McCartney Cuts-Up Burroughs (& Ginzie)

So, Sir Paul has just simply lead a life of willful irony, no? For fans, he can do no wrong; for everybody else, he hardly gets anything right. Working his avant side project, The Fireman, he's headed into decidedly looser territory. Interviewed recently about what it is, he had this to say about how the lyrics were written:

How we do it on The Fireman is we just sit down and I can be talking to Youth about this that and the other. He sometimes will carry around a few of these poetry books. I might say, ‘Let me have that book’, and I’ll look through it and choose a couple of words at random.

Like ‘use this approach’. And we start working on the word ‘approach’. So I’d nick two words off [Allen] Ginsberg, two words of [William] Burroughs, and it was like Burroughs’ technique, the cut-up. So it was a very random process but it is very liberating.

"this that and the other"? "use this approach"?

Yes, I suppose we have once again entered the irony-free zone with Macca, bless his always lyrical soul. Meanwhile 'Down Under', Burroughs' worship of the Dark Side is paying off better dividends than Wall Street, Main Street, or any other paved with (fill or sketch in your adjective of choice here or here) intentions street.

Here's your chance for a preview of what really gives: amazon's free mp3 download of The Fireman's Nothing Too Much Just Out of Sight.

The jury will be right back.

Hopefully, they'll be bringing the poems.


best,
Don