Paul McCartney's Lyrical Homage to Teenage Romance

1969 was a bit of a heavy time for Paul McCartney. He was desperately trying to keep The Beatles together via a project that would force them to play together once again. Maybe it was only natural that his mind would wander off to more innocent days.

It was around that time that McCartney started writing the teenage-themed “The Back Seat Of My Car”. Although he’d never record it with The Beatles, he and his wife Linda would eventually make it the closing track of their 1971 album Ram.
Taking a “Back Seat”

On The Beatles’ 1968 double LP The White Album, individual members often went their separate ways in the studio to record songs without input from the others. With the Get Back/Let It Be project that began in early 1969, Paul McCartney sought to bring everyone back together into a tight musical unit.

He did this via an album that they planned to build from scratch in rehearsals, all while being filmed. As we know, the project ended up exposing more rifts than repairing them. After the rooftop concert at the end of January, the album/documentary was put on ice for over a year, by which time the band had broken up.

Band members were encouraged to bring whatever musical idea they had to the proceedings for possible inclusion on the album. Paul McCartney began working on the bare bones of “The Back Seat Of My Car” at one of those sessions. But he abandoned it before the rest of the band could give their input.

He brought the song out of mothballs to make it the stirring closer of Ram, the 1971 album credited to both Paul and his wife, Linda. In an interview with Mojo in 2001 (as reported by The Beatles Bible), McCartney explained where his head was at when he was writing “The Back Seat Of My Car”:

“Back Seat Of My Car’ is very romantic: ‘We can make it to Mexico City.’ That’s a really teenage song, with the stereotypical parent who doesn’t agree, and the two lovers are going to take on the world: ‘We believe that we can’t be wrong.’ I always like the underdog.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Jim Beviglia

Read More<<<