People say, ‘What does this song mean?’ and I say, ‘Well, it’s up to you.’ It can mean a million things. What am I carrying here? I kind of make it clear that it’s packages. So I’m like Dapper Dan, with my carnation hidden by the packages. I’m bringing presents for you, I’m carrying something for you, but also, when a woman is having a baby, she’s carrying. There are a couple of other meanings that rule themselves out. <...> I’m not even sure about that. I’m just playing with the word ‘carrying’. It’s a very ambiguous little song...
(Paul McCartney, The Lyrics, 2021)
By dawn's first light I'll come back to your room again
With my carnation hidden by the packages
I'm carrying, something
I'm carrying something for you
Ah, long time no see baby, sure has been a while
And if my reappearance lacks a sense of style
I'm carrying, something
I'm carrying something for you
I'm carrying
I'm carrying, can't help it
I'm carrying
I'm carrying something for you
carnation hidden by the packages
It's five past four. Teenager John Lennon gathers his bandmates into the scouts’ hut on the upper field. They get their equipment and get ready. About a mile away, in the Liverpool suburb of Allerton, teenager Paul McCartney is also getting ready. He stands in front of a bathroom mirror and combs his hair. He squeezes one more pearl of Brylcream into his right hand and runs it through his scalp. The teen sweeps the thick, dark brown hair up and back. It stands up high in front. He goes into his bedroom and drapes a long, white sports jacket across his shoulders. The jacket is a rock and roll fashion footnote to a popular song, Marty Robbins’s “A White Sport Coat and a Pink Carnation.”
(The Day John Met Paul: An Hour-by-Hour Account of How the Beatles Began by Jim O'Donnell, 2016)
Wendy’s [Wendy Hanson] own secretary, also installed in Hille House, was Jody Haines; she had come to the notice of Brian and the Boys by being one of the ‘Carnation Girls’, two fans who turned up with carnations at as many Beatles’ concerts as possible and politely handed them in.
(Geoffrey Ellis, I Should Have Known Better: A Life in Pop Management--The Beatles, Brian Epstein and Elton John, 2004)
I'm carrying something for you
Sometimes we would just start a song from scratch, but one of us
would nearly always have a germ of an idea, a title or a rough little thing they were thinking about and we'd do it.
(Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, 1997)
I ran into John’s house saying, ‘Got the title.’ A lot of what we had going for us was that we were both good at noticing the stuff that just pops up, and grabbing it. And the other thing is that John and I had each other. If he was sort of stuck for a line, I could finish it. If I was stuck for somewhere to go, he could make a suggestion.
We could suggest the way out of the maze to each other, which was a very handy thing to have. We inspired each other. So when I arrived with the title, he was just happy that we had a starting point.
(Paul McCartney about Eight Days A Week, The Lyrics, 2021)
By dawn's first light I'll come back to your room again
+ ‘carrying’ as pregnancy (songwriting as sex and the songs as the children)
I'd often wake him up so I'd be coming in a little fresher than he was, but after a coffee or a cup of tea he woke up and we nearly always went up to his little music room that he'd had built at the top of the house, Daddy's room, where we would get away from it all. I like to get away from people to songwrite, I don't like to do it in front of people. It's like sex for me, I was never an orgy man.
(Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, 1997)
I have a recollection of walking round St. John's Wood with that in my mind so I might have written it at home and finished it up on the way to the studio, finally polished it in the studio, maybe just taken John aside for a second and checked it with him, 'What d'you think?"' "Like it." "Good. Let's do it!" That creative moment when you come up with an idea is the greatest, it's the best. It's like sex. You're filled with a knowledge that you're right, which, when much of your life is filled with guilt and the knowledge that you're probably not right, is a magic moment. You actually are convinced it's right, and it's a very warm feeling that comes all over you, and for some reason it comes from the spine, through the cranium and out the mouth. That was a quicky and it was a nice little and thing which I liked.
(Paul about Can't Buy Me Love in Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now by Barry Miles, 1997)
John: Who'd have the children?
