Paul McCartney Q&A: Behind the Fireman's New Psych-Pop Gem

After a 10-year break, Paul McCartney has revived his experimental side project, the Fireman — the name he uses for his low-key collaborations with British producer Youth. 1993's Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest and 1998's Rushes were virtually vocal-free sets of ambient techno, but the new Electric Arguments feels more like a classic McCartney record, with "Blackbird"-like ballads, tight songcraft and live instrumentation. McCartney recently spoke with Rolling Stone about how his Fireman lyrics recall William Burroughs and the group channels the spirit of Revolver's "Tomorrow Never Knows":

In "Sing the Changes" — one of your new songs which almost sounds like an ecstatic hymn — you sing: "Feel the choir, feel the thunder/Every ladder leads to heaven/Sing the praises as you're sleeping/Feel the sense of childlike wonder."
Pretty good? It's nice to hear those lyrics read back to me because it's the first time I've actually ever heard them. We had a ball making this album, and it was a great departure because it seemed more like improv theater. In the improv spirit, there are William Burroughs-type cut-ups in the lyrics. I came to "Sing the Changes," as well as all the other songs in the album, with absolutely no concept of what the melody or lyrics would be about. So it was like writing on the spot, which I think lent an electricity to the whole sound.

It's kind of what happens when you write a song... but on speed. You've just got to think of the idea there and then: "First thought, best thought," as Allen Ginsberg said. Instead of spending the next two hours molding it, I would just step up to the mike and go [singing] "Ooohhhawowahhasingthechanges," like throwing paint at the wall, and then you just stand back and take a look at it and see whether some of it looks good.

You recorded the album at your Sussex studio — what was a typical day like?
I would just come in every morning and have a groove cooking, like a cup of coffee. And then Youth and I would talk about it a little bit, or we'd talk about something else, we'd talk about, say, Andy Warhol, just to get us in the mood. And then I'd sort of wander around and say, "How about a bit of guitar, a bit of bass, a bit of drums," so you'd have a backing track.

And then, inevitably, came the words-ideas-talking-literate thing. It was fascinating to try. And one of the things I liked about it, aside from the pure excitement, was realizing that I'd been writing songs for so long that if I was going to improvise, I probably, instinctively, was going to put a slight amount of form on it. And Youth is very good, I trust him, and he'd say, "Yeah, that's it," and so I knew we'd found a chorus and then we could mold around that. And suddenly I'd have a page full of lyrics, stealing three words from a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and then dipping into some poetry anthology that was lying about — Youth's a groovy guy and he's always got a few books in his rucksack, and I've got a few knocking around — just finding an image like "white sails" and using it as an inspirational thing.