February 28, 2024 • 23 mins
“Drink to me, drink to my health” were among the last words spoken by the great Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. On somewhat of a lark, Dustin Hoffman challenged Paul McCartney to use those words to write a song – on the spot. McCartney indulged Hoffman and, without hesitation, an early version of “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)” poured out of him.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with assistance from Jake Gorski and sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman, Scott Rodger and Paul McCartney.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The Castle's Last Words, Yes.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Was a dare.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Justin Hoffman said to me, can you write a song
about anything? I said, Wow, I don't know. Maybe you know,
He said, just a minute, and he ran upstairs. He
came back down with the newspaper article about the death
(01:22):
of Picasso, and he said, see what Picasso's last words were.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
His last words to his friends were drink to me.
Drink to my health. You know I can't drink anymore.
You drink to me.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Dream do my health?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know I can't dream. Getny move.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm Paul muldoon. For a while now, I've been fortunate
to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
the era.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And will you look at me, I'm going on to it.
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It was like going back to an old snapshot album
looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode Picasso's last words
drink to Me. McCartney met Dustin Hoffman on a nineteen
(02:49):
seventy three trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, where Hoffman and
Steve McQueen were filming the historical prison drama Papillon. Hoffman
had invited Paul and his wife Linda to his home
for a dinner party, and after dinner, the actor issued
the song writer a musical challenge. He read them an
(03:12):
article that had been published in Time magazine earlier that year.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Right up to the end, Piquestu lost no time. The
day before he died, I had been a day like
many others at Notre Dame de vill his Hiltop villa
at Mouja on the French revia. Late in the afternoon,
the artist had taken a walk in the little park
that surrounds his sprawling stonehouse, overlooking the reddish foothills of
(03:37):
the Maritime Apps.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It was Adare. Hoffman wanted to know if the legendary
musician really could make music from anything, so.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
She could you write a song about that? I did
happen to have my guitar with me, so I record
and started singing a melody to those words. And he
was flabbergasted. His then wife, he's not with her anymore
(04:12):
any I think it was.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Annie, Annie, come here, can we listen to this?
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Listen?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
List look at this. I just came. Listen. Listen.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
He's got so brandot buh less.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
He's painting.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Later that evening, Piso and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends
for dinner. Pikasu was in high spirit.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
He bad us well, said.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Night to us.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
A drink to drinking my health.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
He urged, drinking.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Drink too much.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
You know, I can't drink anymore.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Dream more.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
At eleven thirty, he rose from the table and announced,
and now I must go back to work.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You know I can dream any.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
In an interview, Hoffman recounted what it was like to
see McCartney write the song before his eyes.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
I swear by all that's holy that he began singing
this song of the story that I had just told
him about Picasso. It just came out of him. Drink
to me, drink too, my health. You know I can't
drink anymore three o'clock in the morning. It's right under
(05:43):
childbirth in terms of great events of my life. I mean,
I was at the birth of something. The fact is
that he didn't come back the next day. He didn't
even start fiddling around. It was literally immediate I finished
the story and he strummed his guitar.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was a sort of you know, can you write this?
It was almost he set me a little task and
I like the words. So then I thought, well, I've
got to kind of set it up. The grand old
painter tired last night his paintings on the wall four
twenty bad as well, and say good night to us all.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So then that's his this quote.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
May I just say something about that we're talking about
drama earlier on. You know, the fact that the speaker
of the song Yeah is in the scene is very
important Yeah, because he bad us well it's not he
bad them, well, he bad us well, and when it's us, well,
(06:54):
the beauty of that is I suppose that not only
is the speaker involved, but they bring in the listener,
so we're all there immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I haven't thought of it like that, but that's true.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
In recent weeks he had been working especially hard preparing
for a big show of his latest paintings at the
Book's Palace in a in May. On this night, before
he went to bed, he painted until three am.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Three club in mine.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I'm getting very bad.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I suppose that one could set one could musicalize quote
unquote any sentence any English language.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
Maybe not any, but many. I mean, the language has
its own intrinsic musicality.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I supposed how often quote yes.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
How often does the rhythm of the words themselves influence
how the let's call it the melody might turn out.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
All the time, all the.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Time, all the time. You want to get something that
rolls along naturally and that's interesting at the same.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Time, but that fits with the music you're hearing with it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
So sometimes you have to alter a word because it
just doesn't quite work with them either. So you look
for something that says the same thing, but just it's
an alternate word. Maybe it's now it's a two syllable
word instead of the one syllable word.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That didn't work all the other way around.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But I'll be waiting by you waiting, I'll be waiting
for you there.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
So yeah, it's very important that the rhythm sounds natural.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
When it isn't, it kind of sticks out of the
sort of thumb.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I know how.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Paul McCartney took inspiration from everywhere. Talking to him that day,
I remembered a poem by the seventeenth century poet Ben Johnson.
