Anyway

‘Anyway’ is the closing song on Paul McCartney’s 13th solo album Chaos And Creation In The Backyard.

It was a little song that became a bigger song. The thoughts in it are quite little, but somehow when you set it down as a song it becomes bigger. And those kind of surprises are what I do music for.

It started off as the [sings] ‘If you need me,’ the little verse thing, [sings] ‘won’t you call me?’ which is just about, ‘If you love me will you call me?’ And then, you know, it was going quite straightforward and for some reason I was getting this feeling, again, why do you get these feelings? I don’t know, but I was getting this feeling as if it was the deep south of America, like Charlestown, Savannah, something about the chords, I think. There was just something reminding me, almost sort of Randy Newman kind of thing, I thought I was doing. As always it turns out nothing like him but at the time I think I’m doing this thing, so that was going on.

Then I got these other chords that sort of happen half way through the verse which really started to inspire me then. [sings] ‘Only love is strong enough to take it on the chin.’ And that started to move it into a slightly other area which then led up to this, [sings] ‘Anyway, anyway, you can make that call.’

‘Anyway’ was recorded in Los Angeles in 2004. The orchestral arrangement was by Joby Talbot, who conducted the Millennia Ensemble at AIR Studios in London.

So then it was written and took it, recorded it in Los Angeles and then got our string arranger out there, we use two string people, one’s David Campbell, happens to be Beck’s dad, or Beck happens to be his son, and then we use a guy, Joby Talbot, over here who’s very good too, he’s our English guy, and took it to David and we did a little string arrangement on it and so that kind of sewed it all up.