Paul McCartney Plays Beatles Songs on Hotel Pianos for Guests Because ‘I’ve Given Them a Story’
Paul McCartney was a singer/songwriter when he was in The Beatles and ever since. His main instrument is guitar but he plays a mean piano too. McCartney admits that when he sees a piano in public, he can’t resist sitting down and playing. If there’s an audience, he said he’s intending to give them a story.
McCartney was a guest on The Zane Lowe Interview Series on Dec. 24, 2020 to discuss McCartney III. The former Beatle revealed his history of playing public piano for adoring fans.
Paul McCartney grew up with a piano before The Beatles
McCartney shared his history on the piano. It predates his time with The Beatles by many years.
“We had a piano in our house,” McCartney said on The Zane Lowe Interview Series. “My dad played piano for the family parties so there was always a piano there available so I started tinkering around. That became my second instrument that I loved. Even now, if I’m in a hotel or one of these places where there’s a piano in the lobby, I can’t resist. I have to go, ‘Excuse me.’”
If you see Paul McCartney play piano it’s no accident
McCartney is aware of his own legacy. He knows that he’s not just going to slip behind the piano anonymously. He hopes anyone who sees him tells the story to their friends and family.
“I kind of know what I’m doing,” McCartney said. “I understand but there’s two parts. One part is I can’t resist playing a piano. I just want to see if it’s in tune and how it sounds. So that’s for me but then if there’s some people around and I just do a quick little bit of ‘Lady Madonna’ or something, then I know I’ve given them a story. They can go home, ‘You know what I was doing? I was in the hotel foyer. This bloke walks in, he plays this thing and it was Paul McCartney.’ So I know I’m doing that.”
Pianos make good rain checks
Sometimes McCartney’s impromptu piano sessions warrant more than a story. Recently, a vacation got rained out, and he passed so much time on a hotel piano that he wrote a whole song.
But in fact, a funny story was when I was on holiday, very early days of me and Nancy. We were on Holiday in Morocco. We’d come away to have a great holiday together but it was raining every single day. You come all this way to Morocco thinking it’s going to be blissful and it was terrible. But there was a piano in the hotel foyer. So I would go in there when I knew nobody was going to be around except maybe the guys setting the tables for the evening. And I would quietly just play it. I wrote a song actually on Valentine’s Day for Nancy called ‘My Valentine.’ It sometimes goes further than just tinkering. Sometimes you get a song out of it.
Paul McCartney, The Zane Lowe Interview Series, 12/24/2020
