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A Hymn to Yesterday
"So in other words, love is the answer to this turbulent world," he says, adding, "I'm not trying to preach, but I think the world at the moment could use a little bit of peace and love."
As he always has, since the days he wrote "Let It Be" for his mother, Mary, who died when he was 14, he chooses music to express what matters most to him.
  (By Mark Lennihan -- Associated Press) |
"It's just something I've done naturally all my life, almost not meaning to," he says. "It's just the way it comes out with me. Peace is important. Love is important. These are themes that are important to me. So I wrote my thoughts from my heart."
In "Ecce," he saves one of his sweetest melodies for a line repeated over and over, something he has been fairly shouting for 50 years: "Here in my music, I show you my heart."
The title comes from Latin words he saw on a statue of Jesus's crucifixion that he saw in St. Ignatius Loyola Church in Manhattan. Despite that Christian imagery, McCartney says his work is more spiritual than religious. "I wouldn't like to do something that was only available to Christians, or to Jewish people, or to Muslims," he says. "I like the idea that it's a sort of global work."
Critics have dismissed "Ecce," which was released on CD in September, as pleasant but lightweight and simplistic, the classical dabblings of a pop star. McCartney acknowledges he is still learning the trade since his first classical work, "Liverpool Oratorio," was released in 1991. His first drafts of the score for "Ecce" were written on a computer, and it was full of "basic mistakes." "I needed a lot of help just getting it to an orchestra," he says. "This was a huge learning experience for me."
"At my stage of the game I could just sit back and say (taking on an upper-class British accent), 'You know, there's not a lot for me to learn, I've pretty much done it all, I'm the master at this,' " he says. "But I don't like that. I've never felt like that, even when John and I were writing stuff that turns out to have been pretty masterful. . . . But we never actually sat there and said, 'That's it, we're done.' It was always, 'Now what do we do?' It was always moving on."
McCartney excuses himself. The last rehearsal is about to start before opening night at the Royal Albert Hall, with its royal-red velvet curtains and majestic high ceilings. It's a stage he knows well; "Liverpool Oratorio" premiered there, and in 1999 he led a tribute concert there for Linda.
An hour later the session wraps up, and McCartney bounces up to the orchestra, clapping and laughing and thanking everyone. Then he wraps himself into a warm overcoat and scarf and hops into an SUV driven by John Hammel, his friend since the early 1970s. As they drive off, he opens his window and leans out, beaming, and sings a loud chorus of "Ecce Cor Meum." The street is dark and empty, and McCartney's joyful serenade echoes off the old stone buildings.
