YouSaid · the spoken record

Ian Leslie

lines on the record: 64
first: 2025-04-16
most recent: 2025-04-16
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I am going to spend the spring and summer talking about John and Paul. I'm going to love every minute of it. It is just wonderful to hang out with John and Paul and the Beatles and a great thing to talk about where there's lots of other darker stuff going on in the world. I'm going to keep writing my newsletter, The Ruffian, my substack, and I'm going to think about what to write next. And I have no idea. All suggestions welcome.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, and there's that wonderful link between them as well via George Harrison. Friends with Ermin and funds, I think the life of Brian. So I would buy that. And of course, it reminds me of this other aspect of the Beatles, which we haven't touched on, but it's another thing that's so unique about them is that they were a comedy group as well. You know, can you think of any other groups where laughter is so important, where humor is so important? And again, that's primarily John and Paul, right? They were all funny, right? George could be very dryly funny. But that sense of antique overflowing, childlike glee and humor that runs all the way through the Beatles is John Apoll. And it's not true of any other group. So the link between music and comedy is just so interesting.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that's important because actually I think the scale of the achievement of what they did together was rooted in that incredibly rich and deep relationship. It wasn't just a byproduct or a coincidence.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I think Jag Enriches is much more like a marriage, right? Versus a love affair. They love each other, but they're not wildly compelled by each other. I'm not sure they ever were. They always thought, yeah, this is the guy I want to write, make music with. He's obviously great and our talents fit together. Let's get married. But it was nothing like this kind of intense jealousy-ridden, tempestuous, conflicted, hot John and Paul relationship. And I think there's other examples like Picasso and Brack. I don't think they were like John and Paul either, you know. They were just partnerships who came together, you know, got on with each other, but kind of turned it on creatively and then kind of spun apart. And that was it. I doubt that Picasso gave Brack much of a thought after they stopped working together and probably vice versa. Whereas John and Paul's relationship was much deeper.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reflective, but they're completely in love with each other, you know, Kahneman says, said to Michael Lewis, well, you know, I've been in love and all, but with Amos, I was just wrapped. You know, I couldn't, you know, I was completely compelled by him. I was lost. And they just spent hours and hours together, just wanted to be with each other all the time. You know, Kahneman's wife said, this is much more intense than a marriage. And of course, when something is really intense like that, it's going to explode. And in all these cases, the partnership kind of splinters and sparks and falls apart at some point. And then there's this great aftermath of sadness. But it's kind of inevitable because there are really kind of two ends of a relationship. You can have a sustainable, steady marriage type relationship where you love each other in this wonderful kind of loving, calm way. Or you can have this wildly creative, impulsive sort of dramatic and volatile relationship.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And in some ways it mirrors John and Paul. They're a couple of years apart. Coleridge is a bit younger. They've got very different personalities. Coleridge is flamboyant and voluble. He talks a lot. He's wild. He takes drugs. Wordsworth is a little bit more distant and a little bit cooler, a little bit more methodical, but they really sort of, they turn each other on, right? And they spend a lot of time thinking and writing poetry together and really kind of birth the romantic poetry movement together. And then the other example I was thinking about, the best 20th century analogy for John and Paul, I think is Kahneman and Daverski. You know, if you read Michael Lewis's book, The Undoing Project, as I have, the similarities are just too strong to ignore. And here it's Tavsky, who's this kind of wild font of insight and speech. And Kahneman is a little bit calmer.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's so much to say about that. So I'm going to narrow the lens a little bit and say, I think it's really interesting that there are very few creative male romantic but platonic relationships that are very creative. I think this is a particular type of relationship that you see recurring a few times throughout history and often makes a big difference. There's a kind of big leap forward, there's some sort of creative or intellectual revolution that happens. And I think it's kind of distinctive to this relationship where they're not lovers, they're not just mates, you know, and they're not homosexual, but they are two men who have very, very intense feelings for each other. And that feeds into the creativity. I was thinking about a couple of examples recently. One is Wordsworth and Coleridge.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there are a little glimpses of John's brilliance throughout the recordings he made in the 70s, but overall, I'm just struck by how much he missed that really annoying guy telling him to try this or do that or how about this. Or come on, John, let's go to work. And George did too, of course. So they spent the last sort of couple of years of the Beatles having a bit of a moan about Paul, but without Paul, they wouldn't have made some of the incredible music they made at the end of the 60s. And through the 70s, they very quickly kind of lose momentum. And while Paul kind of just tunnels on, not always brilliantly, right? He's solo and wings records are kind of erratic. But my God, he's productive. He just keeps going.