I though it'd be really great to interview Paul McCartney at WOEBOT. The world's most famous musician (?) on a Weblog.
I pitched it with near perfection to his Manager Geoff. I must have spoken to him about 9 times now. Followed up with extremely neat professional emails. Sometimes he seemed really keen. Sometimes less so. But always on a decreasing incline of interestedness.
"Hi Geoff, it's the bloke off the internet again."
"But we just did an interview on the net!"
"Ah yes, but that was in an MSN chat-room and you can't access those in the UK. You can't do too many interviews on the net Geoff, it's the new thing mate, believe! It'll be like David and Goliath. It's a fanzine on steroids, (coughs) WOEBOT is the pre-eminent music blog. The kids'll love it. Just in time for Glasto. It's rock'n'roll innit; yaay tear your hair out, go crazy, give an interview to a blogger."
Macca. He's great isn't he. Though my mate Sacha said the other night there's nothing so unattractive as a really successful musician. Someone who's fucked all the women, taken all the drugs, has all the cars, flown all over the world. Yeah that stayed with me.
Though of course Macca was pretty far-out wasn't he? It wasn't just Lennon was it. Surely everyone knows this? I did a load of background research for this. I read Ian Peel's (pretty weak): "The Unknown McCartney" and AND Barry Miles's (excellent) "Many Years From Now." I'm a fookin' expert on Paul McCartney I tell you. Playing a coin on a radiator at an AMM gig, nearly roping in Delia Derbyshire to score "Yesterday", meeting Luciano Berio, building his own little tape-loops years before Lennon got interested, indeed turning Lennon on to alot of wacky stuff, holding forth on Albert Ayler and Stockhausen, turning in an easy listening version of his Ram LP as Percy Thrillington, a helping hand behing Indica books, Zapple and IT, recording in Lagos, playing with The Meters, putting out ambient techno as The Fireman and post-rock with Youth. Yeah yeah we know.....
"You see I'd also like to touch on Sir Paul's love of Animation. I believe as animator I'd be able to really do justice to this side of his persona. Yeah and all the animals, what's with that? The dogs, the racoons, the frogs, the deer and the blackbird?"
"Well you see he's got a lot of interviews lined up and we're quite squeezed for time."
"Yeah and you don't know WHO I am. I mean I could be some total lunatic. Some gun-toting obsessive. I mean, I could be really fucking dangerous! Let's face it. Though we have met eachother once before on the street in Soho. And, well, I didn't try anything then. But I guess the kind of things I'd want to talk to him about have been covered in a great deal of detail by Peel and Miles. And for goodness sake, Ian Peel wrote a whole book, A WHOLE BOOK, without an interview with the man himself. And of course all this recent exploration of his avant tendencies, well it's probably bad for business in the long-run isn't it? And well, I'm just a blogger. Ha! A blogger. A useless amateur. How could I possibly expect to get an interview. I must be stark raving mad. Yes it's probably best that we leave it like this. Though I'd like to say Geoff, thanks so much for not just telling me to fuck right off in the first instance. That was awfully nice of you."
Posted by Woebot at June 18, 2004 09:10 PM