We All Stand Together - The Paul McCartney Appreciation Thread | Page 3 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Silly Girl said
And he says ‘all of us crazy soldiers/ Who were born under calico skies’– emphasising that we’re all humans, no matter which side you’re on. 

Oh my, it gets deeper as you look into it 

LoveUlikeGuitars said
I’ve always looked at it this way. The draft did loom large in Paul’s life. So I think that the song was written from that perspective as well. Like, this guy was in love with this girl, and it’s absolutely blissful, but the draft keeps playing on his mind always. That’s how I see the abrupt turn in the lyrics…he’s with his girl, but the draft is always playing on his mind, and he hopes that he’s never called to handle the weapons so that he can hold the girl as long as she likes. 

So most of us know he wrote this song during a power outage caused by a hurricane and calico skies refers to that dark greenish gray color of the sky during powerful storms. I’m with ya so far, Paulie.  

He then describes the song as “a gentle love song that becomes a 1960s protest song”. Huh? Ya done lost me.

That is akin to writing “my darling…your eyes remind me of no more nukes. Your eyes are like save the whales”.

Trying to justify it gives me a headache, but I do like the way you guys think. You both could be quite right.

JPM-Fangirl said

Zig said 
 

So most of us know he wrote this song during a power outage caused by a hurricane and calico skies refers to that dark greenish gray color of the sky during powerful storms. I’m with ya so far, Paulie.  

That’s not what I’ve heard Paul say the song refers to. He says/said Calico skies refers to the blitzkrieg, which hit Liverpool pretty hard not too long before Paul was born. Mary was already very much pregnant with Paul by the time the bombings ended. He’s gone on record saying he was born during an air raid, but that isn’t true, either. But it was still a very recent thing then. The whole calico skies thing refers to that, because both he and Linda were born during the war, even though she of course wouldn’t have grown up in a city that bore the visible scars of WWII.

So, with that in mind, the whole soldiers thing also makes sense. It’s not about the draft, because that ended before Paul turned seventeen, so he never had to serve. He could have joined voluntarily, but none of the Beatles would have been forced into army service.

@Mademoiselle Kitty >^..^< – that’s what he said (written words) on the CD booklet. Also, this from Wiki…

“Calico Skies” is the sixth song on Paul McCartney’s 1997 album, Flaming Pie.

McCartney had been staying in Long Island when the category-three storm Hurricane Bob that made landfall had hit in August 1991. This made McCartney sit with an acoustic guitar and write what he describes as “a gentle love song that becomes a 1960s protest song“. The song was co-produced by George Martin and McCartney, being started, finished, and mixed within a single session on 3 September 1992 in Sussex, England. It is the earliest recording on Flaming Pie .

McCartney says of the song: “Bob, the hurricane, knocked out all the power; it was all candle-light, cooking on a woodfire. Very primitive, but we like that enforced simplicity. I couldn’t play records, so I made up little acoustic pieces. This was one of them – it’s a primitive little powercut memory.”

If he told someone else it was about the blitz during the war, he is telling conflicting stories. What source do you cite? 

Mod Note: I don’t want this to stray too far away from the original intent of the thread which is an appreciation of our dear Paul, but the conversation is very interesting and already ongoing in this thread. If anyone, especially the OP @Into the Sky with Diamonds , has any objections to continuing here, we can move the conversation.

For all we know, they could both be true. Perhaps the first part was inspired by the hurricane and the last verse by the Blitz. It wouldn’t be the first time a Beatle smashed two song ideas together to form one song.