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the problems is that, I don't know if you agree with me on this, but I think John kind of lost his voice much sooner than Paul, lost the top kind of level of his voice. Unsurprisingly, because he'd been screaming in songs and in therapy so much, he was shredding his vocal cords. It had obviously been smoking a lot, taking drugs and so on. And I think quite quickly from the early 70s onwards, his voice is thinner and to me not nearly as powerful it was. So on the rock and rollout album that he makes 1973, whatever it is, I think part of the reason it's not very good is that his voice is just not there anymore. It's no longer this incredible instrument that it was through the 60s into the very early 70s.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think walls and bridges is really pretty good. I'm not a huge fan with the exception of imagine and the plastic iron band, I'm not a huge fan of his subsequent albums. But I do think walls and bridges and mind games are pretty good. But I don't have strong games.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Again, he'll kind of write a simple pop song, and then he'll kind of like turn up the emotion somehow and the way he sings, in a way that distorts the song and puts it on and takes it into this strange place. So this kind of screaming vocal in O'Darling, I hear in it a lot of anger. You know, I don't just hear love and sadness and loss. I hear anger in it. And a subcurrent of violence, actually. And I think You could read it, you know, a feminist reading of that song would be that Paul is kind of exposing the possessiveness and sometimes the violent possessiveness that underlies some of these male rock and roll songs about Don't You Leave Me Baby, you know, run for your life.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Him in comparison to John, it's particularly fascinating that Paul is emotionally complex but with a complexity hidden inside brilliantly simple, powerful pop songs lots of time. So I'm not talking about the fireman now. That is like a sort of more avant-garde example, but just something like Penny Lane, you know, it seems like this bright breezy pop song. And then you go to Strawberry Fields and it's like, so obviously radical and weird and odd. But there are layers of complexity to pull songs that are not obvious to the naked eye and they reward a kind of, as you would put it, a Straussian reading. So, you know, a song like, oh, darling, which appears to be a love song, is, and I think it's partly about him splitting up with John, as I write about that in the book. But it's also this, he overloads it with emotion. This is something he does in a song now and again.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the very underrated ones, because very obscure ones are the Fireman albums, including Rushes, which is this almost totally instrumental album that he records in the wake of Linda's death. And it is very poignant. And the kind of few words and sort of fragments of recordings from life that you do hear are very moving when you know the context. And it's typically Paul in that I think it's one of his most personal and raw albums. And he says very little in it. And it's kind of hidden away. And in fact, it's under another name altogether. So, you know, and I think that's the kind of fascinating thing about Paul as an artist is, and if we're thinking about...”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think maybe Venus and Mars I really like, I'm trying to think which ones are underrated. A lot of them are underrated. Give me your”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it sounds much more of its time than anything the Beatles did. That's probably because, as you say, Paul was not really pushing it. And perhaps was being a little bit careful not to be the dominant voice in the room with people who he didn't know very well. And, you know, perhaps he was eager not to be like the big guy, you know, in front of his brother. But yeah, I don't know. I think your answer is as good as any.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was very professional and workmanlike, which is slightly surprising. But in a sense, no surprising because he'd grown up as a recording artist in the Abbey Road studio where everything ran like clockwork. But Harry Nielsen said, yeah, he was always in the studio in the morning and then saying, right, let's get to work. And they did work. But then in the afternoon or the evening, they were then kind of go crazy and go on drinking bouts and take drugs. But I think he was pretty kind of efficient and professional producer. I'm not sure they produced great work together.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, to say, look, here's my song, and then Paul takes it and just sort of takes it to another level. Yeah, I agree. And I do think the result is really beautiful and really underrated song from Paul's post-Beatles career.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's a difficult relationship. Danny Lane was very good, a good singer, decent guitarist, but he obviously was not a talent anywhere on the same scale as Paul or as John or indeed of George. And so there was always this kind of, and of course, Paul was at next Beetle, there was always this kind of inbuilt imbalance. But he did stick with him all the way through the 70s until the 1980s, very early 1980s. So it was an enduring musical collaboration, if not an equal one. But there was also this question of like the money, you know. Denny was being paid by Paul other than them both getting royalties. Although Paul did kind of co-write Mullovic Kintar with him, I don't know how much of Mullan Kitty was contributed by Denny, but that might have been Paul's, you know, letting Denny in, as it were.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree. I mean, it's a pretty good string arrangement. And you're right, he plays it with taking the best kind of melodic phrase from that string arrangement from Phil Spectre. So I think he was upset at Spectre just more generally for having the arrogance to come in and change the Beatles music in any way without Paul's permission. Paul hated anybody who was going to mess around with the Beatles and his music without his say-so. So I understand why he was angry, but I think you're right. I think in that case, Inspector did a good job.