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Pushkin. Hi

0:18

everyone, it's Paul Moldoin. Before

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0:49

The organizers of this civil rights march

0:51

promised.

0:52

That they would be no fun. There

0:57

seemed to us to be a perfectly peaceful

1:00

demonstration that had gone

1:02

wrong, and that our army

1:04

boys had acted

1:07

indiscriminately and had fired on

1:09

innocent period.

1:11

The army have said throughout the day that they

1:13

hope to use minimum force, But three hours

1:15

after the procession began, this has ended

1:17

up as Comes onto the Box side, as

1:19

the worst ever confrontation between the

1:22

army and the Catholic people of the Kragan

1:24

and Bog side.

1:25

It just seemed so sort of wrong to

1:28

me that, even though I

1:30

wasn't a writer of protest

1:32

songs, I just felt

1:34

I had to try and say something

1:37

about this.

1:38

Why don't you just get alan back.

1:42

To the

1:52

I'm Paul mlldoon for a while

1:54

now, I've been fortunate to spend

1:57

time with one of the greatest songwriters

2:00

of our era, and will.

2:01

You look at me, I'm going on to

2:04

I'm actually a performer.

2:05

That is Sir Paul McCartney. We

2:08

worked together other on a book looking at the

2:10

lyrics of more than one hundred and fifty

2:13

of his songs, and we recorded

2:15

many hours of our conversations.

2:18

It was like going back to an old snapshot

2:20

album looking back on work

2:24

I hadn't ever analyzed.

2:26

This is McCartney, A life

2:29

in lyrics, a masterclass,

2:32

a memoir, an improvised

2:34

journey with one of the most iconic

2:36

figures in popular music.

2:39

In this episode give Ireland

2:42

Back to the Irish,

2:46

one might well ask who had taken

2:48

Ireland from the Irish.

2:52

When Ireland gained independence

2:54

from England in nineteen twenty

2:56

two, the northern region

2:59

of the island remained under

3:01

British rule. Those

3:04

who felt Northern Ireland should continue

3:06

forever as a part of the United king

3:09

Kingdom were known as loyalists,

3:12

and so for decades they were locked

3:14

in conflict with Republicans, those

3:16

who wished for a united Ireland

3:19

with no tie to Great Britain.

3:24

This was all further complicated

3:26

by centuries of antagonism in

3:28

the country between Catholics

3:31

and Protestants, and had burst

3:33

into political violence in

3:35

the late nineteen sixties and seventies,

3:38

a period called the Troubles.

3:43

British soldiers were installed in

3:45

border towns and the

3:47

Northern Ireland capital of Belfast.

3:50

The mainly Catholic Irish Republicans

3:53

who lived in Northern Ireland came

3:55

to fail that they resided under

3:58

a kind of occupation. On

4:02

Sunday, the thirtieth of January nineteen

4:04

seventy two, British soldiers

4:07

shot twenty six un

4:10

armed civilians at a peaceful

4:12

protest in the northern Irish

4:14

city called Derry. Several

4:20

of the victims were shot while fleeing

4:23

from the soldiers, and

4:25

others were shot while trying

4:27

to help the wounded. There's an image

4:30

from that day of a priest, father Daily,

4:32

moving through the crowd with this white

4:34

handkerchief held out as

4:36

a flag of truce. That's absolutely

4:39

seared on my mind's

4:41

eye.

4:42

Father, how many dead have you seen in the box side

4:44

appearing you to be dead?

4:46

There are the three in that Saracen car.

4:48

There are two men laying at the end of this

4:50

block of flats. There's another man at least very

4:52

close to being dead.

4:52

There's one, there are two others up there.

4:55

Fourteen people die.

4:58

The incident became known as the

5:01

bog Side massacre or

5:04

Bloody Sunday.

5:05

There was immediately a cover up. No, they

5:07

wantedness and throughout rifles they're all there.

