![Paul McCartney tells inside story of writing new song '(I Want To) Come Home']( "Paul McCartney tells inside story of writing new song '(I Want To) Come Home'")
Paul McCartney tells inside story of writing new song '(I Want To) Come Home'
In a new film talking about the creation of his new song for "Everybody's Fine," Paul McCartney says the inspiration to write the song for the Robert DeNiro film nearly began with another song he was very familiar with -- a Beatles song.
"I was just asked through my office if I wanted to do a song at the song of a new film coming out. It was starring Robert DeNiro. And I said, 'Yeah, I'm interested,'" McCartney said. "So it was the same old story; it was a phone call. When I was shown the film originally, it was in a little viewing theater in Soho. And I was kind of on my own.
"And so I was just watching the film enjoying it and thinking, "Well, if I'm gonna do a song, what might it be?' I was not really getting ideas, but an atmosphere. And they laid in 'Let It Be,' unbeknownst to me sung by Aretha Franklin. 'Ah, ok, this'd be really easy. I can write another 'Let It Be' and I can sing like Aretha Franklin. Thank you, director, throwing me such a curveball. And I thought, 'Well, there's no way I can do that. So I kind of left the viewing theater thinking, 'Well, it's a nice film but I probably gotta pass on this. But later that evening, I got a little idea. So I put down a little bit of an idea and it grew from there. And I thought, 'I can do something.'"
McCartney discussed his usual method of creating songs.
"I try and do music and lyrics together," McCartney said in the interview. "Normally, I have a kind of rough idea of what might work. And the original song was a little bit different. But I found a little bit in the middle of it which was sort of ... 'For too long, I was out on my own.' And so that sounded like the start of a song then. So I started to work it around that. 'For so long, I was out in the cold.'So that's where it started. And I just developed it from that, words and music. But that little beginning of the verse was what led me forward. So I thought, 'Now I sorta know what I'm doing.' And then I finished it and I thought, 'You know, this could work.'"
He said the movie's storyline was familiar to him.
"I could definitely identify to Robert DeNiro's part because I have grown up kids who have got their own families. And so what happens first of all is that you say, 'Hey kids, let's all have Christmas together. And while they're younger, it's like, 'Yeah, of course.' But when they get older and they've got their own kids and their own husbands, it's kind of, 'Well, we would kind of like ot have our first family Christmas together on our own,' and you've got to deal with that. It's like, 'Yeah, ok, I understand (makes like sobbing).
He also wanted to make the song a McCartney song, not just a film song.
"In my mind, what they wanted at the end of this film was a song from me, not so much a piece of the score. And that was like one of the questions I had to work out. Am I just going to go segue seamlessly from Dario's (Dario Marinelli) score? Or am I just going to let his score finish and I come in with something recognizably a song?," he said.
"So that was what I decided to do in the end. And I said to Dario, 'No, I want that to happen after Bob DeNiro's last line. (De Niro: "Your family is making it's way in the world. And you can be proud of the children and their achievements. And if you were going to ask me, I would have to say in all honesty, 'Everybody's fine. Everybody's fine.'") I'd like then my record to kind of unfold and then work its way to the end credits, which would be kind of the emotional end of the movie.
He says the song started out with a simple musical arrangement.
"Originally, I had this song as a very me and piano, little bit of bass and drums, acoustic guitar. And then I started to think it might be good with a bit of orchestration. So I talked to the director, who told me he'd been using Dario Marinelli. And I knew of Dario's work, so I thought it'd be nice to use him instead of get some other orchestrator. So Dario and I talked. I went to his house in Highbury. Offered to tidy his garden up for him. Just a little bonus. It still needs tidying up, by the way, Dario.
"And it was going very well and we decided basically to throw everything at it and just see what happened. And in fact, we threw too much at it. And so he did a demo on a synth. Ah, but then we thought, 'Uh, no, we've put too many notes or too much in it. So, it was like in 'Amadeus,' the film, where the king says, 'Too many notes, too many notes.' Yeah, ok.
It was then he thought they needed a change.
"So we had another meeting where I kind of expressed that to him. I said, 'I think we got to simplify it and what we do is we'll keep to kind of solo voices like a cello or like just a couple of violins before we go to the big orchestra so it kind of stays quite intimate and not too overblown. Just try to keep the simplicity of the song. Once we got that together after a couple of meetings, we thought we just got it right now. So we came here to Air London and this morning we did the session.
"And I think they played great, everyone played very well, all the soloists, and the ensemble. And so we're just about to mix it now. And yeah, it's been great."
http://www.examiner.com/x-2082-Beatles-Examiner~y2009m11d2-Paul-McCartney-reveals-more-...
