I Do

‘I Do’ is the fifth song on Paul McCartney’s 2001 album Driving Rain.

This album is not necessarily what you expect from me, because it’s not what I was I was expecting. But by going into the recording freely, not dictating, things just evolved. For instance the song ‘I Do’ was originally written down low, me singing it like a little low soul thing. But during the session I thought I’ll try sing it higher, and it makes for one of best bits in the song; it’s like I’m trying to catch my breath, because I’m having to go up the octave into this big vocal change. By doing that, this exciting little thing happened to the song. So this process of doing it the Rubber Soul way was making me sing a bit differently and making me think differently. I was letting David come up with his ideas and he was almost DJ-ing some of the mixes. We’d work until early evening, six or seven, and then we’d leave him to play around with it all. Most of the time I loved what he did. So that also took it in little exciting directions that none of us expected.

McCartney wrote ‘I Do’ in Goa in January 2001, while on vacation with Heather Mills. It was McCartney’s first visit to India since the 1960s. While there he also wrote ‘Lonely Road’ and ‘About You’.

‘I Do’ was the third of the India songs. It was one of those ‘if you only knew’ songs, like just talking to someone; ‘if you only knew, that it’s OK from my side’. It’s like a communicative statement to someone – ‘whatever you think at any given time, remember this – I do’. Like I may be goofing off but essentially I wrote this song to say it’s OK. That was another afternoon in Goa song; my three little Goaers. As I said I started singing it low but then, as a vocal trick to kick the song along in the second verse, I found I could actually easily lift it an octave and a nice little moment happened that I like on this song, when I’m catching my breath in order to go up the octave. It’s a little signature thing that happened which I didn’t mean to happen, but it’s good that there are those little accidents. And then David Kahne put an arrangement on from his trusty bank of sounds; he’s got like 24,000 sounds in his bank – he’s got string sounds that can be the bow going one way or the bow going the other way.

‘I Do’ was recorded by McCartney at Henson Studios in Los Angeles in February 2001, during a three-week block of sessions.

Recorded 17th February 2001 onto 16-track analogue tape then loaded into Logic Audio for overdubs. David Leonard mixed this track. Paul played Martin acoustic then overdubbed Höfner bass and the lead vocal. Abe played Paul’s Ludwig drum kit and overdubbed tambourine. Rusty played Gibson SG electric guitar. Gabe played piano. David overdubbed orchestral samples.

McCartney never performed ‘I Do’ live in concert.