5:10

But when you saw the footage

5:12

of it all, it just looked, yeah,

5:16

they could have just left these people to be and

5:19

if you've been shot then

5:21

maybe you know. But it seemed

5:23

to me like it was a

5:25

reasonable demonstration, the

5:28

kind of which had been happening in

5:31

the black communities and then all

5:33

sorts of communities throughout

5:36

recent history and throughout history.

5:39

So I was kind of shocked by

5:41

this whole idea, mainly that

5:45

our soldiers had perpetrated

5:47

this, because up until that point I thought our boys

5:49

were all great. I was

5:52

great supporter.

5:55

You are to me, nobody

5:59

knows that

6:03

that really what

6:06

army doing.

6:08

In a land across

6:10

the see.

6:12

I just startedn't wait a minute, you know what

6:15

if there were Irish.

6:17

Soldiers behaving that

6:19

way in Liverpool where

6:21

I was growing up, and you couldn't go here. You couldn't

6:24

go there because these

6:26

soldiers were God's aren't soldiers

6:29

were going to stop you going down the street. What

6:33

do you lie?

6:36

They've gone your way to

6:39

work, you

6:41

were stop by restorers?

6:46

Would you lie down?

6:49

Do you?

6:52

Would you give?

6:58

And so it just seemed so sort of wrong

7:00

to me.

7:02

Why don't you going to United Island and get down

7:04

because to sort it out.

7:26

Even though the Beatles were writing in

7:28

the nineteen sixties during what seemed

7:30

like a renaissance of protest music,

7:34

they had never released a song that was

7:36

overtly political. After

7:39

the dissolution of the Beatles, however,

7:42

McCartney went to New York and paid

7:44

a visit to John Lennon and Yoko Ono

7:46

in Greenwich Village, where political

7:49

art was very much part of

7:51

the zeitgeist.

7:53

This song is called The Luck of the Irish,

7:56

and the proceeds from this song and record

7:59

will go to the Civil Rights Defense in North

8:01

Island, Civil Defense, whatever

8:03

it's called.

8:04

John and Yoko had written The

8:06

Luck of the Irish at the end of nineteen

8:09

seventy one, inspired

8:11

by a protest they attended the year before

8:14

in support of the Irish Republican

8:17

Army.

8:18

If you had the luck

8:20

of the ariage.

8:23

You'd be sorry and wish.

8:25

You were dead.

8:27

You should have the luck

8:29

of the herrige, and

8:32

you'd wish you was English

8:34

instead.

8:36

In early nineteen seventy two,

8:39

in a furious response

8:41

to the Bogside massacre, John and

8:43

Yoko also wrote Sunday

8:45

Bloody Sunday.

8:48

For Sunday, bloody Sunday.

8:50

When the shot the people were to

8:54

cry a diaty modest.

8:56

Build a breed very head?

8:59

Is there any one amongst you?

9:01

Instead of payment on the kids?

9:04

Not so jah?

9:05

I was reading When They Live.

9:09

McCartney was similarly furious

9:11

about the British soldiers unprovoked

9:14

attack on Irish civilians, even

9:16

though he's rarely found anger

9:19

to be generitive for his art.

9:21

I realized this actually, that sometimes

9:25

I really want to sit down and

9:27

write.

9:29

A song that sums up my.

9:33

Dismay and anger at

9:35

the political situation that I

9:38

read about every bloody Moore, you know,

9:40

and I read about politicians

9:42

saying this and this and this and this.

9:44

It's like, God, what t work? This

9:47

guy is a complete idiot, you know.

9:50

So I'll sit down and say, Okay, you

9:52

are an idiot, but.

9:54

I can't do it. It doesn't really work.

9:57

I wrote a song was called angry. There

10:00

was an attempt at that, but it's not angry,

10:03

you know. It seems to be something I can

10:05

feel in myself. I can't

10:08

easily try and slate that into

10:11

a.

10:13

Song. Yeah, so

10:17

that's not one of my genres.

10:20

McCartney may not feel protest music

10:22

is an easy genre to access,

10:25

but Give Ireland Back to the Irish

10:28

is a passionate protest song.

10:31

Instead of focusing on anger and accusations,

10:34

though, the song is an appeal

10:36

for empathy, asking the British

10:39

to imagine themselves in Irish

10:41

shoes.

