Any Paul McCartney stories

[Studio Addict]

Any stories you can share of working with him?

[johnleckie]

Its funny cos its so long ago I only got distant memory of it all. I engineered two weeks of Wings sessions in Abbey Road 2 for what would become Red Rose Speedway album. I also recorded and mixed the single Hi Hi Hi and mixed C Moon which had already been recorded at Morgan. I'd worked with Paul as tape op on 1st solo album and on Wild Life and I got to engineer cos Alan Parsons was away or something. Alan took over rest of record with Ric Lush and Tony Clarke. Hats off to Mark Vigars who assisted on all Wings sessions for years at Abbey Road and even went to Scotland to record Mull of Kyntyre. I hadn't done many tracking sessions so I was pretty nervous on session. Paul was cool and before anything was recorded he'd go through all the possibilities of the sound, instructing eq and compression but not touching desk. Lot of hard work, full on all the time. Hi Hi Hi was written in studio really and no one seemed to know what they were doing except Paul. He was cool though and made the tea and ponced fags off us. (may need UK translation for that one..) Linda was luverly and bossy and they often walked or cycled in. The band were Danny Sewell, drums and of course Henry McCullough on ace guitar and out of it and the ever partying Denny Laine. Roadie was Trevor and he came in later and we mixed a live show together.
It was fun and I was shittin meself most of the time but it must have been good cos they used all the tracks.
Cheers
JL