Sir Paul Rides Again

"Early on, say, with Wings, it was a necessity to not sound like the Beatles," says McCartney, who, for rehearsal, is casually dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt that reads east hampton town dump. "I didn't want to write another 'Eleanor Rigby.'" He hums the melody, as if I may not be familiar with the tune. "And it's only more recently that I've realized I did establish my own identity and said, 'Well, OK, what's the battle about, then? There's no need to keep fighting. You're a part of the Beatles, you're a part of Wings and you're a part of your new stuff now, and it's all your style.' And so, yeah, on 'Blackbird,' I had done a kind of slightly folksy guitar part which had a top melody and an accompanying bass line, and the two going together gave it this certain character. And I've never done anything since along those lines. And so now, on this new album, I thought, 'Why not? What am I frightened of?' There could be two songs in the world like that. And I wrote the first one! So it's not like I'm nicking anyone's thing."

I interviewed McCartney in two sessions during rehearsals -- as he snacked on broccoli, green beans and a heavily buttered slice of bread -- and later after a photo shoot at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. The day of the shoot, McCartney drove in from the Hamptons, where he spent part of his summer with his wife and their two-year-old daughter, Beatrice. At sixty-three, he's trim (a thirty-three-inch waist) and a bit gray at the temples (British tabloids delighted in accusing Mills of pushing hair dye on Sir Paul, who retorted with a post on Mills' Web site insisting he'd been dyeing his hair for years). We began by talking about Godrich, who was recommended to McCartney by Beatles producer George Martin.

Do you and George Martin still talk regularly?

Yeah, we meet up quite a bit, actually. Particularly because we used his studio for the London end of the recording. George always pops in, especially if he knows I'm there. He's one of the most important men in my life, and that's including my father, my brother, the Beatles -- George Martin is right up there in the top five. Really, I would like to work with him forever. That would be my dream.

Does he still produce?

No. He's got a hearing problem, like a lot of us from the Sixties. 'Cause we did listen to it too loud. He just got to the stage where he thinks, very nobly, that he shouldn't produce. I say to him, "George, the engineers need the ears. You're the ideas man." But I think it's very cool of him to know when not to do it. So I just rang him up and said, "If I can't have you, who's the man?" He chatted it around, thought about it, talked to his son, and a couple of days later he came back and said Nigel.

Had you been aware of Nigel's work?

Yeah, but without knowing he was the man behind it. I liked the last couple of Radiohead albums, particularly the sound. And Travis, The Invisible Band. And Beck. So we just met up, chatted and liked each other -- I think. I liked him. And then I sent him a couple of records that I thought might either turn him on or off, or might just be a direction to go.

Demos you'd made?

No, other people's records. I liked the idea of toying with a kind of Asian thing, a one-chord thing. There's an artist called Nitin Sawhney who I like -- he's a British-Asian guy. It was just a vibe I was into at the time, that sort of droniness. I didn't know what I'd do with it. It was just a mood thing. And Nigel said, "Mmm, no. I know what album I want to make if I'm going to work with you. I want to make an album that's you." And I thought, "That's the kind of producer I need now."