I Owe It All To You

‘I Owe It All To You’ is the fifth song on Off The Ground, Paul McCartney’s ninth solo studio album.

I’d been to a place in the south of France – the kids took us there for Linda’s birthday. I drove past this sign which said Cathedrale Des Images. It turned out to be this huge place carved out of the rock, you’re this big (finger and thumb apart) and the walls are this big (arm’s width). They have dozens of projectors and they throw these images on the walls suddenly the whole place lights up and it’s an Egyptian temple, next thing (finger snap) it’s all stained glass, and so on. It’s a trip, like UFO was back in Pink Floyd’s time. I came back and wrote ‘I Owe It All To You’: ‘I stood inside Egyptian temples/I looked into eternal gardens’.

McCartney performed ‘I Owe It All To You’ on just a handful of occasions, and never as part of a full concert.

On 20 November 1992 McCartney and his band performed at the Mean Fiddler in London for a TV special titled A Carlton New Year, which was broadcast on 1 January. They played three songs: ‘Biker Like An Icon’, ‘I Owe It All To You’, and ‘Hope Of Deliverance’. It was the first time each of the songs was performed live.

On 10 and 11 December they took part in Up Close, filmed at New York’s Ed Sullivan Theater. It was a promotional TV special for the Off The Ground album, which was released two months later. ‘I Owe It All To You’ was performed on both days.

‘I Owe It All To You’ was performed at three concert soundchecks during the New World Tour, in Perth, Australia, on 5 March; in Cincinnati, USA, on 5 May; and Columbia, USA, on 7 May 1993.

I felt very involved in that song, played a lot and sang, and it came out very straightforwardly.