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I guess it's James Taylor, Billy Preston, Mary Hopkins. I mean, I agree they're not like heavyweights I don't know if that's'cause they were but were they turning away great talents? They would have had loads of applicants, right? But I don't know if there was a good filtering process, because there was no process whatsoever at Apple. So in a way, that might have been the problem. There was nobody kind of being the stage one filter. And so they had a kind of randomness in the process.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to Paul as I would like to be. I think he had this vision of them as completely wrapped up in a personal and creative relationship in which he could be blissfully happy, and I think around that, well, I think during India, for whatever reason, perhaps because he was just spending a lot of time meditating and, well, actually just by himself thinking. And then Paul goes home and he's sort of bereft because he spends the last couple of weeks few weeks by himself. I think that tips him over into personal crisis. And that of that comes, you're blues, and I'm so tired. Some of those miserable songs, which afterwards he said, you know, I really meant those songs. And he also, you know, sexy Sadie, he takes a lot of, starts taking a lot more drugs. He gets drunk a lot.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personality, his childhood was just wild. You know, it's so difficult and unstable. And so he was sort of plagued by insecurities and all sorts of personality problems. And India, he goes into India feeling very close to Paul, very close to the others. He comes out of it quite bitter and angry. And there's a kind of element of a wildness to him and a sort of malignancy that wasn't as prominent before and certainly hadn't been for a few years. It actually been relatively kind of calm the few years previously, a couple of years previously. So something happens around then, but I think it happened inside John's head. I don't think there is a concrete thing that happened. I think it was just the way he was feeling and particularly the way he was feeling about his relationship with Paul. He started to feel I'm never going to be as close.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think there is a thing, really. I don't think there is. I don't think Paul hurt John in any kind of concrete way. So John talks about being wounded, but nobody's quite sure what he means by that. Even Yoko, you know, when Yoko was interviewed by Philip Norman, I think in the kind of, I'm not sure if it's the 80s or 90s, she was like, you know, John used to talk about how Paul had hurt him more than anyone else in the world. But I was never sure what he was talking about. I couldn't work it out. I think there was a kind of pivotal moment. I really think that India was the turning point and the aftermath of India was the point at which John kind of something inside John kind of snapped. And John was always on the verge of snapping, right? Because he had this incredibly volatile.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think I agree. And I think this points us to one of the fundamental truths. About the Beatles, which I talk about in the book, which is the music was really, reoted in the personal chemistry between them. You know, it wasn't just that they had these talents and abilities and they bring the talents and abilities together and they collaborate and they make something really good. It was spending time together and knowing each other intimately that created this extraordinary music. And so this is why the model of them kind of going apart and then coming back together, getting into a studio and leaving and never seeing each other again for a year, it would have been very unlikely to work. They needed to be in this kind of intense hot house atmosphere where they're pressing, particularly John and Paul. When John and Paul were not in physical proximity to each other, they just found it much harder to have a creative connection. The creativity and the personal relationship are inextricable.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I quite like it, all those kind of post-Betles Beatles songs, I think there's a kind of poignancy to them and I like George's playing and I like Paul's middle age actually on that song. Is it a song that I really need to listen to? Not really. Do you like it?”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“George would get in the way. It's a defiance. It really becomes about the breakup, in a sense. So I don't really think so. And I think it goes to one of the extraordinary things about them is that they had incredible taste and they were very good at judging their own work. And if you listen to the demos that get released and the off cuts, you very rarely think, A, that song should have been in an album, as you do with Dylan, for instance. You often think, well, you know. Blind Willie McTells obviously should have been on an album. You don't really get that with the Beatles, and you also never think, oh, that earlier take should have been the album car. Or you very rarely think that. So they pretty much had a perfect record of choosing the best cut and the best songs for each album.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I like come and get it, said I don't think there's like a truly great song that should have been released. I mean, some of the songs that just refer to our previous bit about that ended up on solo albums like maybe I'm amazed. Not maybe I'm amazed, but backseat of my car were kind of floating around and maybe they could have been on one of the final albums, but no, generally... That's better as a pure”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe George was doing a bit of that. I think that's right. So all things must pass. You know, he had that at the sessions and you see him rehearsing it with the others during get back. And it's sometimes said, well, you know, John Apoll should have realized how great that song wasn't it a pity. But I actually think it was George thinking, now I'm going to keep that one for my solo album. So you're right, there would have been this sort of divided loyalty as far as for all of them, naturally, right? So, yeah, it's a great point.