More from Paul McCartney on 60 Minutes
This week on 60 Minutes, correspondent Sharyn Alfonsi interviewed rock legend Paul McCarty in a wide-ranging conversation about life, music, and memories of the fab four. Here are some other stories McCartney told that you didn't see on the broadcast.
LISTENING TO THE RADIO
With all the ways to discover new music, from streaming services to satellite radio, McCartney likes to keep it old school: He still listens to FM radio.
In the clip above, Alfonsi was surprised to learn that the former Beatle prefers listening to what he called the "little thing with a knob." McCartney expressed his own shock at her surprise.
"Don't you?" he asked.
EMOTIONAL PERFORMANCES
No matter his source for music, after more than five decades of playing it, McCartney can still be moved to tears when he performs in front of a crowd.
In the video above, he remembers singing "Hello, Goodbye" at a concert in Mexico City. While the song is hardly an emotional ballad, the audience's response moved McCartney.
"The crowd was so fabulous that I felt this kind of warm wave of emotions," he said. "And it got me."
McCartney said that, even though he was singing a "fun little song," he had to hold back tears.
"The feeling was so great, that it just, it affected me to the core," he said.
"MICHELLE"
McCartney co-wrote "Hello, Goodbye" with bandmate John Lennon, with whom he began writing songs when they were just teenagers.
In the video above, McCartney shared with Alfonsi a glimpse into that time. McCartney said when Lennon attended art school parties, he and George Harrison would tag along. In an attempt to look more sophisticated, McCartney says he wore black turtlenecks and sat in a corner, where he strummed a guitar and sang in French. He hoped, unsuccessfully, to impress a girl.
The girl never came, but a new song did.
"Years later, John did say, 'Remember that crazy little French thing you had?'" McCartney remembers in the video above. "He said, 'You should finish that.' So I finished it.'"
That "crazy little French thing" became his song "Michelle."
TODAY'S SONGWRITING INSPIRATION
Today, McCartney draws songwriting inspiration from everyday events, even when life can leave him feeling frazzled.
"Sometimes one of the great things [that] motivates a song is anguish," he tells Alfonsi in the clip above. "You've just been through something, like, either very annoying or disappointing, or worrying, or whatever."
On one such occasion, he sat down at his piano and worked out what he was feeling. The result was the song "I Don't Know," which appears on his latest album. He says it's a testament to the fact that, with his anxieties and insecurities, he still doesn't have things figured out.
"But in a way it was a good thing, because I was sincere about crows at my window and dogs at my door, and everything was getting a bit much," McCartney says. "So I was able to sort of tell it to the piano."
To watch Sharyn Alfonsi's interview with Paul McCartney, click here.
The videos above were originally published on September 30, 2018 and edited by Lisa Orlando and Sarah Shafer Prediger.
