Today – June 18th –  is Pauls 80th birthday. But what to give such a great artist, human and friend on this feast day? I decided to draw a birthday card in memory of our session which took place May 2008 in Pauls Hog Hill Mill studio. It was his generous gift on the occasion of my 70th birthday.

1961 I first held a bass guitar in my hands. Stuart Sutcliff’s President Bass in the Top Ten Club in Hamburg.  At that time Paul was still the pianist of the Beatles band. He waved to me to come up on stage.  But I was to shy  and sat in front of the stage. We  played the Fats Domino Song “I’m in Love Again” with the Beatles. 46 years later Paul and I  were sitting in his Hog Hill Mill studio pulled out of a box of nostalgic songs for my very first own album.  Paul sat at the piano in his white shirt, vest, and jeans, as though he had just come straight from the Liverpool Cavern Club. I sat beside him, a bit nervous with a President bass model in my hands, from the same Hoefner series as Stuart’s instrument back then.

Instead of 2 hours as originally planned we were at it for 3,4,5 hours.  Paul, as always, the absolute professional,  could not be stopped on this Monday in May. He was in high spirits and infected us all. He played all overdubs: Paul on drums, Paul on acoustic guitar, Paul on the E-guitar (….That’s an Epiphone, one of my favourites.  We played it on “Taxman” and “Paperback Writer”…) Paul with a toy harmonica out of a gum machine, Paul on the Hammond organ. We were floating through sounds and memories  and lost all sense of time and place.

Before he left home he picked roses for Christina, me and himself from a bush in front of the studio. „ This is a McCartney Rose“, he said. „ Did you invent it“. „Yes, I was up all night“, he answered and laughed mischievously.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PAUL AND WELCOME TO THE ROCKING 80TH-CLUB !