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Top of their game, so I can't think of many other groups, if any, who split up after recording one of the best albums. I mean, Abbey Road is the last album they record, right? It's not like they've just declined in form when they're thinking, well, we're not that good anymore. We've got to split up, which is what most groups do. They're making this really, I think, the first album of the 70s. And then they split up and they split up after the end, you know, at the end of a medley. The god of narrative just said, this is the way it shall be. And I'm very glad that they didn't sort of then dribble on, as you say, kind of reforming and forming, getting back together, maybe getting another member in, maybe someone leaves. And all that kind of narrative junk that most bands go through, they didn't do that. They just exploded and then they flamed out.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doubtless true. I think the kind of better version, better alternative history might have been George does all things must pass and John does imagine Paul does ram and then the next year they get to do a Beatles album and then the year after that they do their solo projects and they come back and do a Beatles album, right? So they would be kind of going back and forth and they did discuss something like that very briefly. You see it in the get back documentary. But I'm kind of glad they didn't. I mean, I think part of the eternal power and resonance of the Beatles story is that they are seven years and out. You know, there's this incredible narrative tightness to what happens. They get famous. They change the world. They change music. And then they split”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And other times he could just say, I'm just a jealous guy and make the words fit the melody in such a perfect way that it just goes straight to your heart. He always kind of bypasses the music altogether. So jealous guys, yeah, I think one of his greatest solo songs.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think everything would be better as Beetles. Because I think that when they played together, there was just this magic thing that happened. And I think there's just no question that with Renko, George and Paul, it would have sounded better. I'm really glad he turned it into Jealous Guy. Child of Nature is just a really terrible song. And it obviously has this pretty... Melody, but it's so sort of awkwardly gawkish and sentimental. And Jealous Guy is just John at his best in that he was just able to tell the truth in a way that's very simple sometimes. So sometimes he can write these kind of incredibly surreal, baroque, complicated word pictures like I am the Walrus”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You hear quite a lot of the Indian influence in his Fireman albums as well from the 90s. So obviously stayed with him at quite a deep level. You know, he wasn't doing that just to signal, you know, I'm kind of hip anymore. This is way, way after that. So I think you're right. It became a part of his musical soul.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm really fascinated by how the Indian influences work themselves into Beatles, music in non-obvious ways, as well as the more overt ways”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Paul kind of taking things from Indian music. You can hear it in So I want to tell you, he often contributed Indian flavoured things to George song. So Taxman, I want to tell you he does some kind of wonderful vocal melismas there. Hey Jude, maybe just the kind of fluidity of the melody, it might be kind of Indian influenced. I don't know. There may be other examples in songs that are quite subtle. So, I mean, this is not John Apul, but I think you can hear Indian music in songs like Here Comes The Sun, right? So Georgia's song, Here Comes The Sun. It's almost like he'd kind of digested and absorbed the influence by that time. And it returned to Western music, but with a subtle kind of those rhythms and the kind of fluidity of the melodic life.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yea. I mean, I do think that cascading extension, well, I mean, it's very different from Desolation Rail or those long songs and that it's just, it's not of one long song. But neither is it one song welded onto another because in the first part of the song he's foreshadowing it when he says So he's kind of like giving you a little hint of what's to come and part of I think part of what makes that song such an incredible achievement I think is it's we're moving into another chapter but we're taking what was planted in the first chapter with us so that it actually feels integrated even as it kind of takes off like a rocket”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think you can hear it in those songs. I'm looking through you, the willingness to put his insecurities and his jealousy and almost kind of spitefulness into a song, which of course Dylan was just fantastically willing to do, to put a kind of more complex kind of character into a song. I think you can see even earlier in I'll follow the sun. You know, that sense of just keeping on keeping on, you know, just the sense of a troubadour with a guitar who's just going to keep playing and it will never get too attached to anybody. I think maybe he gets a little bit of Dylan into his repertoire there. Yeah, I think you see quite a lot of Dylan. So most often talked about in terms of his Dylan's influence on John, but I think Paul, well, I think Paul was the first to get into Dylan. Introduce Dylan to the others.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whereas before, he really had kind of two modes. He was like full on rock and roll. I saw her standing there or this beautiful kind of romantic reflective side, things we said today. By 1965, mainly because of John, partly because of Dylan, who was this incredibly kind of, you know, boiling with hostility and anger at times anyway, McCartney was really uncovering that side of himself as well and pouring that into songs. And actually, yeah, you're right. I don't think yesterday is that far from some of those more ostensibly kind of negative songs.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's interesting because I think in that year, 1965, with another girl and I'm looking through you, he is really soaking up, I think, from John or the night before. He's leaning into his jodness in the sense of like, he's finding some anger.