You’d think Mary McCartney – daughter of Paul and Linda McCartney, and director of the new Abbey Road Studios documentary If these walls could sing — would bring up her father when asked about her earliest memories of the hallowed Abbey Road space. But instead she brings up another British pop icon that she, against all odds, convinced to join the film: Kate Bush.
‘I think my first kind of memory [of Abbey Road] walks into the front desk when I was a little kid, probably about 6 or 7,” Mary recalls. “The reception there used to have photos of all the musicians who had been there before, this beautiful photo gallery. And there was Kate Bush. … L For real remember seeing that picture.
Mary contacted Bush well before the reclusive singer’s 37-year-old Dogs of love single, “Running Up That Hill”, became a surprise hit in 2022 thanks to Stranger things. Mary already felt that Kate was “very important to be in the film because she produced her own music there. She directed her own music documentaries. She was an incredible talent that Abbey Road used so well.
“I texted her and said, ‘Would you mind… can I talk to you? I’m directing this documentary – can we talk for a minute?’ I was quite nervous,” confesses Mary. “And she said, ‘Oh, thank you, but you know I don’t do interviews.’ … Well, I knew she doesn’t on camera interviews, so I kind of kept in touch with her. … In the end I just said, ‘Look, it’s so important to get you involved. Would you even record anything [as audio only] and send?’ And that’s what she ended up doing. I heard it and I got it chills. … I literally couldn’t believe my luck. It’s one of those the highlights of my life, getting to know Kate and being able to talk to her about her history there.”
Clearly, Bush’s accidental inclusion couldn’t have come at a better time. But while Mary wanted to illustrate that Abbey Road Studios was more than just the Beatles’ hallowed space, another artist’s “disturbing” performance in If these walls could sing turned out not to be very well timed. The film features several minutes of archival footage from 2005-2006 of Ye, then known as Kanye West, in Abbey Road with a 17-piece all-female string ensemble working on his live album. Late orchestration. Mary insists she didn’t actually interview the infamous rapper or take any new footage of him, and that by the time Ye made his most blatant anti-Semitic remarks, it was too late to even consider removing his clip from the documentary .
“It is disturbing because any kind of anti-Semitism or racism is something that is very disturbing to me and almost everyone. The interview [in the documentary ] is a very vintage interview done when he was recording there a long time ago,” Mary sighs. “[My intention] involving him, when I was making the documentary, I had to involve all the different artists that were there and using that space. And you know, it was a great album that he recorded there. … But the documentary was already locked. That’s when a lot of his press interviews that he did started to come about. It’s quite disturbing.”
Among the new interviews Mary conducted for the film were the Gallagher brothers from Oasis – separately, of course. She might have been able to convince Kate Bush to include an original narration, but getting Liam and Noel in the same room was always going to be an even bigger gamble. (“I can only do my best!” laughs Mary.) She found her conversations with two other rock legends especially enlightening.
“I had no idea Elton John and Jimmy Page were session musicians there!” Mary marvels. “I thought, ‘Let’s talk about session musicians and recording processes’, and we went through the recording sheets telling who’s been there – and then one sheet said, ‘Jimmy Page’! … I think that was one of the big surprises for me, being able to talk to Elton and Jimmy about how — so early, early in their career – Abbey Road really influenced them, how they cut their teeth there and learned their craft at Abbey Road.
Page, who played on Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger” recording at Abbey Road, also shared a funny story with Mary about that session. “It was a folkloric story,” she chuckles. “I had heard that when John Barry produced ‘Goldfinger’ for Bond, Dame Shirley Bassey held a note so long she collapsed – but I didn’t know if it was a true story. And then we found this archive of her singing, and John Barry said, “You gotta hold that last note until the credits end.” And so she held it, held it, held it – and it was unfinished! She held it for so long that when it was done she just fell to the floor. But the great thing was that Jimmy Page played guitar during that session, so he could tell me first hand, because he watched it. He just looked at her, and she was so incredible and so dramatic.
