The Fireman — a two-man recording project consisting of Paul McCartney (the Beatles, Wings) and Youth (Killing Joke, Orb) — dishes on its upcoming third album, Electric Arguments in the below video interview withPitchfork.tv.
Highlights:
Their music creation technique is collaborative. Youth might make a suggestion about a groove, then they talk back and forth,Paul runs in and out control room and studio, as Youth suggests stuff and they record ideas. Youth arranges them into a form, then they go back to work improvising over that. They also used the beat poet style cut-and-paste technique.
For the song "Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight" – they came up with the song’s "heavy, dirty groove" first, so any anger is apparently coming from there (some have speculated that it’s a song about his ex-wife Heather Mills). The title of the song comes from McCartney’s ’60s friend Jimmy Scott, the same guy who came up with "Obladi, oblada, life goes on, brah." When someone would say "too much" he’d say "nothing too much, just out of sight."
More highlights:
The title of the album, Electric Arguments, comes from anAllen Ginsberg poem Paul had read recently. He’s been looking at thebeauty of certain word combinations rather than their meaning. Some ofthe song titles on the album have similar origins.
Youth says that Paul loses himself in the performance, outside of the realm of thought and performance. McCartney says he managed the voice in that song by following advice John Lennon gave him while recording the vocal for the Beatles’ version of "Kansas City": to sing out of the top of his head.
McCartney likes working with an indie label (ATO Records/Red Music). He says the major labels lost direction and became "too elephantine and corporate." He says indie labels are more fun to work with because they’re passionate about what they’re doing instead of paranoid about losing their jobs. However, both men say there are decent people at both kinds of labels, and that the majors will eventually get their groove back, become less corporate and "return to their roots."
We previewed the first track from the album last month; here’s the third song, "Sing the Changes":
Photo courtesy of The Fireman
