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It’s Sunday, so permit us a slice of nostalgia. Like so many of you, Clash sat down to watch Peter Jackson’s incredible Beatles documentary Get Back unsure what to expect – one prevailing factor, however, was the genius of Paul McCartney.
Sifting through the Clash archives, we-revisited a conversation founding editor Simon Harper had with the maestro back in 2009. The occasion was a Beatles re-issue, and the two chewed the fat over some classic Fab Four moments.
Appropriately, the conversation closes with ‘The End’ – the final moment on the final album The Beatles made together. The end point of the medley that climaxes ‘Abbey Road’, it seems to act as a message to the Fab Four themselves – “In the end the love you take / Is equal to the love you make…”
During our conversation with Paul McCartney, he notes that this is a couplet – the same way Shakespeare would tie together some of his most famous plays. “I just thought that was a nice line,” he said modestly. “Someone pointed out to me recently, ‘Ah, it’s a Shakespearean rhyming couplet, which Shakespeare ended all the acts of his plays on.’ But I did study Shakespeare, that was sort of my thing; I got a Literature A-level, which is my only claim to academic fame.”
“I’d studied, but I don’t remember thinking, ‘Aha yes, let’s end on a rhyming couplet’, but it is, and so, I dunno, just somewhere from my subconscious I thought ‘Yeah’, but then I’m sure it was just a very practical thing – ‘That’s the thing we should end on – that’s what we need to end.’ It worked out quite luckily really.”
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Discussing the famous medley itself, Paul McCartney revealed that The Beatles had numerous “fragments” but no finished songs. He explained: “We hit upon the idea of, ‘Instead of finishing ’em, let’s use them all as fragments and put them all in a big stained glass window – that will be what joins them.’ I naturally just then thought, ‘What will we do at the end of that?’ Because it’s all going to be fairly monumental – all these bits and pieces – and we wanted a big end. We were working out all the arrangements on guitars. I can’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I just sort of said, ‘Right…’”
Re-visit ‘The End’ below.