It had been covered by Johnny Cash, Drink to me
only with thine eyes and I will play with.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
My Would you have been conscious of Ben Johnson's or
some version of Ben Johnson's song Drink to me only with.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Thine eyes or whatever it is?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yes, an yes, ancient drink to me, I will drink too. Yeah, yeah,
I've heard it.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I mean, yeah, I didn't think of that, because the
whole thought here was just the challenge of doing it
for Dustan, you know. So I was just concentrated on
the words he stuck in front of me, And I
(10:21):
think what was nice was that he obviously seeing it,
stroke heard it.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
As melodic, so he recognized that probably had possibility.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah, he recognized the I think, don't you if you
think about it. You know, he's an actor anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Well, right, he's a singer really, I mean, he's a vocalist.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Those rhythm of words, and I think when he read
the quote, most people would probably think, wow, so that's
what he said. But I think, Dustin, I'm guessing here,
but I would guess that he would think, oh no,
this flows beautifully. Drink to me, drink to my health.
(11:07):
You know, I can't drink any more. Pump po pump,
pump pump. You know, there's like a nice little mathematical equation.
Well so, yeah, so it was a pleasure. It was
a great pleasure to do it, just to shut off.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Dream any more. Dustin Hoffmann remembered reading the article about
Becasso's last words and talking with Paul McCartney about the
famous pinter.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
And I was so struck by that sentence that I thought, well,
he must mean that he can't drink anymore because he
doesn't want to get too high, because he has to
go back and work. And in some strange way, you know,
I can't drink anymore. Also means it's the last time
I'm going to be doing this with my friends, because
(12:07):
I'm going to die in a few hours.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Do you know.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Any more?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I like that that it was probably just something ordinary
that was said earnestly, you know, farewell to his friends. Well,
it becomes his last words. Then it becomes a quote
in an article. Then Dustin reads it and makes it
(12:42):
more than a quote and suggests it's a poem, it's
a lyric. Then he shows it to me, and I
agree with his suggestion, and I for music to it.
So it's a nice little way for things to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Because the song starts with the story of Picasso's last words,
but after a minute or two it splinters into a montage.
Among other things, there's a clip from an advertisement for
a French tourism service offering French language programs and farm
(13:23):
houses available for visitors to rent. Picasso lived much of
his life in France, but it's not immediately obvious what
(13:44):
the connection is in the song. Why does the song
move into such abstraction. One might wager that it was
a pinlely choice by McCartney. He himself is a photographer
and pinter, and he's learned a thing or two about
abstract art from other practitioners, especially the Dutch American expressionist feelining.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
When I started painting for years before, I'd had this
idea that it must be meaningful the painting, it just
had to have some significance, some significant meaning, and it
stopped me completely.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I could never paint. I'm going what significant idea am
I coming up with?
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I'm looking at the garden that's lovely, but it's not
really significant. So it stopped me, stopped me stopping. And
then I met to Cooning and I asked him about
what one of his paintings was and he said, I
don't know. It looks like a cut hunt and I
just thought Jesus, and it blew my mind open. In
this context and in the song context, this idea of
(14:57):
it not having to mean something is quite liberating. M hm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We can hear this liberation in the second half of
Becasso's Last Words. The song departs from its initial subject,
veering into samples from other songs on the album Band
on the Run. The first is from wings hit single Jet.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
When did you know or did you ever know that
Jet was going to be in it.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
When it came to Jet or Band on the Road,
I had thads of tricks that I could use.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
One of the tricks with Jet is shouting. Yeah, that works.
