The Gotham Gal and I listened to the recent Howard Stern interview of Paul McCartney yesterday on a drive from long island to NYC.
It’s a great interview, about 1 1/2 hours long, with incredible stories and lots of music.
Howard picks out songs, plays them, and Paul talks about how each one came about.
If you are a SiriusXM subscriber, you can listen on the web or SiriusXM mobile app.
I highly recommend it.
Near the end (1 hour 17 mins into the interview), Paul tells a story about being challenged by Dustin Hoffman at a dinner party to write a song “about anything.”
Paul accepts the challenge and so Dustin and the other guests decide Pablo Picasso’s last words should be the thing to write a song about.
Those words, as Picasso was heading to bed, were “drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore.”
And so Paul wrote this song to those words.
And as he was telling this story to Howard, Paul says “I kind of like it, it puts you outside your comfort zone for an hour.”
I can totally relate to that.
This blog is that way.
I wake up every morning not knowing what I am going to write and before heading off to the gym or work, or both, I have written something and posted it.
Most frequently I wake up with something on my mind that leads to the post of the day.
Which, coming back to Paul McCartney, is how many of Paul’s songs happened. He would wake up with a song in his head and then he’d get out the guitar or sit at the piano and play it.
The creative process is hard to comprehend, but working with what is on your mind, challenging yourself, and getting outside of your comfort zone are three tricks that have worked for me and apparently also Paul McCartney, arguably the greatest songwriter of our time.
