To mark the release of his new album, The Boys Of Dungeon Lane, this month, the latest issue of MOJO features a world exclusive interview with Paul McCartney. Grayson Haver Currin sits down with McCartney to discuss the emotional, 70-year journey behind the album, and retraces the key musical moments in Paul’s life: growing up in Liverpool, The Beatles, Wings, and more. (More info and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE).
As part of our month-long celebration of all things Macca, we’ve asked a few fellow songwriters to pick their favourite post-Beatles McCartney track. Below, Elvis Costello dissects the exquisite craft of a master he had the pleasure of witnessing at work first hand...
Jenny Wren
(On: Chaos And Creation In The Backyard, 2005)
“Jenny Wren is a song in the very special class; beautiful, elegant, but with a tone of melancholy that is not everyone’s first impression of the author’s disposition. Being so gifted a melodist, singer and bass player, one can overlook how Paul’s choice of a single word can lend depth to his music. The turn to the minor chord on, “Took her song away” or the experience in “She knew poverty” seems to imply that Jenny Wren might be taking place in the late 1920s. When we were writing together in the late ‘80s, Paul would sometimes let me run to with a verse of dense and opaque imagery, only to lean in to propose a perfect summarizing refrain, in just four words: “That” – “Day” – “Is” – “Done”. The perfect economy of Jenny Wren deserves its place in a precious thread running from For No One to Days We Left Behind.”
"We've done that before. Let's do something different..."
Get the latest issue of MOJO to read our world-exclusive interview with Paul McCartney in full. More information and to order a copy for delivery wherever you are HERE!
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