It's always a good opener for any song. Choose a
word you run.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
You've got to you better get out of here.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Run. It works. It's the shouting.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
It's funny you should say that now, because I was
reading a review yesterday, I think of a new translation
of BeO Wolf and the first word of BeO Wolf
is something like what what? And they think you know?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
There are various ideas that's what that means, but yet
it's yet.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
No, seriously that it was meant to represent.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I think at some level the first strum on the
lyre from the poet kicking off, but it's not a
similar idea.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Jet was actually the name of a pony we had, yes,
a little little Shetland pony we had for the kids.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Medv J.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The other sample is in the outro, which borrows from
Missus Vanderbilt, that upbeat track from Band on the Run
about McCartney's rejection of an aristocratic lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
We used to get asked when we're first in the Beatles,
are you worried that you've joined the established, but we
didn't know. We thought it was a club, which it
was in London. I mean, we didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Really know what they meant, and we knew what they
meant you were, you've gone a bit society. Yeah, you
weren't a desperate at or yeah, you know, that's right.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
And it was like, na, we're not. We're we know
a few posh people yet. But to me that missus
Vanderbilt embodied richness and she was a famous like Rockefeller.
If you needed to refer, you know, quiz programs and
give me five rich people's names, it would have been Nabel, Rockefeller, Getty.
(18:52):
You know, there's certain ones you just know because they're
in the newspapers. So that was what she was. And
my idea is.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's again, it's the same throwing over of the rules.
I don't want that.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I know it's money, it's rich and everything, but what
comes with it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Is bothersome.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
H The connection between Picasso's Dying words, a French tourism manual,
(19:55):
a character based on a Shetland pony, and an American
aristocrat is not particularly clear. Beyond the context of the music.
The meaning is slippery, so that bit's from other songs,
has the notion of all songs being one song.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
All songs.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Yeah, Well, I'm prompted partly because in the literary sphere
is strictly literary sphere. One of Stevens thinks of his
poems as being one poem, the whole of harmonium, he
calls it. It's all one thing. He spent his whole
life writing one big phone. I mean, obviously they're discreeted
(20:37):
their bi severic things, but I mean, does it mean
anything to you at all that Stevens might have thought
in those terms that you're doing one song, your life
is about writing one song? Or is that just too
crazy and fanciful.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
You know, as a bit of a stretch for me,
because my stuff's quite varied, and I think that kind
of suggests it isn't one song, right, It's a lot, right, a.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Lot of them.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
They don't neatly fit together, you know. If you've got
something like high Ie High next to al and A,
it's quite a difference.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Like many songs in McCartney's catalog, Picasso's Last Words doesn't
strive for cohesion. It brings together fragments to juxtapose them.
The edges between the samples are sharp. It's a form
of musical cubism, the very style that Picasso pioneered.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
Hell Hell.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Picasso's last words drink to Me from Wings album Band
on the Run, released in nineteen seventy three. In the
next episode, Love.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I was being accused of just writing silly love songs
and was in danger of starting to buy into this
idea that you should just be a bit tougher and
a bit more worldly. But then askerly realized that's exactly
(23:01):
what love is. It's worldly, a.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Polemical love song to the skeptics. That's next time on
McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries
Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash plus.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
The Castle's Last Words, Yes.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Was a dare.
Speaker 4 (00:59):
Justin Hoffman said to me, can you write a song
about anything? I said, Wow, I don't know. Maybe you know,
He said, just a minute, and he ran upstairs. He
came back down with the newspaper article about the death
(01:22):
of Picasso, and he said, see what Picasso's last words were.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
His last words to his friends were drink to me.
Drink to my health. You know I can't drink anymore.
You drink to me.
Speaker 4 (01:40):
Dream do my health?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
You know I can't dream. Getny move.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm Paul muldoon. For a while now, I've been fortunate
to spend time with one of the greatest songwriters of
the era.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
And will you look at me, I'm going on to it.
