{"id":352275,"date":"2026-01-04T20:59:19","date_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:59:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/352275\/"},"modified":"2026-01-04T20:59:19","modified_gmt":"2026-01-04T20:59:19","slug":"paul-mccartney-says-one-of-his-best-songs-was-inspired-by-surrealist-period-and-his-children","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/352275\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul McCartney says one of his best songs was inspired by \u2018surrealist\u2019 period and his children"},"content":{"rendered":"

An all-time great song from Paul McCartney<\/a> was inspired by his children and a \u201csurrealist\u201d period following The Beatles<\/a>\u2018 break-up. <\/p>\n

The Wings<\/a> frontman would release both McCartney and Ram <\/a>in the months to follow the split of the Fab Four. But a song which featured on Ram is McCartney\u2019s take on \u201csurrealist\u201d art, something the veteran performer shared was a huge interest of his. Part of the process for writing Uncle Albert \/ Admiral Halsey came from making up stories for his children and putting that surrealist spin on the writing. Speaking in a Q&A session on his website in 2021, McCartney confirmed there was a desire to create surrealist art at the core of his Ram work, which came out clearest of all on Uncle Albert \/ Admiral Halsey. He would also note Monkberry Moon Delight as a surrealist piece of music which was influenced by his children. <\/p>\n

Speaking of the song, he said: \u201cI\u2019d always liked writing love songs, ballads, and rock \u2018n\u2019 roll songs, but then one of my other little side interests was to invent surrealist stuff. Admiral Halsey was someone\u00a0I\u2019d read about \u2013\u00a0he\u2019s a character from American history \u2013 and I just liked the name.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very into surrealism at that\u00a0particular time, so I wrote songs like Monkberry Moon Delight which is again\u00a0totally surreal. The word \u2018monkberry\u2019\u00a0actually came from our kids! That was how they said milk when they were little \u2013 \u2018can I have some monk?\u2019 \u2013 you know, in the way that kids get funny names for things. So, Monkberry Moon Delight to me was like a milkshake!\u201d<\/p>\n

McCartney would also single out the \u201cbutter pie\u201d lyric of Uncle Albert \/ Admiral Halsey as an example of writing with surrealism in mind. He said: \u201cNo,\u00a0there\u2019s no meaning behind it. Because I like surrealist art, I also like surrealist words.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cA great example of this is Lewis Carroll writing Alice in Wonderland\u00a0\u2013\u00a0it\u2019s a crazy thing,\u00a0you\u2019ve got a cat sitting in a tree that grins and talks, and\u00a0you\u2019ve got Alice falling down a hole and meeting the red queen, and so on. That whole tradition was something that I loved, and when I met\u00a0John I learned that he loved it to. So, it was something that became a bond between us.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was playing around with that and making up a fictional story, and I just ran into the words \u2018and butter pie\u2019. Well,\u00a0there\u2019s no such thing as a butter pie, that\u00a0I\u2019ve ever heard of anyway. So, it was a surrealist image, like in surreal art where you have a thing called a \u2018hair cup\u2019, which is just a cup\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0made out of fur. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u00a0wouldn\u2019t think to drink from it,\u00a0it\u2019d be disgusting, but as an image\u00a0it\u2019s interesting and shocking. \u2018Butter pie\u2019 is that kind of equivalent, but in a song.\u201d McCartney would also suggest revisiting the surrealist portion of his career in the interview, saying it made a nice difference to the love songs. <\/p>\n

He added: \u201cIf\u00a0you\u2019re not in the mood for writing a love song then\u00a0it\u2019s not wise to try and write one, but you might be in the mood to write something a little crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An all-time great song from Paul McCartney was inspired by his children and a \u201csurrealist\u201d period following The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352276,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-352275","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352275","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=352275"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/352275\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=352275"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=352275"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=352275"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}