How superstition won the grammy

One-on-one

Would you have any interest in speaking to Paul McCartney about the Grammy Award he won, a publicist asked over email the other day. OK, OK, twist our arms, why don’t you?

McCartney won the Grammy for traditional pop album for Kisses on the Bottom, a collection of his covers of standards like It’s Only a Paper Moon and Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive, as well as new songs like My Valentine, which he wrote for his wife, Nancy Shevell. It is one of at least a few distinctions McCartney has received in a career that includes many solo offerings, several albums with Wings and, before that, records made with a pop quartet called the Beatles.

In these excerpts from a telephone interview from Britain recently, McCartney spoke about his Grammy victory and why, by design, he wasn’t at this year’s ceremony.

So you’ve just won another Grammy Award. Don’t you ever get tired of these things?

Nope. You don’t get tired. It’s very nice. And the Grammys have become more and more important, media-wise. It’s a bigger, better show. When you look at all the people in the musical field who are up for them, it’s gratifying to think that you’ve picked one up.

It’s been reported that this is your first Grammy for an album of new recordings since ‘Let It Be’. (It actually won for best original score for the film ‘Let It Be’. McCartney has also since won Grammys for individual songs, and the ‘Band on the Run’ album won a Grammy for its engineer, Geoff Emerick.) Does that sound right to you?

You know what? I don’t keep count. I’m the worst on facts about me or facts about the Beatles. It’s like, “It’s 50 years to the day — ” And I go, “Oh is it?” What am I supposed to do? Keep a little diary and watch every little event? So, no, I’m always pleasantly surprised at these facts or these fictions. I can’t help you on that.

You weren’t at the Grammys ceremony this year. Why not?

We started to get a theory that when you don’t go, that’s when you win. But Nancy likes the event, and I do too, because she does. In some ways, it’s better than the Oscars — the Oscars are great and super-important, but the Grammys is like a really cool concert and you get some very good performances.

But this is what happens: We went a couple of times and sort of sat there, and graciously accepted defeat. With that moment you look for at the Oscars or the Grammys, when the cameras go to the people who didn’t win, and they’re smiling wonderfully and applauding. “And the winner is — John Mayer!” And you go: “Oh, wonderful. How wonderful. What a good singer.” Secretly, you’re thinking, “He’s not as good as me, though.” It’s a very human moment. Hence the theory, you mustn’t go if you want to win.

Do you have one place where you keep all your awards and trophies?

No, I don’t. I’m particularly lax on that. I don’t know where they all are. I’m just not organised. I said to someone the other day, “Would you believe the Beatles were up for an Oscar, for Let It Be, and we didn’t even know we were up for it?”

Is that even possible?

In those days, it was. Because it was less of a global ceremony. And the Beatles were very much in a — Let It Be was the time that we were breaking up, so the news had not reached us. If you take that as indication, how unconcerned — how unplugged — we just weren’t plugged into that.
I don’t think any of us ever collected all of our gold discs, to put them up on walls. So I don’t have a trophy room. Some of them go up in my office, which I think is an appropriate place to intimidate business people. (Laughs) Which is my aim in life.