I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 4 (02:16):
It was like going back to an old snapshot album
looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode Picasso's last words
drink to Me. McCartney met Dustin Hoffman on a nineteen
(02:49):
seventy three trip to Montego Bay, Jamaica, where Hoffman and
Steve McQueen were filming the historical prison drama Papillon. Hoffman
had invited Paul and his wife Linda to his home
for a dinner party, and after dinner, the actor issued
the song writer a musical challenge. He read them an
(03:12):
article that had been published in Time magazine earlier that year.
Speaker 5 (03:17):
Right up to the end, Piquestu lost no time. The
day before he died, I had been a day like
many others at Notre Dame de vill his Hiltop villa
at Mouja on the French revia. Late in the afternoon,
the artist had taken a walk in the little park
that surrounds his sprawling stonehouse, overlooking the reddish foothills of
(03:37):
the Maritime Apps.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It was Adare. Hoffman wanted to know if the legendary
musician really could make music from anything, so.
Speaker 4 (03:50):
She could you write a song about that? I did
happen to have my guitar with me, so I record
and started singing a melody to those words. And he
was flabbergasted. His then wife, he's not with her anymore
(04:12):
any I think it was.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Annie, Annie, come here, can we listen to this?
Speaker 4 (04:16):
Listen?
Speaker 2 (04:16):
List look at this. I just came. Listen. Listen.
Speaker 4 (04:19):
He's got so brandot buh less.
Speaker 6 (04:25):
He's painting.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
Later that evening, Piso and his wife Jacqueline entertained friends
for dinner. Pikasu was in high spirit.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
He bad us well, said.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Night to us.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
A drink to drinking my health.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
He urged, drinking.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Drink too much.
Speaker 5 (04:53):
You know, I can't drink anymore.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Dream more.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
At eleven thirty, he rose from the table and announced,
and now I must go back to work.
Speaker 3 (05:06):
You know I can dream any.
Speaker 1 (05:10):
In an interview, Hoffman recounted what it was like to
see McCartney write the song before his eyes.
Speaker 7 (05:18):
I swear by all that's holy that he began singing
this song of the story that I had just told
him about Picasso. It just came out of him. Drink
to me, drink too, my health. You know I can't
drink anymore three o'clock in the morning. It's right under
(05:43):
childbirth in terms of great events of my life. I mean,
I was at the birth of something. The fact is
that he didn't come back the next day. He didn't
even start fiddling around. It was literally immediate I finished
the story and he strummed his guitar.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
It was a sort of you know, can you write this?
It was almost he set me a little task and
I like the words. So then I thought, well, I've
got to kind of set it up. The grand old
painter tired last night his paintings on the wall four
twenty bad as well, and say good night to us all.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
So then that's his this quote.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
May I just say something about that we're talking about
drama earlier on. You know, the fact that the speaker
of the song Yeah is in the scene is very
important Yeah, because he bad us well it's not he
bad them, well, he bad us well, and when it's us, well,
(06:54):
the beauty of that is I suppose that not only
is the speaker involved, but they bring in the listener,
so we're all there immediately.
Speaker 4 (07:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
I haven't thought of it like that, but that's true.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (07:07):
In recent weeks he had been working especially hard preparing
for a big show of his latest paintings at the
Book's Palace in a in May. On this night, before
he went to bed, he painted until three am.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Three club in mine.
Speaker 3 (07:27):
I'm getting very bad.
Speaker 1 (07:31):
I suppose that one could set one could musicalize quote
unquote any sentence any English language.
Speaker 6 (07:39):
Maybe not any, but many. I mean, the language has
its own intrinsic musicality.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
I supposed how often quote yes.
Speaker 6 (07:50):
How often does the rhythm of the words themselves influence
how the let's call it the melody might turn out.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
All the time, all the.
Speaker 4 (08:05):
Time, all the time. You want to get something that
rolls along naturally and that's interesting at the same.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
Time, but that fits with the music you're hearing with it.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
So sometimes you have to alter a word because it
just doesn't quite work with them either. So you look
for something that says the same thing, but just it's
an alternate word. Maybe it's now it's a two syllable
word instead of the one syllable word.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
That didn't work all the other way around.
