Fact #52391
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Muriel Young (radio presenter) : He (Paul) sat on our sofa with Jane Asher and he was trying to find the words. It wasn't 'Michelle, ma belle' then. He was singing 'Goodnight, sweetheart' and then 'Hello, my dear' just looking for something that would fit the rhythm.
Jan Vaughan (French language teacher) : He asked me if I could think of a French girl's first name, with two syllables, and then a description of the girl which would rhyme. He played me the rhythm on his guitar and that's when I came up with 'Michelle, ma Belle.' It was some days later that he phoned me up and asked if I could translate the phrase 'these are words that go together well.'
John Lennon : Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, then he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I'd been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like 'I lo-o-ove you' in the middle of one of her songs, and that made me think of the middle eight for Michelle - I love you, I love you, I lo-o-ove you.'
(Source : not known)
Paul McCartney : A lot of people said Michelle would have made a good single. There are songs which we like but we wouldn’t like to have out as singles. ‘Cause it’s a very funny thing about putting a single out. We always used to think for a single we’d have to have something pretty fast. I don’t know why. They always sounded like the singles. So when we did ‘Michelle,’ we all thought it was okay, but we just didn’t want it out as representative of us at the time.
(Source : radio interview, 1977)
Paul McCartney : There used to be a guy called Austin Mitchell who was one of John’s tutors at art school and he used to throw some pretty good all-night parites. You could maybe pull girls there, which was the main aim of every second; you could get drinks, which was another aim; and you could generally put yourself about a bit. I member sitting around there, and my recollection is of a black turtleneck sweater and sitting very enigmatically in the corner playing this rather French tune. I used to pretend I could speak French, because everyone wanted to be like Sacha Distel or Juliette Greco…So I used to sit around and murmur. It was my Maurice Chevalier meets Juliette Greco moment: me trying to be enigmatic to make girls think, ‘Who’s that very interesting French guy over in the corner?’ I would literally use it as that, and John knew this was one of my ploys.
I used to pretend I was French, ‘…jou jou jou,’ and nobody knew the difference.
Years later, John said, ‘D’you remember that French thing you used to do at Mitchell’s parties?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Well, that’s a good tune. You should do something with that.’ We were always looking for tunes, because we were making lots of albums by then and every album you did needed fourteen songs, and then there were singles in between, so you needed a lot of material. So I did.
Michelle was a tune that I’d written in Chet Atkins’ finger-pickin’ style. There is a song he did called Trambone with a repetitive top line, and he played a bass line whilst playing a melody. This was an innovation for us; even though classical guitarists had played it, no rock ‘n’ roll guitarists had played it. The first person we knew to use finger-pickin’ technique was Chet Atkins…Based on Atkins’s Trambone, I wanted to write something with a melody and a bass line on it, so I did. I just had it as an instrumental in C.”
(Source : book Many Years From Now)
Paul McCartney : The other interesting point was there’s a very jazzy chord in it: ‘Michelle, ma belle.’ That second chord. That was a chord that was used twice in The Beatles: once to end George’s solo on ‘Till There Was You’ and again when I used it in this. It was a chord shown to us by a jazz guitarist called Jim Gretty who worked behind the counter at Frank Hessey’s where we used to buy our instruments on the never-never in Liverpool. So Jim Gretty showed us this one great ham-fisted jazz chord, bloody hell! George and I learned it off him.
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Jan Vaughan (French language teacher) : He asked me if I could think of a French girl's first name, with two syllables, and then a description of the girl which would rhyme. He played me the rhythm on his guitar and that's when I came up with 'Michelle, ma Belle.' It was some days later that he phoned me up and asked if I could translate the phrase 'these are words that go together well.'
John Lennon : Paul and I were staying somewhere, and he walked in and hummed the first few bars, with the words, then he says, 'Where do I go from here?' I'd been listening to blues singer Nina Simone, who did something like 'I lo-o-ove you' in the middle of one of her songs, and that made me think of the middle eight for Michelle - I love you, I love you, I lo-o-ove you.'
(Source : not known)
Paul McCartney : A lot of people said Michelle would have made a good single. There are songs which we like but we wouldn’t like to have out as singles. ‘Cause it’s a very funny thing about putting a single out. We always used to think for a single we’d have to have something pretty fast. I don’t know why. They always sounded like the singles. So when we did ‘Michelle,’ we all thought it was okay, but we just didn’t want it out as representative of us at the time.
(Source : radio interview, 1977)
Paul McCartney : There used to be a guy called Austin Mitchell who was one of John’s tutors at art school and he used to throw some pretty good all-night parites. You could maybe pull girls there, which was the main aim of every second; you could get drinks, which was another aim; and you could generally put yourself about a bit. I member sitting around there, and my recollection is of a black turtleneck sweater and sitting very enigmatically in the corner playing this rather French tune. I used to pretend I could speak French, because everyone wanted to be like Sacha Distel or Juliette Greco…So I used to sit around and murmur. It was my Maurice Chevalier meets Juliette Greco moment: me trying to be enigmatic to make girls think, ‘Who’s that very interesting French guy over in the corner?’ I would literally use it as that, and John knew this was one of my ploys.
I used to pretend I was French, ‘…jou jou jou,’ and nobody knew the difference.
Years later, John said, ‘D’you remember that French thing you used to do at Mitchell’s parties?’ I said yes. He said, ‘Well, that’s a good tune. You should do something with that.’ We were always looking for tunes, because we were making lots of albums by then and every album you did needed fourteen songs, and then there were singles in between, so you needed a lot of material. So I did.
Michelle was a tune that I’d written in Chet Atkins’ finger-pickin’ style. There is a song he did called Trambone with a repetitive top line, and he played a bass line whilst playing a melody. This was an innovation for us; even though classical guitarists had played it, no rock ‘n’ roll guitarists had played it. The first person we knew to use finger-pickin’ technique was Chet Atkins…Based on Atkins’s Trambone, I wanted to write something with a melody and a bass line on it, so I did. I just had it as an instrumental in C.”
(Source : book Many Years From Now)
Paul McCartney : The other interesting point was there’s a very jazzy chord in it: ‘Michelle, ma belle.’ That second chord. That was a chord that was used twice in The Beatles: once to end George’s solo on ‘Till There Was You’ and again when I used it in this. It was a chord shown to us by a jazz guitarist called Jim Gretty who worked behind the counter at Frank Hessey’s where we used to buy our instruments on the never-never in Liverpool. So Jim Gretty showed us this one great ham-fisted jazz chord, bloody hell! George and I learned it off him.