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He doesn't, and the arrangement, the string arrangement, he made sure that it wasn't sentimental. He said to George Martin explicitly, you know, we've got to find a way of not making this sound saccharin. And so they asked George Martin and asked the players not to play with vibrato or to play with very little vibrato. So, yeah, I think it's a very unsentimental and in a way it's not that far off for no one, which is a kind of anti-sentimental song where there's more or another.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't. I think it is, I mean, first of all, it's not really sentimental in any way. I mean, I can see, I think it acquired this reputation because it does seem to come from a different tradition, a kind of perhaps a more easy listening tradition in the first instance, although I can hear echoes of music going far back from that in history. But as a song about this person, this woman has left me and I have no idea why. It doesn't then sort of go on to describe how wonderful this girl is. Just says she's gone and I don't know why. It's bleak, you know, and the way he sings it is more of a kind of, it's clipped, it's brusque, it's northern. There's almost this kind of northern folk sound to the way he sings.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's kind of theatrical, but I think it's also very heartfelt. So when we sense that there's some humor going on in a John song, we shouldn't think, oh, therefore he's just having a laugh. He doesn't really mean it. You should actually think the opposite. You should think, oh my God, if he's joking about it, he's really, really, really feeling it.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, Jonah was throws sadness together either with anger or humour or both. And he didn't deny sadness, you know, necessarily. If you think about the songs on the White Album, Know you're blues. He's literally talking about being lonely and wanting to kill himself. I mean, there isn't much more of an.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a really great point, though, because I think what John always looked for, they both did, but John, perhaps more than anyone, was a visceral emotional connection, a physical kind of feeling that kind of comes off the song like flame. And I think in the Beach Boys, you're right. I can imagine he listened to the Beach Boys and thought, this is very clever and very melodic and very beautiful, but it's not breaking my heart or it's not making me want to dance. And so therefore it feels a little distant. Whereas Paul was more likely to be seduced by the complex and extraordinary beauty of Brian Wilson's composition. So, yeah, I think what you're saying makes sense.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A good question. I mean, it clearly had more of an influence on Paul, partly because they were both bass players. They both had these kind of expansive melodic gifts. So, you can see the affinity more clearly. It's harder for me to see what the connection between Brian and John is, but I also, I've never seen John deprecating the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson either. And of course, he was quite capable of doing so. So I'm not sure. Have you got a feeling for that?”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think he thought it was silly I'd never detected that. I think there's some sort of quote where he says, oh avagard is French for bullshit. Yeah, I don't think he really believed that. And I've seen more quotes from 1966, 1967, where he's talking about me and Paul are into this, you know, or Paul played be this. And so then we listen to, we started listening to Indian music or we started listening to avant-garde stuff. No, I don't think he kind of got it. He was quite as into it in the way that Paul was, but I think he was open-minded and curious, and he loved to check out new noises too.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Well, it's an interesting example of where the composition starts and where the production starts. Because you might say it's a John composition and vision. And Paul executes it incredibly. I think what John wanted from the song was to create a psychedelic experience so that the song was not just about the void. It wasn't just about a psychedelic experience. It was a psychedelic experience. He wanted it to embody it. And I think he successfully communicated that vision to Paul and the others. And of course, then Paul is incredibly well placed to deliver on that because he's been thinking and he's been immersed in that world of avant-garde noise production. So he knows exactly where to take it. So yeah, I see what you mean. It's almost a pool song, but I do think it's John's vision. It wouldn't have happened without John.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you're right. I mean, anytime there's some sort of weird, really avant-garde thing to do, we should be thinking about Paul. Not always the case, of course, because there are tracks like Tomorrow Never Knows where John really kind of goes full blast. But even then it's in partnership.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would imagine Paul, although maybe a kind of collaboration between Paul and George, because George was involved in some of the kind of wackiest stuff around that period. He hadn't actually been that present during the making of Sergeant Pepper, but he kind of came back renewed from sort of magical mystery onwards. So I don't know. What's your guess?”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to think now after nineteen sixty seven if there are examples of those truly jointly composed songs, and I'm not sure. So you might be right. I mean, I don't think sometimes this is exaggerated and people say, well, you know, they basically became independent forces after 1967 or not. People put it on different dates. I actually think they were writing together all the way through. It's just that some of the contributions are very subtle. And actually, you saw that in the get back movie, even when Paul's writing the lyrics to get back the song, you know, Paul is kind of throwing in little ideas and Paul is using him as a sounding board. But yeah, I think those kind of absolutely fluid, where you don't can't tell where one person's contribution starts.”
2025-04-16 · Conversations with Tyler · Ian Leslie on McCartney, Lennon, and the Greatest Creative Partnership of All Time · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source