Paul: Dick James
(Get Back sessions, January 7th, 1969)
I’m not interested in buying his whole company. I just want my songs. Give me back my babies, Lew!” [Lord Grade and Northern Songs]
(Paul McCartney, interview with Richard Williams for the Times, Monday, January 4, 1982)
Many of the reviews of ‘Egypt Station’ – NME’s included – note the puzzler at the heart of McCartney, accomplished and fabulously wealthy as he is: why still do it? Why release a new album? Why collaborate with Kanye and Rihanna? Why tour? What’s left to prove? Why put yourself on the line again?
“That’s the bit that I never remember,” he says. “Putting yourself on the line. I always forget. It’s like women having babies. They go through this terrible, terrible pain, then they go, ‘Let’s have another one, love’. It’s like they’ve forgotten. And it’s a bit like that with me. I’ve had 17 solo babies and I still want another one. I like what I do and I always did. It’s a process I enjoy and I kind of forget that there’s going to be an end product, because I’m too excited and wrapped up in something, playing a guitar riff, making up a nice little phrase on the guitar. I’m just involved in that, and you get blind to the thing that at the end of this road there’s going to be an exam. So you have to just push that aside and think sod it, it doesn’t matter. I’m really writing for the people who like what I do, and that includes me. So I think, OK, that’s pretty cool, you’re still pulling the rabbit out of the hat.”
(Paul McCartney, interview with Dan Stubbs for NME, September 14th, 2018)
Ah, long time no see baby, sure has been a while
The problem was that, by this stage, everything was up for negotiation, and miscommunication was the order of the day. We weren’t really writing together anymore.
(Paul McCartney about You Never Give Me Your Money, The Lyrics, 2021)
MICHAEL [Lindsay-Hogg]: Were you writing much more before she [Yoko] came around—?
PAUL: Oh yeah, sure.
MICHAEL: Or had you – cooled it a bit, then? Before her.
RINGO: Before Yoko got there.
PAUL: Yeah, cooled it, cooled it. Sure. We’d cooled it because… not playing together. Ever since we didn’t play together—
MICHAEL: Onstage, you mean.
PAUL: Yes. With the band. Because we lived together, and we played together. We were in the same hotel, up at the same time every morning, doing this all day. And this – I mean, this, you know, it doesn’t matter what you do, [but] just as long as you’re this close all day, something grows, you know. In some ways. And when you’re not this close, only, just physically… something goes.
MICHAEL: Right.
PAUL: So then you can come together to record, and stuff, but you still sort of lose the… [hesitating] Actually, musically, you know, we really – we can play better than we’ve ever been able to play, you know. Like, I really think that. I think, like – [laughs; bleak] we’re – we’re alright on that. It’s just that – being together thing, you know.
(Get Back sessions, January 13th, 1969)
I can't help it
I'm carrying something for you
John and I used to write our songs in pretty much three hours.
<…>
This time period carried over to our family life. If I knew Linda was downstairs doing something – a photo session or a cookery programme then I would abscond and try to write something, with part of the thought being to surprise her, to give her a little gift at the end of those two hours and be able to say, ‘Guess what I was doing!’
Even now, I’m still disappearing into little rooms. It’s about finding a quiet place to think, creating private space for one to imagine. You don’t particularly want to let anyone in on that process, though. So if there’s someone in the next room, within earshot, doing the dishes and they’ve got half an ear on me, and after I’ve reappeared they say, ‘That sounded nice,’ I’ll think, ‘You weren’t supposed to hear it. But it’s okay, now that it’s done.’
(Paul McCartney about Great Day (1997), The Lyrics, 2021)
LINDA: I know that Paul was desperate to write with John again. And I know John was desperate to write . . . desperate. People thought, Well, he’s taking care of Sean, he’s a househusband and all that, but he wasn’t happy. He couldn’t write and it drove him crazy. And Paul could have helped him–easily.
(Paul and Linda McCartney, Dec.1984, interview with Joan Goodman for Playboy, 1984)
If I'm writing a song and I'm stuck, I might then go, 'OK, what would we have done?' But it's not like, 'Johnny, help me baby.' You know, it's not quite like that. 'Yes, Paul, put that word in.' You know, it's actually come out a little bit like that, so I'm playing that down now. You know, it always informs you.
(Paul McCartney, interview with Jim Axelrod for CBS News, Sept 17th, 2005)
