for the next thing to come. You can almost add beauty to a thing by accepting that it's temporary."
"I suppose musically I'm competing with the other three, whether I like it or not. It's only human to compete. But I think it's good for us. I think George has shown recently that he was no
dummy. I think we're really good, each one of us, individually. You know, there's like three periods in my life. There's the time when I was at school and just after leaving it. That was when I used to read alot -- Dylan Thomas, paperbacks, alot of plays, Tennessee Williams, things my literature master had turned me onto. I used to sit on the top level of buses, reading and smoking a pipe. Then there was the whole sort of Beatle thing. And just now again I feel I can do what I want. So it's like there was me, then the Beatles phase, and now I'm me again."
"It's rather serious -- life. And you can't live as if you have nine lives. I find myself doing that often. I think everybody does, saying in his mind, 'I'll get it tomorrow.' But I can't do that anymore. Take One with the Beatles should have been like I said, with a puff of smoke and magic robes and envelopes. But we missed Take One, so now we do Take Two. And in the disappointment of Take Two -- I feel I can always find something good in the bad -- the good thing is that it really has made me come to terms more with my life. As a married couple, Linda and I've really become closer because of all those problems, all the decisions. It's been very real what I've been through -- a breath of air, in a way -- because of having been through very inhuman things."
"The Beatle thing was fantastic. I loved every minute of it. It was beautiful. But it was a very sheltered life. Why, somebody would even ring me up in the morning and say, 'You've got to be at Apple in an hour.' It got very nursemaidy. If you are a real human, you've got to wake yourself up. You've got to take on these tedious little things because out of the tedium comes the joy of life. I got fed up by Apple this year over Christmas trees. 'Did we want one, because the office was buying Christmas trees for everyone?' I hated that. Actually we pinched one from a field in Scotland."
