Find My Way

‘Find My Way’ is the second song on McCartney III, Paul McCartney’s solo album written and recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown.

A video, directed by Roman Coppola, was filmed using 46 cameras to capture McCartney on every instrument and from multiple angles.

I started Find My Way on the piano, it was based on an idea that I’d had in the car when I was listening to music and there was a beat on the radio I liked so I just started singing along with it making up my own words and tune #TimsTwitterListeningParty #McCartneyIII

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) December 21, 2020

On ‘Find My Way’ the bass switches between the Höfner and the Moog, sort of intersecting in different sections of the song. We use the Moog a fair bit…

For ‘Find My Way’ we used a quarter-inch Brenell tape machine. It’s got a speaker built into it, Paul will record a lick into it, and then we’ll play it back at different speeds through the speaker. We’ve got a tape loop set up with a tape reel the lid of a coffee can so you get a continuous loop.

It’s got a sound-on-sound mode where it lifts the tape away from the record head so you can have a couple of different sounds playing at the same time. Then when you put it into playback mode you can play it at different speeds and get different octaves. We’ll record that into Pro Tools and edit them up.

I actually had a whole different idea for the verses which I decided I didn’t like and eventually put in a new idea which is now the middle! #TimsTwitterListeningParty #McCartneyIII

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) December 21, 2020

I will sometimes, as I did with a couple of songs on this album, sit down at the piano and just start noodling around, and I’ll get a little idea and start to fill that out. So the lyrics — for me, it’s following a trail. I’ll start [sings ‘Find My Way’]: “I can find my way. I know my left from right, da da da.” And I’ll just sort of fill it in. Like, we know this song, and I’m trying to remember the lyrics.

That was written at the beginning of lockdown. It was a very scary time. Other scares we’ve had – SARS, avian flu – they seemed to happen to other people. But this was happening to everyone, people you knew, everyone in the world. Some of my friends, some people I knew were close to going under with it.