Looking For Changes | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

‘Looking For Changes’ is the second song on Off The Ground, Paul McCartney’s ninth solo studio album. See more…

The song is supportive of animal rights. Paul and Linda McCartney had been vegetarians for a number of years, and often used their public platform to promote the cause.

I thought I’d better try to write a protest song. And that’s not easy. I’ve shied away from it. Rock ‘N’ Roll ‘s much easier, the straight ahead thing like ‘I’m Down’ way back. But I thought I’d try something more pointed. I looked at animal experiments and took three of them — using a bit of poetic licence, I’m not sure the lyrics are technically accurate.

The first verse is about a cat with a machine in its brain. The image comes from a photo I’d seen of a perfectly ordinary tabby cat with the top of its head removed and this piece of metal stuck in it for the purposes of some scientific experiment.

Then there’s rabbits with tears in their eyes — which is about those companies who are testing perfumes and cosmetics by dropping the stuff in animals’ eyes. When the animals go blind they say, Oh that’s enough, and draw their scientific conclusions. These Belsen/Auschwitz experiments on animals are going on in our name.

Then the final image is of a monkey smoking — I think it’s normally beagles the labs use, but that doesn’t matter. I thought at least I could play that one to me mates at PETA and they’d say, Right on, man. I mean, the worst thing is that animals can’t speak, they can’t say, I want a lawyer.