10:45

What do you lie.

10:48

If your way too

10:51

well?

10:53

You wis the.

10:56

Ressol does? Would

10:59

you lie down?

11:18

McCartney wrote Give Ireland Back to the

11:20

Irish from the British perspective,

11:24

but the conflict in Ireland

11:26

must have struck a personal chord

11:29

due to his family's Irish roots. In

11:32

fact, the two opposing signs

11:35

represented in the troubles were

11:37

replicated within McCartney's

11:40

own household.

11:41

My mom was Catholic, being

11:45

more Irish than my dad. My dad was like Liverpool

11:47

Irish when a few generations back. My

11:49

mom was a bit more recent right

11:52

from Ireland and

11:54

so she was cutting. My dad was Protestant,

11:57

very red, must

12:04

be free.

12:18

You mean it looks like me because I look Irish.

12:20

What it means is no,

12:23

not really. I was thinking that deeply into

12:25

it. Well, I see that now as

12:27

I'm kind of rereading it. No,

12:30

I was more meaning that it

12:33

could be me. Yes, it could be this guy. This

12:35

muld be me if we're talking

12:37

about England where we were. How

12:40

would you like it if on your way to work? So

12:43

as a man looks like me, there's

12:46

just a way of saying, you know, he's it's

12:49

just like you. I could have said, or

12:51

it's just like you and me.

12:53

Yeah, he's not other.

12:55

An means.

13:00

Anything.

13:05

As I revisited this song,

13:07

I couldn't help but think about my own

13:09

childhood in County armyor

13:12

just one county over from County

13:14

Monaghan, where Paul McCartney's family

13:17

had lived.

13:18

Were you involved in the troubles?

13:21

Not as an active participant?

13:24

No? No, No, who

13:27

was at around about that time wouldn't

13:30

be in consumable.

13:34

No, not at all.

13:34

It could easily have happened, honestly. But

13:37

my mother, I think, very like your mother,

13:40

was a very protective person.

13:42

And she wanted

13:44

us to do well in the world, and she didn't

13:47

want us to get involved in these guys who were

13:49

done at the end of the lane.

13:53

This period of history has of course crept

13:56

into my own poetry. There's

13:58

a poem, for example, called Ireland,

14:00

which goes as follows, Ireland,

14:04

the Volkswagen part in

14:07

the gap, but gen ticking

14:10

over. You wonder

14:12

if it's lovers and not men

14:15

hurrying back across

14:18

two fields and a

14:20

river that

14:24

somewhat ominous feel at

14:26

the end there of men, probably

14:28

armed, probably up to no good,

14:31

going about their business in the country,

14:34

and the river of

14:36

course representing the separation

14:39

of those two fields.

14:41

So when you talk about that

14:44

in your poems, yes, you're

14:47

recounting stuff just.

14:49

When I was there being a person on

14:51

the street.

14:52

With it all happening around you.

14:54

Yeah. City.

15:12

Paul McCartney was still on his

15:14

trip to New York when he

15:16

heard news of Bloody

15:18

Sunday. He rushed to

15:20

organize a recording of the track with

15:23

some of the musicians from his new band Wings.

15:27

It was the first Wings recording

15:29

that included the guitarist Henry

15:32

McCullough, who was himself

15:34

a Northern irishman.

15:36

So we made the record and

15:38

then I sent it over to EMI. Immediately

15:42

got a phone call from Sir Joseph Lockwood.

15:44

It was the head of AMI, but

15:47

Sir Joe, he said.

15:48

Paul, you can't put this record of

15:51

the Irish situation. I said, look, said,

15:53

Joe said.

15:53

The thing is, I'm not really a protest

15:56

songwriting, but this is a factory

15:59

deeply, and I feel like I've got

16:01

to say something.

16:02

He said, oh record, he said, please don't

16:04

put it out reconsider So I

16:08

gave it a couple of days and just running back. No,

16:10

you know, I've got to.