Speaker 1 (08:49):
But I'll be waiting by you waiting, I'll be waiting
for you there.
Speaker 4 (08:56):
So yeah, it's very important that the rhythm sounds natural.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
When it isn't, it kind of sticks out of the
sort of thumb.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
I know how.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Paul McCartney took inspiration from everywhere. Talking to him that day,
I remembered a poem by the seventeenth century poet Ben Johnson.
It had been covered by Johnny Cash, Drink to me
only with thine eyes and I will play with.
Speaker 6 (09:37):
My Would you have been conscious of Ben Johnson's or
some version of Ben Johnson's song Drink to me only with.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Thine eyes or whatever it is?
Speaker 3 (09:49):
Yes, an yes, ancient drink to me, I will drink too. Yeah, yeah,
I've heard it.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
I mean, yeah, I didn't think of that, because the
whole thought here was just the challenge of doing it
for Dustan, you know. So I was just concentrated on
the words he stuck in front of me, And I
(10:21):
think what was nice was that he obviously seeing it,
stroke heard it.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
As melodic, so he recognized that probably had possibility.
Speaker 4 (10:34):
Yeah, he recognized the I think, don't you if you
think about it. You know, he's an actor anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Well, right, he's a singer really, I mean, he's a vocalist.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Those rhythm of words, and I think when he read
the quote, most people would probably think, wow, so that's
what he said. But I think, Dustin, I'm guessing here,
but I would guess that he would think, oh no,
this flows beautifully. Drink to me, drink to my health.
(11:07):
You know, I can't drink any more. Pump po pump,
pump pump. You know, there's like a nice little mathematical equation.
Well so, yeah, so it was a pleasure. It was
a great pleasure to do it, just to shut off.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Dream any more. Dustin Hoffmann remembered reading the article about
Becasso's last words and talking with Paul McCartney about the
famous pinter.
Speaker 7 (11:45):
And I was so struck by that sentence that I thought, well,
he must mean that he can't drink anymore because he
doesn't want to get too high, because he has to
go back and work. And in some strange way, you know,
I can't drink anymore. Also means it's the last time
I'm going to be doing this with my friends, because
(12:07):
I'm going to die in a few hours.
Speaker 1 (12:11):
Do you know.
Speaker 2 (12:15):
Any more?
Speaker 4 (12:19):
I like that that it was probably just something ordinary
that was said earnestly, you know, farewell to his friends. Well,
it becomes his last words. Then it becomes a quote
in an article. Then Dustin reads it and makes it
(12:42):
more than a quote and suggests it's a poem, it's
a lyric. Then he shows it to me, and I
agree with his suggestion, and I for music to it.
So it's a nice little way for things to happen.
Speaker 1 (12:59):
Because the song starts with the story of Picasso's last words,
but after a minute or two it splinters into a montage.
Among other things, there's a clip from an advertisement for
a French tourism service offering French language programs and farm
(13:23):
houses available for visitors to rent. Picasso lived much of
his life in France, but it's not immediately obvious what
(13:44):
the connection is in the song. Why does the song
move into such abstraction. One might wager that it was
a pinlely choice by McCartney. He himself is a photographer
and pinter, and he's learned a thing or two about
abstract art from other practitioners, especially the Dutch American expressionist feelining.
Speaker 4 (14:10):
When I started painting for years before, I'd had this
idea that it must be meaningful the painting, it just
had to have some significance, some significant meaning, and it
stopped me completely.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
I could never paint. I'm going what significant idea am
I coming up with?
Speaker 4 (14:34):
I'm looking at the garden that's lovely, but it's not
really significant. So it stopped me, stopped me stopping. And
then I met to Cooning and I asked him about
what one of his paintings was and he said, I
don't know. It looks like a cut hunt and I
just thought Jesus, and it blew my mind open. In
this context and in the song context, this idea of
(14:57):
it not having to mean something is quite liberating. M hm.
