Paul McCartney Interview: All My Loving 5/23/68

PAUL: "I was always frightened of classical music. And I never wanted to listen to it because it was Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, and sort of, big words like that... and Schoenberg. I mean, like... A taxi driver the other day had some sheet music of a Mozart thing, and I said 'What's that?' And he said 'Oh, that's the high-class stuff. You won't like that. No no, you won't like that.' And I said, 'well, what is it?' (giggles) He said 'No, you won't like it. It's high-class, that. High-brow!' And uhh, that kind of way I always used to think of it. I used to think 'Well you know, that's very clever, all that stuff.' And it isn't, you know. It's just exactly what's going on in pop at the moment. Pop music is the classical music of now."

"People just take our music... and you know, in a line we sort of say 'She was just seventeen,' and they just read everything into it. Like, 'She was a seventeen-year-old nymphomanic, working on the streets of Broadway.' But you know, all we meant is 'She was just seventeen.' But it might mean all the other as well... I don't know, you know. (smiles) I have no idea if there's any Aeolian cadences and... myasmic climaxes and all of that." (laughs)

"We're the last people to know about our songs, because... it's like, if you look at a snapshot of yourself, you're looking at what tie you were wearing or whether you were looking nice in the snapshot. But anyone else will just take the snapshot and say 'Oh, that's good. That's a snapshot of Tony,' you know. We're always just thinking of ourselves as happy little songwriters. (giggles) Just little rockers, you know. Just playing in a rock group. But it gets more important than that, after you've been over to America... and sort of... got knighted." (laughs)