{"id":462797,"date":"2026-03-07T15:41:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/462797\/"},"modified":"2026-03-07T15:41:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-07T15:41:10","slug":"the-one-musician-paul-mccartney-has-dreamed-of-working-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/462797\/","title":{"rendered":"The one musician Paul McCartney has dreamed of working with"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Raph_PH)<\/p>\n

Sat 7 March 2026 13:21, UK <\/p>\n

There aren\u2019t many missed opportunities in the world of Paul McCartney.<\/a> <\/p>\n

He is one of the most celebrated songwriters of all time, having seemingly completed everything there was to achieve in music before he reached his third decade on the planet, as the rest of The Beatles dominated the pop landscape and pushed their sound into new and expressive areas across the 1960s. <\/p>\n

In 1970, The Beatles broke up amid growing tension, parting the invincible Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership for the first time since the pair\u2019s eminence. John Lennon embarked on his more politically fuelled solo mission with the Plastic Ono band in tow, while Paul McCartney formed Wings with his wife, Linda. Throughout his post-Beatles years, McCartney\u2019s career has been well-adorned with collaboration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most people would surely jump at the opportunity to hit the studio with a former Beatle, but the bewildering musician Thom Yorke isn\u2019t \u201cmost people.\u201d In 2012, McCartney revealed his long-lived fantasy of one day working with the genius Radiohead frontman<\/a>, but with a side order of uncharacteristic reticence. <\/p>\n

\u201c[My daughter] keeps saying to me, \u2018Ring Thom and just go into the studio and just see what you come out with,’\u201d McCartney told NME in 2012. \u201cI\u2019m a bit sort of paranoid to just ring him up. \u2018Hey Thom, it\u2019s Paul here. What do you fancy, what are you doing? Do you fancy writing something?\u2019 Just in case he says, \u2018Er, actually, I\u2019m busy\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Thom<\/a>(Credits: Far Out \/ Greg Williams)<\/p>\n

Although the pair are mutual admirers<\/a>, McCartney had reason to be bashful in his approach to the Radiohead frontman for a collaboration. It turns out McCartney had already asked Yorke to collaborate with him on his Memory Almost Full track, \u2018Mr. Bellamy\u2019, in 2006. Yorke duly turned the opportunity down, leaving the former Beatle unwilling to repeat the request. <\/p>\n

Yorke was asked why he declined McCartney\u2019s seemingly-attractive request in an interview with The Observer shortly after. \u201cUhh, \u2019cause I can\u2019t play the piano,\u201d he explained dismissively. \u201cNot like that. I had to explain to him that I listened to the tune \u2013 \u2018Mr Bellamy\u2019 \u2013 and I really liked the song, but the piano playing involved two hands doing things separately. I don\u2019t have that skill available. I said to him, \u2018I strum piano, that\u2019s it.’\u201d<\/p>\n

There are a lot of reasons as to why you might not want to work with a Beatle. Perhaps your allegiances were cemengted long aog and you\u2019ve always been more of a Ringo guy. Perhaps the idea of even being in the same room as someone as iconic as McCartney is daunting enough that the thought of writing a song with them is paralysing beyond belief or, perhaps, you jsut don\u2019t have the skill. <\/p>\n

While there may be some truth to Yorke\u2019s reasoning, McCartney also gave his version of events, offering that Yorke wasn\u2019t a fan of collaborations. \u201cMy daughter was putting an album together, and she put us in touch,\u201d McCartney told T4 in 2007. \u201cI asked Thom to do a duet, but he said he couldn\u2019t because he only felt happy working on his own and Radiohead\u2019s material.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yorke has since embarked on a solo career packed with collaboration and side projects, including those with Flying Lotus, MF Doom, PJ Harvey and his supergroup Atoms For Peace. He even offered his voice to UNKLE\u2019s \u2018Rabbit in Your Headlights\u2019 back in 1998, which invites a degree of doubt to McCartney\u2019s explanation. Hence, it would appear Yorke was put off by the nature of the specific project as proposed. <\/p>\n

Listen to Paul McCartney\u2019s \u2018Mr. Bellamy\u2019 below.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

The Far Out Beatles Newsletter<\/p>\n

All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Raph_PH) Sat 7 March 2026 13:21, UK There aren\u2019t many missed opportunities in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":462798,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,6470,27498,10447,27500,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-462797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-paul-mccartney","tag-radiohead","tag-the-beatles","tag-thom-yorke","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462797","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=462797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}