November 29, 2023 • 24 mins
“Long Tailed Winter Bird,” “Bluebird,” and “Single Pigeon” are just a few of the many bird-oriented songs Paul McCartney has written over the years. His love of ornithology extends back before his songwriting days to his early childhood. “Blackbird”, one of the most universally cherished songs in his canon, was born of that love and worked well with the civil rights allusions that were the song’s subtext. The latter day companion of “Blackbird”, “Jenny Wren,” was also born of that love. Released 40 years apart, those two songs explore McCartney as an ornithologist as well as the ways in which he’s in dialogue with his songs as a writer.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman and Scott Rodger.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. Look,
there's a beautiful bird.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I loved bird watching when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
How can you tell one bird from another?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I like to be able to get out of the
normal stream of life. We were about a mile away
from quite deep countryside, so I used to just go
on my own, just being away from the normal stuff, school, family, life.
(01:21):
Appearance is one way to identify birds.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
How does it look?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I had a little bird book, the Observers Book of Birds.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
In yards or in pipes, wherever people are, you are
likely to find another small bird with a beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The wren was a great favorite because you wouldn't see
that often. Just simply said, flit from one little push to.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This small brownish bird is a wren.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And singing as it goes. We can learn to know
wrens by their sounds, so I loved birds. Because of that,
I started being able to recognize the birds.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I'm Paul Muldoon and I've been fortunate to spend time
with one of the greatest songwriters of the era.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And will you look at me? I'm PAULO. I'm actually a.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Performer, that is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on
a book looking at the lyrics of more than one
hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many
hours of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Who She'm a songwriter?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
My god?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Well that that crypt homie.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Jenny Wren.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Liked the girls Jenny Wren took she could See's age way.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Paul McCartney has been a nature lover and birdwatcher since childhood.
His song catalog is teeming with feathered friends. There's single
Pigeon from nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
Single Pigeon through the Railing did Throw You Out?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
There's Bluebird from the same year.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They did Night Window.
Speaker 7 (03:40):
Willis Algon fly.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Your dog.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
And you know what love this.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
I'm a bluebird.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And there are a couple from the Beatles era.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I am a rabbit pornithologist. I like my birds.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
When Paul McCartney went off bird watching as a kid,
he was trying to escape the daily grind of school, errands,
work and other people. Even though when he's looking for
a location to buckle down and write songs, here's the
same impulse.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
When you're writing something as embarrassing, as potentially embarrassing as
a love song, it's best to hide away in the
furthest corner cupboard you can find so that no one
can hear you through this process. So I will often
literally try and get away so that nobody can hear
(04:45):
me do this, because this is like very private. It's
got to just be me and this guitar. Then I
can touch this sort of inner place where I am
the troubado wandering around in the forest thinking of love,
thinking of the beauty of it, the mystery of it,
(05:09):
the strength of it. You know. Well, I say it's
potentially embarrassing because you know, someone could walk in and go,
oh god, you know, and that would be the worst thing.
So I'll go very hidden the ways for you. But
once I get on that trail, I really like it.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
Your impulse to get into that cupboard. Yeah, to get
into that little place to work. Yeah, it's a kind
of nesting impulse, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Is it partly Yeah, maybe, I think it's mainly privacy.
I think it's mainly to not be overheard.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
For privacy, one can head either to the tiniest cupboard
or to the great outdoors, as McCartney did when he
wrote Jenny Wren Angeles.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
There's a canyon that I particularly like to go walking
in and you have to drive there, so I'd gone
on my own. I just found a little quiet parking
space along the side of the road and it was
very rural area. I'd taken my guitar unusually, so I
(06:34):
meant to go and write a song. But again, this
was my outdoors cupboard.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Like so many girls, Jenny Wren Good Scene took a
song away, Like so many girls Jenny Wren Good Scene
(07:07):
Booken Up took away.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I remember just sitting there thinking, yeah, just said the
idea of the story was she could sing. Well, something
had happened, but we don't know what.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
The protagonist of the song Jenny Wren is halfway between
bird and human, singing and taking wing like the other girls.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Like the the girls, Jenny wrenn took king, she could sing,
and it's huge way.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In fact, McCartney may have derived the name from a
character in Charles Dickens's eighteen sixty five novel Our Mutual Friend. Here.
