Really Love You

The first song credited to McCartney-Starkey, ‘Really Love You’ appears on Paul McCartney’s tenth solo album Flaming Pie.

It emerged from a jam in the studio the day after the pair recorded ‘Beautiful Night’.

Doing ‘Beautiful Night’ with Ringo wasn’t enough. I wanted more fun. So we jammed. The actor’s worst dream is being on stage not knowing what play he’s in – doing this vocal was like that, you can go anywhere. You’ve got to clear your mind – and play bass – let your head to and ad-lib it all.

He invited me to play on ‘Beautiful Night’ and I said ‘Sure’. I think it’s a beautiful track, and while we did that we started jamming. He had a few ideas for a jam, playing his bass. I love to play drums when Paul’s playing bass – he’s such a fine player, still the most melodic. We were just jamming and he was shouting these words, and it turned into a song. Jeff Lynne was playing a little plunky guitar too – it was just the three of us and it turned out fine, just finding a pattern and playing it – it’s organic, it grows. It was a fun day and I like to hang out with Paul and Linda.

Well, I was surprised [at being co-credited for the song] when I spoke to Paul, because we did just make it up as we went along. He called me and said I was sharing the credit and I said, ‘Thank you very much’. I wasn’t expecting anything. It’s like, ‘you play on my albums through the years, and I’ll play on yours’. I don’t get union rate! You know, we usually have dinner and send each other flowers and that’s it.

A remix of ‘Really Love You’ appeared on the 2005 remix album Twin Freaks. It was also released as a 12″ vinyl single limited to 2,000 copies, which also contained ‘Lalula’ from the album. The remix of ‘Really Love You’ featured drums from ‘What’s That You’re Doing?’, a collaboration with Stevie Wonder from the Tug Of War album.

Paul McCartney never performed ‘Really Love You’ live.