Fact #165867
When:
Short story:
Paul McCartney completes a two-day recording session in London, England, UK, Europe, playing rock'n'roll oldies, which will eventually be released in 1988 in Russia on the album Back In The USSR.
Full article:
Paul McCartney : Originally, it was just going to be jams. Then the next move was, "These are sounding good, man. You should record 'em." So we went down to my studio for two days, and did 18 songs the first day. It was, like, unheard-of; I'm sure no one will ever try that, but it's actually great fun. We got a lot done, and out of it we had some pretty good stuff -- you surprise yourself with it. So we did that for two days. The second day was a different lineup, and each time we spent five minutes on each song. And in the end, we had quite a nice selection of rock and roll stuff. I said, "Well, look. I'm not really happy to release this as my next album."
It just seemed like unfinished work, just jams. It was just like looning around at home. But then people said, "What's this? It sounds fresh; it's spontaneous." We wanted to pretend the Russians had done a bootleg in London. And we were going to manufacture some records as bootlegs, and say, "Look at this! It's a Russian bootleg of some secret McCartney tapes." But then the record company and my manager said, "No, you can't do that in your position," and all that. I said we could have done that when we were starting out. They said, "Yeah, but things are different now." So I said, [with mock sneer] "Oh, you bunch of wimps! I hate you. You're so predictable." I really was quite disappointed by it. I thought it was a brilliant idea. And risky! That's what I liked about it, that element of fun, electricity.
But then my manager, who also was disappointed that we couldn't do it, came back later and said we should do something with it. So we decided to come out with it exclusively in Russia, and nowhere else. That had never been done. It's a great glasnost thing. And it was the first gold disk to come out of Russia.
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It just seemed like unfinished work, just jams. It was just like looning around at home. But then people said, "What's this? It sounds fresh; it's spontaneous." We wanted to pretend the Russians had done a bootleg in London. And we were going to manufacture some records as bootlegs, and say, "Look at this! It's a Russian bootleg of some secret McCartney tapes." But then the record company and my manager said, "No, you can't do that in your position," and all that. I said we could have done that when we were starting out. They said, "Yeah, but things are different now." So I said, [with mock sneer] "Oh, you bunch of wimps! I hate you. You're so predictable." I really was quite disappointed by it. I thought it was a brilliant idea. And risky! That's what I liked about it, that element of fun, electricity.
But then my manager, who also was disappointed that we couldn't do it, came back later and said we should do something with it. So we decided to come out with it exclusively in Russia, and nowhere else. That had never been done. It's a great glasnost thing. And it was the first gold disk to come out of Russia.