ARTICLES
Paul McCartney on Van Halen and Gilmour
Besides being one of the greatest songwriters and singers of all time, Paul McCartney is also a multi-instrumentalist. Although he is primarily praised and known for his influential bass playing, he can play many other instruments and even recorded three albums on which he played everything himself. Many Beatles songs featured guitar parts and solos performed by him, such as in “Taxman”.
So he certainly knows how to recognize when someone is truly an incredible guitar player. Over the decades, he has spoken about many acclaimed guitarists, including Eddie Van Halen and David Gilmour.
Paul McCartney on Van Halen and Gilmour
“I like guitar players. I’m spoiled with guitar players. I knew Hendrix. I saw Jimi live a lot. Probably some of his first dates in London, back at Bag O’ Nails, where Linda and I met, and at a place called Blazes. You were in a room this size, little stage down that end, and him with his Marshalls wounded up to 11. I’m spoiled. I’ve seen Eric when he was with Cream, I’ve seen him develop.”
“So you can’t show me very many good guitarists. I think there’s only about 20 in the world. I think Van Halen’s real good, Gilmour’s real good. They have very different styles, but there’s some people who can hold a guitar and just play it and it looks like it’s part of them,” Paul McCartney commented in an interview with Musician magazine in 1990.
He has always been a big fan of both Eddie Van Halen and David Gilmour and has praised them on multiple occasions. He even invited the Pink Floyd guitarist to record and perform live with him several times, calling him a genius. “David Gilmour plays the solo on the record (‘No More Lonely Nights’). I’ve known him since the early days of Pink Floyd.”
He continued:
“Dave is a genius of sorts, so I was pulling out all the stops. I admired his playing so much, I’d seen him around; I think he’d just done his solo ‘About Face’ album. So I rang him up and said, ‘Would you play on this?’ It sounded like his kind of thing,” Paul McCartney said in his book “The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present”.
The first time Gilmour played with the Beatle was in 1979, being featured on the all-star song “Rockestra Theme” by The Wings and then on the albums “Give My Regard To Broad Street” (1984), “Flowers In The Dirt” (1989) and “Run Devil Run” (1999).
For Paul McCartney Jimi Hendrix was better than Eddie Van Halen
Eddie has often been compared to Jimi Hendrix because of the impact his unique guitar style had on music. But when it comes to comparing the two, Paul believes Hendrix was better. “I have very fond memories of Jimi. I mean, Van Halen’s great, I love Eddie Van Halen. But I still think Jimi was the best,” Paul McCartney said in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine in 1986.
Unlike Gilmour, Eddie Van Halen never played with Paul. But the Beatle was deeply admired by him and said his favorite thing in a Heavy Metal band was always the guitar player. “I like Eddie Van Halen as a player. He gets it right quite often. I like a lot of heavy metal guys because they wind it up. What I usually like in a heavy metal band is the guitar player. But when it’s just miles of scales, I lose interest. I like some of the hot sounds,” Paul McCartney told Guitar Player.
Bands like The Beatles and The Dave Clark Five were an important influence on Eddie and his brother Alex while they were growing up. Their mother enrolled them in piano lessons so they could become classical pianists. But when they first heard the Fab Four and The Dave Clark Five, everything changed. Curiously, they were more into the DC5. Alex later said that at the time, if someone had asked which band would last longer, he would have bet on The Dave Clark Five.
McCartney almost appeared on “Dark Side of the Moon” and Gilmour was a Beatle for a day
McCartney and Pink Floyd crossed paths a few times at Abbey Road Studios in London. The first time was in 1967, when The Beatles were recording “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and Pink Floyd were making their debut album “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.” They had the opportunity to get to know each other better then, but their connection became stronger a few years later. Especially in 1973, when Paul was recording a new album with Wings at the same studio while the Progressive Rock band was working on their masterpiece, “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
“(Pink) Floyd came in after us (at Abbey Road) and did a lot of cool experimental stuff. This was more Wings period, but they were next door making ‘Dark Side of The Moon’. That was pretty cool. (Yeah I listened to it at the time) the engineers were quite interchangeable. So the engineer that would work on their stuff would work on ours. He’d play us some of the ‘Dark Side of The Moon’ stuff,” he said in “McCartney 1, 2, 3”.
The Beatle was almost featured on the record, as Pink Floyd were asking random questions to people at the studio and including some of their answers on the album. However, they felt that Paul and Linda’s responses did not fit what they were looking for, so they were ultimately left out.
Gilmour played live with McCartney at the Cavern Club
Years later, Gilmour had the chance to be a Beatle for a day. In 1999, McCartney decided to play a special show at the Cavern Club in Liverpool and invited David to join the band, which also featured Deep Purple’s Ian Paice on drums. They performed the Beatles classic “I Saw Her Standing There” along with several Rock and Roll standards from the 1950s and 1960s.
Gilmour was extremely happy about the opportunity, as he had been a massive Beatles fan since he was young. “I’ve completed all the stuff that Paul has so far asked me to do with him. I don’t know if he’s doing anymore. But it was really good fun to get back to that kind of music for a change. Getting to be a Beatle for that night at the Cavern was unforgettable” he told MSN that year.
Once, when asked to choose some of his favorite songs, Gilmour picked “You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away.” In his opinion, it was John Lennon’s first clear moment of being influenced by Bob Dylan. Although he loves that song, he said he could have chosen almost any track from their discography because they were all great.