Jenny Wren is a dressmaker for dolls. She's a teenage
girl who was born with a crooked spine and underdeveloped legs.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the
dark hair, and if it were not a star, which
it couldn't be, it was an eye.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Despite her struggles, Jenny Wren has a sunny outlook and
keen powers of observation.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
And if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye,
bright and watchful as the birds whose names she had taken.
Speaker 8 (08:40):
I mean, it's the name is has currency beyond that.
Jenny Wren was a term we used, perhaps you used
when you were not in the fields outside the estate,
just about the regular the little wren.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is often think it's probably my
favorite bird.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's very little, very private, very sweet little thing. So
in other words, because she doesn't sing. But you can
see the world in its foolish way. Is how we
spend our days, Cassine love society. You can see the
reality of the situation.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
We spoon the days go.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
You can see all these sad things happening.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Side of life.
Speaker 9 (09:37):
Boke, that broken world is not unreminiscent of the broken
wings of that other singer.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, that's right. M hmm.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Blackbirds singing in the dead of life. Take these broken
wings and.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Learn to fly. All your life you were on only
waiting for this moment.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
To arise, which I think again.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
Songs being in conversation with songs from the tradition but
also within your own work.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
They're talking to each other. Yeah, and that's a good thing. Yeah.
I think. You know, when you're sitting down with an
acoustic guitar, there's a few ways you can go. And
with Blackbird, it's a little part. It's a guitar part
that you sing against rather than strumming chords, and so
(10:49):
I think this has the same kind of thing. This
is a little part rather than just chords. So I mean,
I think I was probably intentionally writing another Blackbird.
Speaker 10 (11:06):
Ba Bird Bye, black Bird, into the line of a.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Dark black.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
If the guitar part of Jenny Wren echoes McCartney's Blackbird,
then it carries within it another echo, one from the
classical genre Bachs Burret in E minor.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
A little guitar part which is so much a part
of it was something that George and I. It was
a party piece of us when we were.
Speaker 11 (11:48):
Kids, and it's it's box, it's do do do Do
Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
do do do do do do.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We knew the tune, liked the tune, but particularly liked
the counterpart, because well, do do do do do Do
do do do do do there's a baseline. M m hmmm.
(12:26):
So with this bark piece, George and I learned do
you do do do do? Do you do? Do do
do as the melody, and then do you do do
you do? Did you do? Do do do? And then
we kind of ran out. We didn't know how it went,
so we made up the rest of the doll. So
so we have our own little version of this back
(12:47):
which become a party piece. And I know that I've
been fascinated with it. It's structure, do you do do
do do do do you do do do do that
little bit, do do do, do that little thing. I
just switched it around a bit and made it my own,
but I knew where I was coming from. How with
(13:09):
that became the blackbird singing in the dead.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Of night, blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take
these broken wings and learn to.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
Fly all your life.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So I had that, and then I just I don't
know why, really, I think it was in Scotland, the
time or the break I got this idea of a
blackbird singing the dead of Nyechester. So it's just an
image of a silhouette of a blackbird silhouetted in the
dead of night in a sort of forest somewhere as
(13:48):
being this lonely sort of image.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Black bird light.
Speaker 10 (13:57):
Into the light of a dull black light.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
The loneliness of the blackbird is reflected in the simple
instrumentation of that famous song. No orchestration, just McCartney and
his guitar and the chirps of the bird.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
He's singing about blackbird singing in the dead um, take
these broken wings and learn to fly.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
On your line.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And I there was such an all encompassing record company
of the old variety that they had a sound library.
So if I wanted the sound of blackbirds singing, I
could just sort of look it up on a largicle
most birds, blackbird, and you would get you know, you
(14:52):
can look it up and get someone will go and
get the library.
Speaker 7 (14:55):
You were only waiting for this moment, do a rise.
