Hand In Hand

‘Hand In Hand’ is the ninth track on Egypt Station, Paul McCartney’s 17th solo studio album.

Sometimes songs just come to you, sort of late at night. And I’ve got a piano at home, and in actual fact this particular piano happens to be my dad’s old piano, so it’s special to me. And I was sitting there one night and I just started to find these chords that are the beginning of ‘Hand In Hand’.

And it’s basically a love song. And as I wrote it, I was imagining me and Nancy about to go through life hand in hand. It was written [in the] early stage of our relationship.

And then I started to think, ‘Yeah, well, this is a lot of people.’ You know, there are millions of people in that situation, where they’ve got someone they love, and they want to go through life hand in hand, and to be a partnership of some kind.

And it was nice, actually, when we recorded it, we had two lady cellists. That’s all there is on there beside the band. And it was very sweet ’cause at the end of it we liked what they’d done, we said that’s great, thank you. And one of them sort of said, ‘Oh, you know what? I’m getting married for the second time, and I’m a little bit nervous, but this song has made me think it’s going to work out all right.’ So we thought, that’s it! You know, that’s a reason, right there, for writing that song.