‘You Gave Me The Answer’ – Simon from the UK asks…

The 10th installment of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection, Flowers In The Dirt is almost upon us, so we thought we’d treat you to a special bonus edition of  ‘You Gave Me The Answer’ ahead of the 24th March release date.

We love the sound and spirit of every Flowers In The Dirt song and although we tried, we couldn’t just pick one favourite! Fortunately we can always rely on Paul’s fans to ask interesting questions about every song imaginable, and so we were really excited when we saw that Simon from the UK had been in touch to find out more about ‘Distractions’…

“One of my favourite songs on the album is ‘Distractions’. What was your musical reference point that inspired you to write that song?”

We caught up with Paul recently to find out…

“Thanks for your question, Simon. I like a good love song, you know. And it’s always nice to be in the mood to write a ballad and that was the case when I sat down to write this. It just occurred to me that if you love someone, one of the problems is that you don’t always spend enough time with that person. Because you’ve got things to do, you’ve got work or you’ve got other obligations to other people or whatever. And so I thought, yeah you could call those distractions from the main event kind of thing. That was basically what this is:

What is this thing in life that persuades me to take time away from you?
 … Distractions, like butterflies

I elaborated on that theme, it’s just someone wishing they could spend more time with their loved one. And you know for me at that time it was about Linda. But people often say to me, ‘Who did you write this about?’ and even though then I would have been writing specifically about Linda - because she was the object of my affection - I liked the idea that it could also be the sort of dream of romance. It could just be an ideal - we all love someone and wish we could spend more time with that someone. A romantic ideal! I know that a young couple won’t hear this about me and Linda, the guy will hear it about him and his girlfriend, the girl will hear that it’s about her and her boyfriend, and I like that. I like that about my songs, that people use them for their own purpose. And I think that’s a very romantic idea.”

Who do you think about when you hear the song ‘Distractions’? Let us know in the comments below…

FLOWERS IN THE DIRT  BUY NOW: 
Deluxe Edition (3CD/1DVD): Click HERE!
Special Edition: Click HERE!
Vinyl (2LP):Click HERE!