You were only waiting for this moment to ride. You
were only waiting for this moment do right.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The song may have started out as a simple image
of nature, the silhouette of a lonely bird crying out
into the dark, but when McCartney wrote the song in
the spring of nineteen sixty eight, he was also speaking
to the turbulence of the American civil rights movement, including
(15:40):
the enforced desegregation of schools.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Then it started to be about arising. Yeah, you know,
Blacky said to take these broken wings. So another was
I was writing about the civil rights disturbances in the
Little Rock, particularly that we've been hearing about segregation and
(16:05):
stuff that shocked us so much.
Speaker 12 (16:09):
Colored children to attend that all hit schools have been
upheld by the United States, have been caught, city and
state police had cordened off the school, and many tuble
makers were taken her a custody.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know your broken wings, sunken eyes, seeing broken wings flying,
you know this is your moment to arise and be free.
And yeah, then I realized I was sending it in
that direction. Who now wasn't just a ornithological piece. It
(16:42):
was now to do with sort of politics and to
do with freedom.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Really, she saw poverty.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Breaking up warriors too.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The song Away.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
The Blackbird, McCartney writes about singing and protest in Jenny Wren. However,
the bird's protest comes in the form of silence. Instead
of selecting a chirping bird to accompany this song, McCartney
included a du duc An Armenian woodwind instrument with a
(17:28):
haunting sound.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
A minute I'm talking about Jenny Wren, I'm seeing the bird,
and then I'm seeing a person. And then in this story,
for no apparent reason, she just doesn't sing anymore. But
she's she could sing, she's a great singer, and she
(18:14):
doesn't sing anymore. And it turns out that it's because
of all our foolish ways, like a protest, and so
then it just becomes a bit reflective about our society,
how we screw things up and everything, and so now
(18:36):
we sympathize with the person who protests. Oh, she's even
lost her voice over this.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Like the girls Jenny Wren too green, she.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
Could sing.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
And'sch ways.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
What did Jenny Wren see? You saw who we are? Yeah?
What did she see? Who? She saw our foolish ways
and the way we castle o aside, the way we
lose sight of life. So they we are we have poverty,
(19:26):
breaks up homes, and we wounded warriors to their song away.
She saw sure the screw up that society is. And
(19:51):
you know, like everyone, we're just looking for that better way.
So it's kind of nice that someone spotted that the
change needs to happen. I think, you know, it's it's
a good old world really, and I think think we
screw it up. You know, that's it's it's highly obvious
(20:13):
with the ocean filled with plastic, it didn't get there
by itself, and so you could say we screwed that up.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
In typical McCartney fashion, he ends the song on a
note of hope rather than despair. By taking the protests
of Jenny Wren as a warning sign, he builds a
world in which she may sing again.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
But the day will come. There you go, it's going
to be a great day. And Jenny Wren will sing,
but it will come.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Jenny will scene when they spoken world, when's it's foolish?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Way said.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Beaus Joey.
Speaker 8 (21:35):
Can you hear a little bird singing at the moment?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's a rain? Is it really? Yes? It is?
Speaker 8 (21:42):
It's a house rain.
Speaker 10 (21:44):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (21:45):
The Indian name for it, I happen to know is
a little bird with a big voice. And that's it.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Wow. Oh well that is pretty cool. Oh I love
that little Journy Wren. Hey, Jenny, Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Now now why is that so beautiful?
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Young?
Speaker 8 (22:21):
But also you know what, that gives one faith that
everything comes together, just connected.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Jenny Wren from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, released
in two thousand and five, that in the next episode
an argument through song.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
You do you know?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Now? What can we do? It was at a time
when John was firing missiles at me with his songs.
I don't know what he hoped again, other than punching
me in the face. And this kind of annoyed me. Obviously,
(23:37):
I suddenly decided to turn my missiles on him.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between
iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.
Pushkin. Hi, everyone, it's Paul muldoon. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm, slash Plus. Look,
there's a beautiful bird.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
I loved bird watching when I was a kid.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
How can you tell one bird from another?
Speaker 2 (01:01):
I like to be able to get out of the
normal stream of life. We were about a mile away
from quite deep countryside, so I used to just go
on my own, just being away from the normal stuff, school, family, life.
