Zan will soon be saying goodbye to triple j and hello to Double J, but not before doing the biggest Take 5 of her career: Sir Paul McCartney.

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One of the greatest songwriters of all time sat down to open his songbook, and dive deep into the making of five of his greatest. Sir Paul McCartney has provided the soundtrack to billions of lives. His legacy in song in unparalleled; starting with The Beatles, who changed the game forever, he rolled on with his own solo career while building a new band in Wings and collaborating with everyone from Michael Jackson to Stevie Wonder and Kanye West. (You can read further about his experiences working with Yeezy and re-inventing himself after The Beatles over on Music News).

From Zan: "It’s been 25 years since Macca toured Australia, so his visit here is special. We chased him for months, and in news that was music to my ears, we got word he was keen to Take 5. I hope you love this conversation as much as I did. From a man who's songcraft has changed the game, and whose endless curiosity has shaped modern music. This is Paul McCartney Taking 5."

The Beatles – ‘Blackbird’

"I wrote it when I was up in Scotland and I just heard about the Civil Rights movement going on in America, in Little Rock. That was contemporary then, it’s that long ago. I think a lot of people were shocked to see the black students not being allowed into the school and loads of white people jeering and spitting at them. We didn’t have that kind of prejudice in Liverpool, there’s quite a black population [there]. I had mates, particularly in music, who were black. It didn’t occur to us, so when we all saw it we were all pretty shocked. I wanted to write a song that would somehow give the people going through the struggles maybe just a little bit of hope.

"...So, I was writing this song called 'Blackbird', which I thought could have the double meaning of black woman and blackbird and this idea of broken wings but you learn to arise was kind of symbolic of the struggles people were going through. So, that was my Civil Rights song, really."

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Paul McCartney and Wings – ‘Band on the Run’

“The thing is, you kind of go with fashions sometimes. You can’t help it because it’s in the air, it’s what people do and what people are thinking, so you get affected. At that time there was a lot of records about desperados, renegades, that king of thing. Particularly coming out of California, there was a lot of that stuff about.

"I thought yeah, it’d be quite nice to write a song about a prison break because it’d be quite dramatic and, again, you could use it as symbolism - talking about breaking out of your boring life... It was an American thing, really, that I got caught up in."

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Paul McCartney – ‘Temporary Secretary’

"[Recording by yourself is] like a hobby, it’s like you’re just doing it as a bit of fun, so you don't worry about it quite so much. If you’re recording something you think ‘Oh, I’m going into the studio next week, there’s going to be engineers and this better be good.’ It just gives you a certain kind of freedom. That album [McCartney II] I was into experimentation, so there were electronic sequences you put in a little program and you could loop it. So, I played around and eventually got that ‘Temporary Secretary’ loop that I liked. I started off with that, put some drums on it and stuff, and wrote the song over that. It was a nice way to write."

"...It’s nice when something like that is ahead of its time. At the time, it’s too ahead of its time and a lot of people don’t like it but you think, it's got something. It came and went at the time but then years later someone said ‘Oh, there’s a DJ in Brighton and he’s playing the hell out of this song of yours.’ I said, ‘What is it?’ and they said ‘Temporary Secretary'. Because, you know, it works in a club. It’s a good beat and the riff sounded very modern, so yeah, we revived it based on that."

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Paul McCartney and Wings – ‘Jet’

"Yeah it was [named after a puppy]. There’s no telling where you’ll get ideas from and we happened to name this little black puppy Jet. Again I was noodling around, looking for an idea and thought that’s a good word ‘Jet’. So, I wrote the song about that. Not about the puppy, just using the name. And now it’s transformed into a sort of girl.

"It was kind of — a little bit about the experiences I'd had in marrying Linda. Her dad was a little old fashioned and I thought I was a little bit intimidated, as a lot of young guys can be meeting the father figure. And if the dad’s really easy-going, it makes it easy. It wasn’t bad but I was a bit intimidated, probably my fault as much as his. Anyway, the song starts to be about the sergeant major and it was basically my experience, roughly translated.

"I never do a song with the actual words that actually happen, because then that’s like a news story. Oh Linda, I was going to see your dad and he was intimidating. A bit boring. So, I mask it and mould it into a song, something you can sing reasonably."

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The Beatles - 'Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End'

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“They were separate. That’s one of the things we did on [Abbey Road], we put together separate ideas and this one — I was very lucky — it fitted together very neatly. As you say, I didn’t think of ['The End'] as the end of The Beatles. I think of it mainly as the end of an album. But I just had that little couplet: ‘And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make’. I liked that as a sentiment and I liked it as a mini poem. That came on the end of the album and that song, quite luckily.

"It is good, as you say, everyone got to do their bit. I don’t analyse my stuff but if I was to, that’d be a good one to analyse. You’ve got John, George, Ringo — that’s sewing it all up."