16:11

He said, it'll be better and it'll get banned. OK,

16:18

I've got micro straton. This

16:21

thing was big enough event

16:24

in my history, in my country's

16:27

history to.

16:29

Take some kind of a stand.

16:40

Joseph Lockwood's concerns about

16:42

the song were perhaps vindicated.

16:46

When the song was released, the BBC

16:48

Radio Luxembourg and other organizations

16:51

banded from broadcast. It

16:54

was too provocative, they said, too

16:56

controversial. Most radio

16:59

stations in the United States also

17:02

avoided playing the song.

17:04

The British Broadcasting Corporation will

17:06

play your song.

17:07

What do you think about that?

17:09

I think they're silly, you know. I think any kind of

17:11

repression like that, you know, it always

17:13

ends up in the person

17:16

who is being banned getting

17:18

more out of it than the people who ban it. Witness

17:20

this, you know you want an interview about it. It's such big

17:23

news because they ban it and all that.

17:25

On an ABC special report,

17:27

McCartney was explicit in

17:29

his support of the Irish

17:31

nationalists.

17:33

You think the British should

17:36

get.

17:36

Out, Yeah, you know,

17:38

eventually, that's what I think.

17:39

Yeah.

17:40

I was brought up to be proud of it. You know, the British

17:42

Empire and obviously own most

17:45

of the world at one time, almost gradually

17:47

had to sort of give it back because people said,

17:50

hey, listen, it's ours, you know, not yours, and they

17:52

want to back Well, I just see that's

17:54

the same thing in Ireland, you know, it's a little bit of territory

17:56

we've gained in the past. And I think this bloody

17:59

Sunday you know, where the British parachute

18:01

Regiment went in and sort of shot

18:04

at the people. Me as a British

18:06

citizen, I don't like my army

18:08

going around shooting my Irish brothers.

18:11

In a way, if people are shooting at them. They

18:13

can't just sit there and not shoot back,

18:15

you know. So whilst I don't dig it, it's

18:18

inevitable, you know that if they get shot at,

18:20

they'll shoot back.

18:21

Give Ireland Back to the Irish

18:24

may have been banned in Britain

18:26

and overlooked in America, but

18:29

in Ireland it hit number

18:31

one on the charts. It also

18:34

curiously hit number one in Spain,

18:37

where McCartney believes it may have resonated

18:39

with the Basque struggle for self

18:42

determination. Much

18:44

of the violence surrounding the troubles

18:46

came to an end with the nineteen ninety

18:49

eight Good Friday Agreement, which

18:51

restored self government to

18:54

Northern Ireland, but the

18:56

aftershocks of Bloody Sunday

18:59

still reverberate, and

19:02

they raise questions about what,

19:04

if any punishment should be faced

19:07

by those involved in the killing.

19:09

Yes, it

19:11

was a moment.

19:12

Where, you know, there was a sense that art

19:16

could respond to that situation,

19:19

which, by the way, is a situation

19:21

still hasn't really been resolved.

19:24

Bloody something itself.

19:25

No, no, no, I know this is a very thorny

19:28

issue.

19:48

Give Ireland Back to the Irish

19:50

a single released by Paul McCartney

19:52

and Wings in February nineteen

19:55

seventy two.

19:57

In the next episode, John,

20:00

being older and at art school,

20:03

would go to art school parties which

20:07

Nat George normally wouldn't have an entree

20:10

into.

20:11

But I remember going to one

20:14

and I took my guitar, so I'm sitting

20:17

enigmatically in the corner with

20:20

my black pole and neck sweater.

20:24

I remember sort of lounging around and

20:27

trying to look interesting to

20:30

this older crowd. So

20:37

one of the weapons that

20:39

I used was to

20:43

play this sort of frenchy sounding

20:46

song and sort of make

20:49

gottural noises, kind

20:54

of half thinking that someone will think, well, he's

20:58

French.

20:58

Probably Michelle.

21:04

That's next time on McCartney

21:07

A Life in Lyrics. McCartney

21:12

A Life in Lyrics is a co

21:14

production between iHeartMedia NPL

21:17

and Pushkin Industries.