(01:21):
Appearance is one way to identify birds.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
How does it look?
Speaker 2 (01:26):
I had a little bird book, the Observers Book of Birds.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
In yards or in pipes, wherever people are, you are
likely to find another small bird with a beautiful song.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
The wren was a great favorite because you wouldn't see
that often. Just simply said, flit from one little push to.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
This small brownish bird is a wren.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
And singing as it goes. We can learn to know
wrens by their sounds, so I loved birds. Because of that,
I started being able to recognize the birds.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
I'm Paul Muldoon and I've been fortunate to spend time
with one of the greatest songwriters of the era.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
And will you look at me? I'm PAULO. I'm actually a.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Performer, that is, Sir Paul McCartney. We worked together on
a book looking at the lyrics of more than one
hundred and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many
hours of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
Who She'm a songwriter?
Speaker 4 (02:39):
My god?
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Well that that crypt homie.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is McCartney, A life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Jenny Wren.
Speaker 5 (02:57):
Liked the girls Jenny Wren took she could See's age way.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Paul McCartney has been a nature lover and birdwatcher since childhood.
His song catalog is teeming with feathered friends. There's single
Pigeon from nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
Single Pigeon through the Railing did Throw You Out?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
There's Bluebird from the same year.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
They did Night Window.
Speaker 7 (03:40):
Willis Algon fly.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Your dog.
Speaker 7 (03:48):
And you know what love this.
Speaker 6 (03:52):
I'm a bluebird.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
And there are a couple from the Beatles era.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
I am a rabbit pornithologist. I like my birds.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
When Paul McCartney went off bird watching as a kid,
he was trying to escape the daily grind of school, errands,
work and other people. Even though when he's looking for
a location to buckle down and write songs, here's the
same impulse.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
When you're writing something as embarrassing, as potentially embarrassing as
a love song, it's best to hide away in the
furthest corner cupboard you can find so that no one
can hear you through this process. So I will often
literally try and get away so that nobody can hear
(04:45):
me do this, because this is like very private. It's
got to just be me and this guitar. Then I
can touch this sort of inner place where I am
the troubado wandering around in the forest thinking of love,
thinking of the beauty of it, the mystery of it,
(05:09):
the strength of it. You know. Well, I say it's
potentially embarrassing because you know, someone could walk in and go,
oh god, you know, and that would be the worst thing.
So I'll go very hidden the ways for you. But
once I get on that trail, I really like it.
Speaker 8 (05:27):
Your impulse to get into that cupboard. Yeah, to get
into that little place to work. Yeah, it's a kind
of nesting impulse, I think.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Is it partly Yeah, maybe, I think it's mainly privacy.
I think it's mainly to not be overheard.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
For privacy, one can head either to the tiniest cupboard
or to the great outdoors, as McCartney did when he
wrote Jenny Wren Angeles.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
There's a canyon that I particularly like to go walking
in and you have to drive there, so I'd gone
on my own. I just found a little quiet parking
space along the side of the road and it was
very rural area. I'd taken my guitar unusually, so I
(06:34):
meant to go and write a song. But again, this
was my outdoors cupboard.
Speaker 5 (06:41):
Like so many girls, Jenny Wren Good Scene took a
song away, Like so many girls Jenny Wren Good Scene
(07:07):
Booken Up took away.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
I remember just sitting there thinking, yeah, just said the
idea of the story was she could sing. Well, something
had happened, but we don't know what.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
The protagonist of the song Jenny Wren is halfway between
bird and human, singing and taking wing like the other girls.
Speaker 5 (07:38):
Like the the girls, Jenny wrenn took king, she could sing,
and it's huge way.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In fact, McCartney may have derived the name from a
character in Charles Dickens's eighteen sixty five novel Our Mutual Friend. Here.
Jenny Wren is a dressmaker for dolls. She's a teenage
girl who was born with a crooked spine and underdeveloped legs.