In the end, however, Abbey Road will always be primarily associated with the Beatles, and Mary even learned new stories about them when she interviewed her father and Ringo Starr – such as the fact that Paul had done a rough, pre-photoshoot pencil drawing of the four Beatles who were in one parade across that famous zebra crossing, an iconic image that eventually became the Abbey Road album cover as a live action shot. “I did not know that!” she chuckles. “He told me that story and he was like ‘When I sketched it…’ And I was like ‘Guard. Where is that sketch? l need to put that in the documentary!’”
It could even be argued that Abbey Road became, in a sense, the much-discussed ‘Fifth Beatle’ after the Beatles stopped touring and became a full-fledged studio band. Abbey Road Studios was such an integral part of their sound that they liked groundbreaking albums Revolver and Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band might have sounded very different if they had been recorded in a different room. A fascinating moment in If these walls could singfor example, is about how the Beatles created another famous long note — that booming, 42-second E major chord on Sergeant Pepperside B, in “A Day in the Life” – with four pianos.
“It was difficult to choose which songs to include in the documentary, but I was clear about that song from day one because it’s one of my favourites. But there are also great stories in it,” says Mary. “I think the orchestra was a bit shocked, because usually they always read music and create like that. So it was a great story that shows how the Beatles sort of changed and pushed boundaries, but with great results.”
Mary continues: “Abbey Road gave the Beatles real freedom, and they really worked with the technicians and the engineers and of course with George Martin, all of them of such high caliber. It was a real collaborative process. So if they said, “How do we get this creative sound?” a technician might say, ‘Well, let’s take this tape and we’ll loop it right here.’ They were inventing new things all the time, which was really accelerated and exciting. Abbey Road was able to keep up with the Beatles’ creativity as they all pushed boundaries, changed the rules and used up all the space. They recorded in all different rooms. They used pianos lying around Abbey Road that affected the sound. There were sound effects, because Abbey Road had recorded comedy records there in the ’50s, so they could use that. Abbey Road was a place where they felt comfortable, safe and cared for. They were not hindered in any way.”
Mary, a first-time film director but a longtime professional photographer like her late mother, admits that “one of the big challenges” in making If these walls could sing kept an audience interested and invested in a movie about a ’90 year old building’. That’s why she mostly avoided the “nerdy side of it,” explaining, “Within my photography and everything I do, it’s about people and emotion and connections. So I went for the emotional stories that would really engage the viewer. … What I like about the documentary is that the interviews feel very personal. Everyone felt relaxed, like they were real wanted to talk about space. They’re very reflective and I think that’s very inclusive for the audience. It’s like you feel at home there.
“I mean, I see people on this crosswalk all the time, making a pilgrimage to space, because it really means so much to so many people. And so I hope that by the end of watching the documentary you feel like you’ve been in space and you understand why people are so passionate about it and why people are still recording there to this day.
Read more from Yahoo Entertainment:
-
Ringo Starr on his best drumming moments, the one who isn’t bad, and wanting to be Frank Sinatra
-
Is something good going to happen? Big Boi hints at an upcoming dream collaboration with Kate Bush
-
Giles Martin talks about the rarity of the Beatles’ ‘Yellow Sadmarine’ and why ‘Revolver’ was a ‘prog’ album: ‘If any other band did this, they’d be accused of being pretentious’
-
Olivia Harrison reflects on George Harrison’s life and death in poetry memoirs: “He used to say, ‘I gave my nervous system for the Beatles.’”
-
The Full Monty: Eric Idle talks secret battle against cancer, the Rutles, George Harrison, his lost David Bowie-Kate Bush movie and making Queen Elizabeth II laugh
-
Julian Lennon comes to terms with family legacy with ‘Jude’ album, ‘Imagine’ cover: ‘Breaking through any fear and anxiety I used to have’
-
Giles Martin on the breakup of the Fab Four, 50 years later: ‘You actually wonder if the Beatles could have saved themselves’
Continue following Lyndsey Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Amazon
