The Song Paul McCartney Wants To Be Remembered For transcript

Which song do you think Paul McCarnney said he'd like to be remembered for? The answer at least according to Paul McCartney is Maybe I'm Amazed. It's not the song most people would choose. In fact, if you'd asked me before reading that quote, Maybe I'm Amazed probably wouldn't have been my first guess either. After all, Paul McCartney has written some of the most famous songs in popular music history. Songs that most people know, whether they're Beatles fans or not.

Yet the more I thought about it, the more that answer seemed to make sense. Because Maybe I'm Amazed seems to capture so much of what makes Paul McCartney who he is. Back in 2009, Paul McCartney was asked which of his songs he'd most like to be remembered for. He chose Maybe I'm Amazed, a song from his first solo album that wasn't even issued as a single at the time and was recorded during one of the lowest and most uncertain periods of his life.

What's easy to forget is that the McCartney album itself received a mixed reception at the time. What's also interesting is that Paul wrote and recorded Maybe I'm Amazed before the public breakup of the Beatles. Most people describe it as a love song, and of course it is. But there's a lot more going on in this song than just that. In order to really understand this song, we've got to go right back to the beginning of 1970.

John Lennon had already told the others he was leaving the Beatles. Business disputes were becoming increasingly bitter and for the first time in years, Paul McCartney wasn't entirely sure what came next. In this 1977 interview, Paul reflected on those early post-Beatles years and admitted, "I had got to do something, or I would have just been out of work." Later in that same interview, he said something else that caught my attention.

"I had always written together with John. Even if we'd written separately, there was always the thought that if I ever got into difficulty, I could just take it to John and vice versa. I would write a song where I would get stuck halfway and he would help me finish it. I had him as a cushion. " But suddenly that cushion was no longer there. Paul retreated to Scotland with Linda and their young family and tried to work out what life after the Beatles might look like.

Most people know Maybe I'm Amazed as Paul's love song to Linda and that's certainly part of the story. But what struck me was that when Paul discussed the song in his book, The Lyrics, he didn't really talk about love. Instead, he talked about fear, loneliness, and the conflict between our inner and outer selves, which makes perfect sense when you think about where Paul was in early 1970. It's easy to forget that Paul McCartney was only 27 when he recorded this.

He'd spent most of his adult life as one of the most admired people in the world. Suddenly, the future he had known for years was beginning to disappear. And nobody, including Paul himself, seemed entirely sure what was coming next. Maybe I'm a man. Maybe I'm a lonely man who's in the middle of something that he doesn't really understand. Those aren't the words of someone who has everything figured out. They're the words of someone bearing their soul for everyone to hear.

This isn't Eleanor Rigby or Paperback Writer. There are no characters here and no story to hide behind. This is Paul McCartney talking about Paul. Yet, despite everything that's going on in the song, there's also something else, or rather someone else. The fact that the album opens with The Lovely Linda tells us a lot about where Paul's head was at the time. Linda was never far away. The more I listen to Maybe I'm Amazed, the less it feels like a love song and the more it feels like a 'thank you'.

That second line has always intrigued me. For me, it all comes back to one word, 'Afraid'. Listening to the song now, it's hard to separate those lyrics from what was happening in Paul's life at the time. And maybe that's why the original recording on this album still sounds so powerful today. As a performance, it's rougher around the edges than Let It Be, The Long and Winding Road, or Yesterday. But what it loses in polish, it gains in honesty.

The piano isn't elegant or restrained. Neither is the vocal. Although much of the McCartney album began life on Paul's Studer four-track machine at home, Maybe I'm Amazed was different. Paul walked into Abbey Road on the 15th of February 1970 and built the entire track from the ground up in a single day. Playing the piano, drums, bass, guitars, and vocals himself. Although many remember it as a single, Maybe I'm Amazed wasn't released as one at the time.

In fact, it remained an album track until February 1977 when a live version from Wings Over America finally gave Paul one of the biggest hits of his solo career. By the time Wings Over America was recorded in 1976, Maybe I'm Amazed sounded very different. The song hadn't changed. Paul had. The man who recorded this version doesn't sound like the man we heard on the McCartney album. Paul wasn't the only person who recognized the strength of the song.

Over the years, Maybe I'm Amazed has been covered by dozens of artists. Petula Clark recorded it. And Billy Joel performed it. But my favourite is the one the Faces recorded for their 1971 album Long Player. The Faces don't try to recreate the original recording. They make it their own. One of the things I've always found interesting is that Maybe I'm Amazed has remained part of Paul's live shows for decades. Even as his voice changed, it stayed in the set.

I think that tells us something about how much the song means to him. Every time he sings it, it's almost as if he's reminding himself of one of the most difficult periods of his life and how far he's come since then. There's also something slightly ironic about Paul's choice. The song he'd most like to be remembered for wasn't a Beatles song, wasn't released as a single at the time, and came from an album that many critics struggled to understand.

I don't know about you, but songs like Yesterday, Let It Be, and Hey Jude have become so familiar that it's easy to forget just how extraordinary they are. But Maybe I'm Amazed has never felt quite that way to me. Every time I listen to it, I seem to notice something different. Well, the more I thought about it, the more his answer makes sense to me. Maybe I'm Amazed doesn't just tell us about Linda. It tells us about Paul.

It captures him at a moment when his life was changing completely. More than 50 years later, you can still hear it. And perhaps that's why he chose it. I'd be interested to know what Maybe I'm Amazed means to you. Is it simply a great love song, or do you hear something else in it? Do let me know in the comments. I'll be back next weekend with the story of one of 1966's greatest albums, Face to Face by the Kinks, so I hope you'll join me for that.

But that's all for this one. So, I'll say bye for now and thanks for watching.