Paul McCartney: Twenty Flight Rock (1974)

In the large and detailed book which came with the recent reissue/remixes of John Lennon's Mind Games, there is an interview with Lennon and Yoko Ono at the time.

In it Lennon says what he misses in his solo career was just sitting down and playing with the group. And, as seen in the Let It Be/Get Back movies, when they got together their default position would always be just to jam on the songs they grew up with in the rock'n'roll era.

“If you sit down with any of us,” he said, “Yoko's seen us sitting together – George, Ringo, Paul was here last week, anytime we talk about the past at all, it's always pre-'making it'.

“We always talk about the Cavern, the dancehalls in Liverpool and Hamburg, 'cos that's where we were really hot musically.

“And we never talk about about after that because the live music stopped existing once we left the dance halls and moved into theatres where you had to do a show that only lasted 20 minutes . . .”

Yoko: “Whenever they talk about, 'Oh that's like the Cavern' their faces really light up. They never mention about when they were making it.”

Lennon would often say he loved rock'n'roll and that was about it, just that raw and elemental songs which shaped his early taste. Hence his Rock And Roll album (although his arm was somewhat twisted.)

McCartney had often gone back to the source for live albums and when they were in the studio recording live what became the One Hand Clapping album – recently given official release as a double album – he would depart into rock'n'roll standards.

When that album was released it came with a seven inch single (if you bought it through specific online outlets). It was of solo McCartney on an acoustic guitar in the garden at Abbey Road knocking out a couple of his own songs (notably Blackbird) but the rest came from Eddie Cochrane and especially Buddy Holly.

It was no stretch for him to do this because, as with Lennon, this stuff was in his DNA.

Here he is from the One Hand Clapping – The Backyard collection (now available digitally) going through Cochrane's classic song.

Two minutes of nostalgia and humour.

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For more oddities, one-offs or songs with an interesting backstory check the massive back-catalogue at From the Vaults.