Sir Paul McCartney explains Beatles influence

Sir Paul McCartney’s latest album was influenced by his own work with The Beatles.

The ‘Hey Jude’ hitmaker was concerned ‘New’ was too much of a ”patchwork quilt” to flow well, but listened back to his old group and realised they tried hard to make their LPs as eclectic as possible.

He explained: ”I thought, if it’s good enough for The Beatles then it’s good enough for me.

”At first the songs were so different to each other I was concerned it was way too much of a patchwork quilt, with no cohesion.

”So I listened to some Beatles albums, in particular the ‘White Album’, and realised it’s all over the place in terms of styles. We did that on purpose. We’d say to Ringo, ‘Did you use that snare drum on the last track?’ and if he said ‘yes’ we would make him change it.”

And the 71-year-old star also used wife Nancy Shevell as motivation to finish writing songs.

He explained: ”I would sit down with the guitar in the morning and knew in three hours’ time I could wake up Nancy in New York because of the time difference.

”That gave me great motivation to finish a song and play it to her. I’m such a smoothy.”

Paul worked with producers Ethan Johns, Mark Ronson, Paul Epworth and Giles Martin on ‘New’ and admitted he initially only wanted to record with one, but they all got on so well, they felt like family.

He said: ”I was trying four producers with the aim of having just one. But we got on great, all of them. They are basically all my sons, long lost children. They are all very free, that’s what I like.”