Observations placeholder
Paul McCartney - Blackbird
Identifier
006030
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
"Blackbird" is a song from the double-disc album The Beatles (known as the White Album). The song was written by Paul McCartney. McCartney explained on Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road, aired in 2005, that the guitar accompaniment for "Blackbird" was inspired by J.S. Bach's Bourrée in E minor, a well known lute piece, often played on the classical guitar.
The piece is extraordinarily symbolic and very very personal, but of course everyone wanted to know what it meant and he had to keep on making something up. It is actually very sad symbolically. Not being able to fly like George, for example, must have been endlessly frustrating - but ego got in the way you see.
I had been doing poetry readings. I had been doing some in the last year or so because I've got a poetry book out called Blackbird Singing, and when I would read "Blackbird", I would always try and think of some explanation to tell the people, 'cause there's not a lot you can do except just read the poem, you know, you read 10 poems that takes about 10 minutes, almost. It's like, you've got to, just, do a bit more than that. So, I was doing explanations, and I actually just remembered why I'd written "Blackbird", you know, that I'd been, I was in Scotland playing on my guitar, and I remembered this whole idea of "you were only waiting for this moment to arise" was about, you know, the black people's struggle in the southern states, and I was using the symbolism of a blackbird.
It's not really about a blackbird whose wings are broken, you know, it's a bit more symbolic.— Paul McCartney, Interview with KCRW's Chris Douridas, 25 May 2002 episode of New Ground (17:50–19:00)
Exactly.