Speaker 1 (15:10):
We can hear this liberation in the second half of
Becasso's Last Words. The song departs from its initial subject,
veering into samples from other songs on the album Band
on the Run. The first is from wings hit single Jet.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
When did you know or did you ever know that
Jet was going to be in it.
Speaker 4 (15:42):
When it came to Jet or Band on the Road,
I had thads of tricks that I could use.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
One of the tricks with Jet is shouting. Yeah, that works.
It's always a good opener for any song. Choose a
word you run.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
You've got to you better get out of here.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
Run. It works. It's the shouting.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
It's funny you should say that now, because I was
reading a review yesterday, I think of a new translation
of BeO Wolf and the first word of BeO Wolf
is something like what what? And they think you know?
Speaker 1 (16:38):
There are various ideas that's what that means, but yet
it's yet.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
No, seriously that it was meant to represent.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
I think at some level the first strum on the
lyre from the poet kicking off, but it's not a
similar idea.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Jet was actually the name of a pony we had, yes,
a little little Shetland pony we had for the kids.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
Medv J.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
The other sample is in the outro, which borrows from
Missus Vanderbilt, that upbeat track from Band on the Run
about McCartney's rejection of an aristocratic lifestyle.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
We used to get asked when we're first in the Beatles,
are you worried that you've joined the established, but we
didn't know. We thought it was a club, which it
was in London. I mean, we didn't.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
Really know what they meant, and we knew what they
meant you were, you've gone a bit society. Yeah, you
weren't a desperate at or yeah, you know, that's right.
Speaker 4 (18:25):
And it was like, na, we're not. We're we know
a few posh people yet. But to me that missus
Vanderbilt embodied richness and she was a famous like Rockefeller.
If you needed to refer, you know, quiz programs and
give me five rich people's names, it would have been Nabel, Rockefeller, Getty.
(18:52):
You know, there's certain ones you just know because they're
in the newspapers. So that was what she was. And
my idea is.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
It's again, it's the same throwing over of the rules.
I don't want that.
Speaker 4 (19:10):
I know it's money, it's rich and everything, but what
comes with it.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Is bothersome.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
H The connection between Picasso's Dying words, a French tourism manual,
(19:55):
a character based on a Shetland pony, and an American
aristocrat is not particularly clear. Beyond the context of the music.
The meaning is slippery, so that bit's from other songs,
has the notion of all songs being one song.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
All songs.
Speaker 6 (20:16):
Yeah, Well, I'm prompted partly because in the literary sphere
is strictly literary sphere. One of Stevens thinks of his
poems as being one poem, the whole of harmonium, he
calls it. It's all one thing. He spent his whole
life writing one big phone. I mean, obviously they're discreeted
(20:37):
their bi severic things, but I mean, does it mean
anything to you at all that Stevens might have thought
in those terms that you're doing one song, your life
is about writing one song? Or is that just too
crazy and fanciful.
Speaker 4 (20:52):
You know, as a bit of a stretch for me,
because my stuff's quite varied, and I think that kind
of suggests it isn't one song, right, It's a lot, right, a.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Lot of them.
Speaker 4 (21:07):
They don't neatly fit together, you know. If you've got
something like high Ie High next to al and A,
it's quite a difference.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Like many songs in McCartney's catalog, Picasso's Last Words doesn't
strive for cohesion. It brings together fragments to juxtapose them.
The edges between the samples are sharp. It's a form
of musical cubism, the very style that Picasso pioneered.
Speaker 7 (22:09):
Hell Hell.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Picasso's last words drink to Me from Wings album Band
on the Run, released in nineteen seventy three. In the
next episode, Love.
Speaker 4 (22:40):
I was being accused of just writing silly love songs
and was in danger of starting to buy into this
idea that you should just be a bit tougher and
a bit more worldly. But then askerly realized that's exactly
(23:01):
what love is. It's worldly, a.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Polemical love song to the skeptics. That's next time on
McCartney A Life in Lyrics. McCartney A Life in Lyrics
is a co production between iHeartMedia, NPL and Pushkin Industries
Host
Paul McCartney
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