Ten Driving Songs By McCartney

The car, certainly in the fifties and sixties, is a symbol of freedom. For the first time in history, human beings have the opportunity to make long journeys easily. Driving also stands for independence, especially those of young people. Therefor it's not surprising that making a ride is a popular theme in pop music. And also in McCartney ‘s case, traveling is a recurring theme. An overview of ten ‘driving songs’ by McCartney, in reverse chronological order.

Road
Driving your car, heading to a certain destination, McCartney uses these themes in his lyrics throughout his whole career. Most of the time not literally though, in a lot of songs it’s about a travel through live. “It’s just a metaphor” as he explains in the track Road from his last album NEW (2013).

Driving Rain
The title track of McCartney’s 2001 album is one of the few songs that actually really was inspired by a day off, driving around in a car, while staying in Los Angeles.

‘Driving Rain’ was written out here in Los Angeles – there was a lot of rain out here in February and so on our day off we went off for a drive in this little Corvette that I hired, we drove off up the Pacific Coast Highway and went on up to Malibu and had a bit of lunch. In the evening, feeling great after a nice day out, I was sitting around at the piano and I just started writing something half-based on the day out. People say ‘how do you get your creativity?’ and I think the answer is that you just have to be open to stuff.

Paul McCartney 

Get Out Of My Way
A classic driving song from the 1993 album Off The Ground in the style of fifties rock ‘n’ roll, inspired especially by Chuck Berry’s songs. “It’s a driving song, you know, I’m in my car, heading to see my girl, so ‘get out of my way’. 

On The Way
In On the Way Paul apparently has some confessions to make to his travel companion and he will be doing that during a long journey. A rare blues song by McCartney from his 1980 album McCartney II. 

I put down a drum track and some bass and that was that and it sat around for a month or so. The day before going back to it, I had seen Alexis Korner on a TV program about the blues, and I thought, 'Oh, I've got to do something like that because it's the kind of music I like.' So that's how that one came about.

Paul McCartney

Getting Closer
Another song about McCartney on his way to a woman. “Keeping ahead of the rain on the road, watching my windscreen wipers” The weather is bad, while driving, and this woman? Is she nice actually? Calling her ‘my salamander’ doesn’t really sound that way…

Click here for Part Two

Related Posts:

Paul McCartney Live Wish List
McCartney’s Ten Best Vocals Solo
McCartney Live: Ten Favorite Beatles Tracks

André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

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