It was many years before I ever got a Fender bass, even though I thought they sounded terrific. "It was great advice, but it did lead to my always tending to look for a great instrument, yes, but one that was reasonably priced, even when I could afford stuff. It sent a bit of a shudder through my dad - I could see the look of horror on his face, his sense of, Whoo, that's debt! He used to say, Never get under an obligation to anyone. "The first time I wanted a guitar, I bought an Epiphone Zenith 17 for £15 pounds on hire-purchase, so I had to pay such and such an amount every month. He really ground it into me to never be in debt, because while we weren't on the poverty line, there wasn't much money to go around. "The terrible thing about me is that I got locked in a mindset that I picked up from my dad. It's interesting that in 1965, despite being hugely successful by then, you chose to play a $175 Epiphone Texan for the Ed Sullivan performance of Yesterday… Paul McCartney is a great acoustic guitarist in the same way Creedence Clearwater Revival's John Fogerty is a great electric player - while neither is a master technician, both are able to create melodic parts that take up permanent residence in the minds of their listeners.Īnd like Fogerty's best solos, McCartney's accompaniments, from the harmonically sophisticated chords of Michelle to the celestial counterpoint lines of Blackbird to the wistful-sounding inversions of Junk, were clearly devised for the sake of the song, to be integral parts of the whole. You can believe McCartney, however, a man who indeed does not play the "right" way, and who hasn't filled his basement with rare and delectable guitars - or basses, for that matter.Īs for his overriding concern about the quality of his songs, his records speak for themselves. It's usually the case that brilliant guitarists who denigrate some aspect of their playing, or claim to be disinterested in their gear, are as believable as football strikers who claim to not worry whether they're scoring as long as the team wins. This is clear when McCartney met with us and, for the first time, offered a detailed assessment of his acoustic guitar playing - perhaps the one aspect of his, let's face it, miraculous talent that is underrated.Įven as he speaks in considerable detail of some of the inventive and memorable acoustic guitar parts he played as a Beatle and in his solo career, he says things like, "You know, I'm not really technical," and, "I never learned the proper way of picking." With regard to his guitars, he insists, "I was never really so concerned about the instrument as I was about the song."
The interesting thing is that while Paul McCartney himself, now 62 years old and a long way from Yesterday, would relate more to the response of my juvenile self and pre-teen brother and cousin, he would to some extent agree with the hypercritical and elitist observations his performance would probably evoke today.