Speaker 4 (08:13):
Something sparkled down among the fair hair resting on the
dark hair, and if it were not a star, which
it couldn't be, it was an eye.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Despite her struggles, Jenny Wren has a sunny outlook and
keen powers of observation.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
And if it were an eye, it was Jenny Wren's eye,
bright and watchful as the birds whose names she had taken.
Speaker 8 (08:40):
I mean, it's the name is has currency beyond that.
Jenny Wren was a term we used, perhaps you used
when you were not in the fields outside the estate,
just about the regular the little wren.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, which is often think it's probably my
favorite bird.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
It's very little, very private, very sweet little thing. So
in other words, because she doesn't sing. But you can
see the world in its foolish way. Is how we
spend our days, Cassine love society. You can see the
reality of the situation.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
We spoon the days go.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
You can see all these sad things happening.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
Side of life.
Speaker 9 (09:37):
Boke, that broken world is not unreminiscent of the broken
wings of that other singer.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah, that's right. M hmm.
Speaker 6 (09:54):
Blackbirds singing in the dead of life. Take these broken
wings and.
Speaker 7 (10:00):
Learn to fly. All your life you were on only
waiting for this moment.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
To arise, which I think again.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
Songs being in conversation with songs from the tradition but
also within your own work.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
They're talking to each other. Yeah, and that's a good thing. Yeah.
I think. You know, when you're sitting down with an
acoustic guitar, there's a few ways you can go. And
with Blackbird, it's a little part. It's a guitar part
that you sing against rather than strumming chords, and so
(10:49):
I think this has the same kind of thing. This
is a little part rather than just chords. So I mean,
I think I was probably intentionally writing another Blackbird.
Speaker 10 (11:06):
Ba Bird Bye, black Bird, into the line of a.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Dark black.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
If the guitar part of Jenny Wren echoes McCartney's Blackbird,
then it carries within it another echo, one from the
classical genre Bachs Burret in E minor.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
A little guitar part which is so much a part
of it was something that George and I. It was
a party piece of us when we were.
Speaker 11 (11:48):
Kids, and it's it's box, it's do do do Do
Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do Do
do do do do do do.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
We knew the tune, liked the tune, but particularly liked
the counterpart, because well, do do do do do Do
do do do do do there's a baseline. M m hmmm.
(12:26):
So with this bark piece, George and I learned do
you do do do do? Do you do? Do do
do as the melody, and then do you do do
you do? Did you do? Do do do? And then
we kind of ran out. We didn't know how it went,
so we made up the rest of the doll. So
so we have our own little version of this back
(12:47):
which become a party piece. And I know that I've
been fascinated with it. It's structure, do you do do
do do do do you do do do do that
little bit, do do do, do that little thing. I
just switched it around a bit and made it my own,
but I knew where I was coming from. How with
(13:09):
that became the blackbird singing in the dead.
Speaker 6 (13:11):
Of night, blackbird singing in the dead of night, Take
these broken wings and learn to.
Speaker 7 (13:19):
Fly all your life.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
So I had that, and then I just I don't
know why, really, I think it was in Scotland, the
time or the break I got this idea of a
blackbird singing the dead of Nyechester. So it's just an
image of a silhouette of a blackbird silhouetted in the
dead of night in a sort of forest somewhere as
(13:48):
being this lonely sort of image.
Speaker 5 (13:52):
Black bird light.
Speaker 10 (13:57):
Into the light of a dull black light.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
The loneliness of the blackbird is reflected in the simple
instrumentation of that famous song. No orchestration, just McCartney and
his guitar and the chirps of the bird.
Speaker 6 (14:15):
He's singing about blackbird singing in the dead um, take
these broken wings and learn to fly.
Speaker 7 (14:27):
On your line.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And I there was such an all encompassing record company
of the old variety that they had a sound library.
So if I wanted the sound of blackbirds singing, I
could just sort of look it up on a largicle
most birds, blackbird, and you would get you know, you
(14:52):
can look it up and get someone will go and
get the library.
Speaker 7 (14:55):
You were only waiting for this moment, do a rise.
