SIRIUS XM Radio announced today that it will
broadcast a Howard Stern-Paul McCartney special this weekend on SIRIUS
XM’s Howard 101 channel.
This week on his SIRIUS XM show, Howard Stern interviewed Paul
McCartney. Stern described the importance of the music of The Beatles
in his life, saying “[The Beatles] are more of a religion to me than
any organized religion. Their music does more for my spirit and
elevates me to a higher plane than any religious ceremony ever did.”
Howard and McCartney went in-depth on the music legend’s life,
family, The Beatles, his new Fireman album Electric Arguments, and much
more. McCartney presented Howard with an autographed genuine brand new
Hofner bass guitar as a surprise birthday gift, singing as he entered
the studio: “A very merry un-birthday to you, to you. . . a very merry
un-birthday to Howard.” This guitar is also known as the Hofner
“Beatle” bass, made popular by McCartney and favored by him because it
was symmetrical in shape and could be easily turned around to play
left-handed.
This weekend Howard 101 will broadcast a Paul McCartney special
featuring this new interview, plus highlights of Stern’s first
McCartney interview from 2001. The Howard Stern-Paul McCartney special
will air January 17 at 8:00 am ET and 8:00 pm ET, and on January 18 at
11:00 pm ET exclusively on Howard 101.
“Paul’s interview with Howard Stern is not to be missed–it is
Paul like you’ve never heard him and it is Howard with one of his
all-time heroes,” said Scott Greenstein, President and Chief Content
Officer, SIRIUS XM Radio.
The special will also feature tracks from McCartney’s new Fireman album Electric Arguments.
“We decided we would go in the studio and have fun,” said
McCartney of the making of his new album. “We’d have the track going,
have a groove going, and I just stood up at the mic and started
throwing things at it. I’d hear a bit of a lyric or we’d look at a
poetry book …we just started to concoct it and put it together and
paste it…that’s the whole thing about the Fireman – he can do
anything.”
McCartney also commented on Ringo Starr’s recent public
statement that he will not sign anything more for fans, asking that
people stop contacting him for this:
“The truth is, Ringo was always like that. He was the one, if
fans came to his door, he’d just say ‘piss off…this is my private
life…out there I am a Beatle and. . . that’s fine and I’ll do things
when we go to show but I am at home with babies and a wife and I don’t
want that. . .’ He has the right to do whatever he wants to do in life
and he doesn’t want to do that and I think it’s very brave of Ringo.”
McCartney also revealed the story behind the naming of Abbey Road, first working title for the landmark album, saying:
“. . . the engineer Geoff Emerick – who is our Beatle engineer,
did all the great sounds for us – was smoking cigarettes called Everest
. . . they’re like a kind of menthol cigarette . . . and we kind of
looked at that and said ‘Everest’ – it’s kind of big, it’s heroic. That
could be good for the album. So that was the working title. But the
more we thought of it the more we [said]. . . no, this is not great.
And just one day we were in Abbey Road working and I . . . said . . .
Abbey Road. Because if we did that we could just run outside, there’s a
level crossing as we call it . . . we could just stand there, get
photographed, come back to work…it would take just two seconds…and
I said ‘it’s not a bad title.”