The Paul McCartney Song That Features an Arrow Flying Through the Studio
Paul McCartney did many experimental methods during recording sessions to get certain sounds in songs. For example, he brought an anvil to capture the clanging sound in The Beatles’ “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer”. One song from his solo career featured an arrow flying through the studio to emulate that noise. Fortunately, no one got hurt.
‘Kreen-Akrore’ featured the sound of an arrow flying through the air
“Kreen-Akrore” is the final song of Paul McCartney’s first solo album, McCartney. Released in 1970, the title alludes to the Kreen-Akrore tribe who inhabited the Brazilian jungle and were known to kill anyone who encroached on their land and threatened their way of life.
In an interview with Forbes, Allan Kozinn, author of The McCartney Legacy: Volume 1, explained that McCartney was determined to simulate jungle sounds while recording “Kreen-Akrore”. This included building a campfire, creating animal noises, and firing an arrow from one side of the studio to the other.
“He found both the spirit and the sounds he wanted by building a campfire in the studio, making animal noises, and buying a bow and arrow, and setting up microphones across the length of the studio so that he could capture the sound of an arrow flying through the air,” Kozinn shared. “And this was for an instrumental track that he knew would be an outlier on the McCartney album.”
Paul McCartney was inspired to write the song after watching a documentary
Paul McCartney formed an interest in the Kreen-Akrore tribe after watching a documentary. The film, The Tribe That Hides From Man, was made by ATV and premiered on the U.K.’s ITV network on Feb. 11, 1970. The next day, McCartney started drumming and started to get a feel for the song. The recording also featured backing vocals from his wife, Linda, who later joined him in his second band, Wings.
“There was a film on TV about the Kreen-Akrore Indians living in the Brazilian jungle, their lives, and how the white man is trying to change their way of life to his, so the next day, after lunch, I did some drumming,” McCartney said in a 1970 interview. “The idea behind it was to get the feeling of their hunt. So later piano, guitar, and organ were added to the first section. The second had a few tracks of voices (Linda and I), and the end had overdubbed breathing, going into the organ, and two lead guitars in harmony.”
McCartney has always been a climate activist
While the song isn’t about climate change, it follows a theme in McCartney’s activism. The former Beatle has always been a fighter for nature and doesn’t believe it should be destroyed or infringed upon by mankind. In 2018’s Egypt Station, his song, “Despite Repeated Warnings”, expresses his frustration with mankind’s destruction of nature and their lack of action to stop it.
“People who deny climate change… I just think it’s the most stupid thing ever,” McCartney told BBC. “So I just wanted to make a song that would talk about that and basically say, ‘Occasionally, we’ve got a mad captain sailing this boat we’re all on, and he is just going to take us to the iceberg [despite] being warned it’s not a cool idea.’”