You were only waiting for this moment to ride. You
were only waiting for this moment do right.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The song may have started out as a simple image
of nature, the silhouette of a lonely bird crying out
into the dark, but when McCartney wrote the song in
the spring of nineteen sixty eight, he was also speaking
to the turbulence of the American civil rights movement, including
(15:40):
the enforced desegregation of schools.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
Then it started to be about arising. Yeah, you know,
Blacky said to take these broken wings. So another was
I was writing about the civil rights disturbances in the
Little Rock, particularly that we've been hearing about segregation and
(16:05):
stuff that shocked us so much.
Speaker 12 (16:09):
Colored children to attend that all hit schools have been
upheld by the United States, have been caught, city and
state police had cordened off the school, and many tuble
makers were taken her a custody.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
You know your broken wings, sunken eyes, seeing broken wings flying,
you know this is your moment to arise and be free.
And yeah, then I realized I was sending it in
that direction. Who now wasn't just a ornithological piece. It
(16:42):
was now to do with sort of politics and to
do with freedom.
Speaker 4 (16:47):
Really, she saw poverty.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Breaking up warriors too.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
The song Away.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
The Blackbird, McCartney writes about singing and protest in Jenny Wren. However,
the bird's protest comes in the form of silence. Instead
of selecting a chirping bird to accompany this song, McCartney
included a du duc An Armenian woodwind instrument with a
(17:28):
haunting sound.
Speaker 2 (17:52):
A minute I'm talking about Jenny Wren, I'm seeing the bird,
and then I'm seeing a person. And then in this story,
for no apparent reason, she just doesn't sing anymore. But
she's she could sing, she's a great singer, and she
(18:14):
doesn't sing anymore. And it turns out that it's because
of all our foolish ways, like a protest, and so
then it just becomes a bit reflective about our society,
how we screw things up and everything, and so now
(18:36):
we sympathize with the person who protests. Oh, she's even
lost her voice over this.
Speaker 5 (18:44):
Like the girls Jenny Wren too green, she.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
Could sing.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
And'sch ways.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
What did Jenny Wren see? You saw who we are? Yeah?
What did she see? Who? She saw our foolish ways
and the way we castle o aside, the way we
lose sight of life. So they we are we have poverty,
(19:26):
breaks up homes, and we wounded warriors to their song away.
She saw sure the screw up that society is. And
(19:51):
you know, like everyone, we're just looking for that better way.
So it's kind of nice that someone spotted that the
change needs to happen. I think, you know, it's it's
a good old world really, and I think think we
screw it up. You know, that's it's it's highly obvious
(20:13):
with the ocean filled with plastic, it didn't get there
by itself, and so you could say we screwed that up.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
In typical McCartney fashion, he ends the song on a
note of hope rather than despair. By taking the protests
of Jenny Wren as a warning sign, he builds a
world in which she may sing again.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
But the day will come. There you go, it's going
to be a great day. And Jenny Wren will sing,
but it will come.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Jenny will scene when they spoken world, when's it's foolish?
Speaker 3 (21:07):
Way said.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
Beaus Joey.
Speaker 8 (21:35):
Can you hear a little bird singing at the moment?
Speaker 2 (21:39):
That's a rain? Is it really? Yes? It is?
Speaker 8 (21:42):
It's a house rain.
Speaker 10 (21:44):
Wow.
Speaker 8 (21:45):
The Indian name for it, I happen to know is
a little bird with a big voice. And that's it.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
Wow. Oh well that is pretty cool. Oh I love
that little Journy Wren. Hey, Jenny, Yeah, it's so beautiful.
Now now why is that so beautiful?
Speaker 5 (22:09):
Young?
Speaker 8 (22:21):
But also you know what, that gives one faith that
everything comes together, just connected.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
I think so too.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Jenny Wren from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, released
in two thousand and five, that in the next episode
an argument through song.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
You do you know?
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Now? What can we do? It was at a time
when John was firing missiles at me with his songs.
I don't know what he hoped again, other than punching
me in the face. And this kind of annoyed me. Obviously,
(23:37):
I suddenly decided to turn my missiles on him.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
McCartney A Life in Lyrics is a co production between
iHeartMedia NPL and Pushkin Industries.
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