CLUB SANDWICH 82

DIGGING AROUND THE BACK
Paul sits down with Ceoff Baker and Mark Lewisohn and jaws through the day about the songs he's been singing

            THE SONG WE WERE SINGING

            The song represents for me good memories of the Sixties, of dossing around late at night, chatting, smoking, drinking wine, hanging out, jawing through the night. I think it works as an opening track - it creeps you into the album and sets it up nicely. I played Bill Black's standup bass on the recording; it's the wrong way around for me, being left-handed, but I have a go - and I can just about play 'Heartbreak Hotel' on it as well.

            THE WORLD TONIGHT

            This one was written on an acoustic guitar when I was on holiday, so it started out folk-y. I don't "go to work" to write songs, they just come when the mood strikes me and that's usually when I'm on holiday, perhaps after a sail or a swim, when I'm chilling out and relaxing with a piano or a guitar. My studio manager, Eddie, usually expects me to bring home a couple of cassettes from a holiday.

            IF YOU WANNA

            We had a day off in Minneapolis when we were on tour. Linda was going off to do something and I stayed behind in the room and wrote a song on guitar. Recording wise, I used the same process as the other songs I did with Steve Miller: me on drums, Steve on guitar, both playing acoustic guitars, I did the vocals and produced
            Steve's guitar stuff. This is the kind of song you might hear when you're driving across the desert in America, Easy Rider country.

            SOMEDAYS

            This was written the day Linda was doing one of her cookery assignments. I went along too [a photo of Paul and Linda, taken this day, was published on the cover ofCS70 - ed], taking an acoustic guitar, and asked the lady in the house we were using if she had a little room where I could go and sit quietly. She offered me her son's room and I went in there. In these situations I tend to make up a little fantasy, thinking: well, they're going to be two or three hours, and when it's all done they'll say to me, "What did you do?" And I'll be able to reply, "Oh, I wrote a song!" So I just started writing, with my guitar, and came up with 'Somedays' -"Somedays I look, I look at you with eyes that shine, somedays I look into your soul" The first verse came quite well, then the second and the middle, and whereas, at another time, I might have thought, "I leave the words there and finish them next week", I finished them there and then. John and I used to do this too, occasionally: I don't think we ever really took more than three or four hours on a song. I'd go to visit him, he'd come to visit me, and we'd sit down and write.
            I'm not a great reader into moods: I don't naturally say that if I wrote a sad song then I was sad that day, or if I wrote a happy song I was happy. I wrote 'Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da' but that doesn't