Be What You See (Link)

‘Be What You See (Link)’ is the tenth and shortest track on Tug Of War, Paul McCartney’s third solo album.

Lasting just 34 seconds, it acts as a bridge between the rockabilly Carl Perkins duet ‘Get It’ and ‘Dress Me Up As A Robber’.

‘Be What You See (Link)’ was recorded at AIR Studios in London on 29 December 1981. It featured McCartney on acoustic guitar and vocals fed through a vocoder.

McCartney had recorded linking tracks from his earliest days with Wings. Others included ‘Bip Bop Link’, ‘Mumbo Link’, and ‘Cuff Link’.

The idea originally was that I wanted a few moments on the album where, like on a Pink Floyd album, you’ll get a sound developing into another sound, and I like that kind of thing, like where a radio play atmosphere develops. Carl [Perkins] and I had a joke at the end of ‘Get It’ and he started laughing. It was a nice way to end the track. It was genuine laughing but I wanted the laughing to go on into something more mystical. So I got on a vocoder, which Herbie Hancock, the musician, uses, where you play the actual notes with your mouth. And I got into this and it developed like the way you hear on the album, mixed into the next track. It’s difficult because if you start a short track and it starts to sound good, how do you finish it? It’s only a link you’re making, but you’ve got to get out. You can’t stay there forever, because it was only meant to be a link. We kept it like that with the laughing.