Macca’s Gems: Rockestra Theme

One by one they trickled in, on this autumn morning, Tuesday October 3, 1978: People like Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, Hank Marvin of The Shadows, Pete Townsend of The Who, John Paul Jones and John Bonham of Led Zeppelin, Gary Brooker, Ray Cooper; all big names from the yet young rock history, gathering in the basement of Abbey Road Studios for a new McCartney project: Rockestra.




McCartney is in the middle of the recording sessions for the latest Wings album Back To The Egg. But this is a project within a project. He has been around for some time with the idea of putting together an orchestra consisting of only rock musicians. And now he has an instrumental song that could fit that idea: 

I got this little tune as an instrumental. I thought, it is a nice and easy melody line and it might be a good thing to try a lot of guitars on the melody line and, whereas most people use orchestra’s, normal orchestra’s, I thought the idea might be good to use rock instruments instead. And have what you would call a rockestra instead of on orchestra. 

Rockestra Theme:

At first he records the song, Rockestra Theme, only with Wings. They recorded it, recorded it again and double-tracked themselves and repeated this process a third time. The result was, according to Wings drummer Steve Holley, "a monstrous orchestra effect". McCartney is satisfied with the achieved sound and becomes convinced the track is suitable to record with a rock orchestra. When he then asks among friends and others in the music scene whether there is interest in the project, he finds out that he is not the only one who walks around with a similar idea of a Rockestra:

 I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and talking about it with various people. And you meet people in the business and you find other people saying ‘yeah, I was thinking of doing something like that’. So by the time I heard other people saying, ‘yeah, I’m gonna do that’, I thought, I’d better gonna do it, if ever I’m gonna do it, and just try to get it together. (…) So I rang up a lot of people, I thought it might be good to do it. And some of them couldn’t make it, and some of them could come. I just decided, whoever shows up, if only three of them show up, then that will be the rockestra and we’ll just see what we could do.”

It will be much more than just three. In the end, it is quite full in the recording studio; together with the members of McCartney's band Wings, including the horn section, there are more than 20 musicians in total. While most of them are still busy setting up their gear or tuning their instruments, Paul, sitting behind his piano, goes through the song with a few others. Eventually a few out-takes will follow, after which the song will be recorded with the complete rock orchestra.



The second half of the day is dominated by another Back to the Egg track: So Glad To See You Here. Again McCartney takes place behind the piano to play the song a couple of times and a few hours later this one is also recorded. There is a single take of the song After The Ball and the recording session of the Rockestra is over. The next day, Paul returns to the studio with his wife Linda McCartney and Denny Laine for some vocal overdubs.

So Glad to see You Here

The Rockestra-team will come together once more after the recordings, for a live performance during the closing night of The Concerts For The People Of Kampuchea on December 29th, 1979. Most of the players regrouped at the end of Wings' set and performed Little Richard's "Lucille," "Let It Be," and two versions of "Rockestra Theme." 

Rockestra live: Lucille

In 1980 Rockestra Theme brought McCartney the Grammy for "Best Rock Instrumental Performance."

Related Posts:

Back To The Egg
Macca’s Gems: No More Lonely Nights
Macca’s Gems: Tropical Island Hum

André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

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