AKA
05-13-2003, 12:10 PM
McCartney to get back to studio
Reuters
ROME, Italy -- Flushed with success as he enters the final stages of a sell-out world tour, Paul McCartney is still in love with his job -- though he has a plan ready for when the punishing schedule finally takes its toll.
"I've always said since I was about 20 that I would be getting wheeled on when I was 90 and do a very slow version of 'Yesterday'," the 60-year-old ex-Beatle told Reuters Television in Rome, Sunday.
"I'll have a big holiday after this. But I like what I do... It's not really work for me, it's a job and hobby. It's a hobby! I like it so much that if I retired I'd still want to do music."
And making music, this time in a studio rather than on stage, is precisely what McCartney has in mind for when his world tour is over.
"I've enjoyed playing with (this band) so much and... I'm always writing songs," he said.
"The next logical move for a normal band is to get in the studio to make some new music. So we'll probably do that towards the end of the year."
The ex-Beatle's most recent album, "Driving Rain," was released in November 2001. He had not previously announced another one was already on the agenda.
McCartney began his "Back in the World" tour in April 2002. He played 58 concerts in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Japan last year, and is in the middle of the 32-show European leg of the tour, which includes stops in 12 countries.
In Rome, he played a benefit concert inside the Colosseum -- only the second rock 'n' roll gig in the arena where gladiators fought to the death some 2,000 years ago.
More than 500,000 turned out to watch the ex-Beatle play in Rome.
"You just kept getting flashes of Nero with his thumbs up or thumbs down, and lions," McCartney joked, referring to the brutal Roman Emperor Nero and the sign that emperors would make to indicate whether a gladiator should be slain or spared.
"Just looking around and that sense of history fills the whole evening. We were playing our music in some way trying to exorcise the ghosts of some of the evil that happened."
The following night, organizers said up to 500,000 people filled the center of Rome for a second McCartney concert -- this one a free-for all outside the ancient monument.
The tour will end on June 1 in Liverpool, birthplace of the Beatles. By that time, nearly two million people will have paid to see McCartney play.
He has been performing 22 Beatles songs at each of his world tour dates, almost twice as many as the pioneering 1960s-era band ever played during its own British shows.
Memories of the 1960s do not come out only in the choice of songs though. The world tour has offered McCartney opportunities to get some satisfaction in the old rivalry with the Rolling Stones and their front man Mick Jagger.
"If you're lucky you might break house records. So it's nice when you arrive somewhere and they say 'the Rolling Stones used to have the house record and now you've got it.' And we say 'Oh, sorry Mick."'
Reuters
ROME, Italy -- Flushed with success as he enters the final stages of a sell-out world tour, Paul McCartney is still in love with his job -- though he has a plan ready for when the punishing schedule finally takes its toll.
"I've always said since I was about 20 that I would be getting wheeled on when I was 90 and do a very slow version of 'Yesterday'," the 60-year-old ex-Beatle told Reuters Television in Rome, Sunday.
"I'll have a big holiday after this. But I like what I do... It's not really work for me, it's a job and hobby. It's a hobby! I like it so much that if I retired I'd still want to do music."
And making music, this time in a studio rather than on stage, is precisely what McCartney has in mind for when his world tour is over.
"I've enjoyed playing with (this band) so much and... I'm always writing songs," he said.
"The next logical move for a normal band is to get in the studio to make some new music. So we'll probably do that towards the end of the year."
The ex-Beatle's most recent album, "Driving Rain," was released in November 2001. He had not previously announced another one was already on the agenda.
McCartney began his "Back in the World" tour in April 2002. He played 58 concerts in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Japan last year, and is in the middle of the 32-show European leg of the tour, which includes stops in 12 countries.
In Rome, he played a benefit concert inside the Colosseum -- only the second rock 'n' roll gig in the arena where gladiators fought to the death some 2,000 years ago.
More than 500,000 turned out to watch the ex-Beatle play in Rome.
"You just kept getting flashes of Nero with his thumbs up or thumbs down, and lions," McCartney joked, referring to the brutal Roman Emperor Nero and the sign that emperors would make to indicate whether a gladiator should be slain or spared.
"Just looking around and that sense of history fills the whole evening. We were playing our music in some way trying to exorcise the ghosts of some of the evil that happened."
The following night, organizers said up to 500,000 people filled the center of Rome for a second McCartney concert -- this one a free-for all outside the ancient monument.
The tour will end on June 1 in Liverpool, birthplace of the Beatles. By that time, nearly two million people will have paid to see McCartney play.
He has been performing 22 Beatles songs at each of his world tour dates, almost twice as many as the pioneering 1960s-era band ever played during its own British shows.
Memories of the 1960s do not come out only in the choice of songs though. The world tour has offered McCartney opportunities to get some satisfaction in the old rivalry with the Rolling Stones and their front man Mick Jagger.
"If you're lucky you might break house records. So it's nice when you arrive somewhere and they say 'the Rolling Stones used to have the house record and now you've got it.' And we say 'Oh, sorry Mick."'