See Your Sunshine

‘See Your Sunshine’ is the third song on Paul McCartney’s 14th solo album Memory Almost Full.

I’d already recorded most of the song, and when the time came to put the bass on it I played a fairly straightforward track. Then I was messing around, because I thought it was done, so just for my own pleasure I started goofing around, playing way too much, and afterwards I joked with the producer, saying, ‘Whoa – that was way over the top!’ He said, ‘No, that’s great – do another take like that. I think that’s exactly what the song needs.’ That was dangerous, because I pulled out every trick in the book and just had fun playing. But when I listened back it all seemed to make sense. I was going where I wouldn’t normally go, throwing in notes that I didn’t think were needed, but somehow it fitted. I think I only did two takes.

McCartney put forward the song for consideration during the Chaos And Creation In The Backyard sessions, but it was rejected by producer Nigel Godrich.

‘See Your Sunshine’ was written for McCartney’s second wife Heather Mills. The couple announced their separation in May 2006 and divorced acrimoniously two years later.

That is pretty much an out-and-out love song for Heather. A lot of the album was done before, during and after our separation.

I didn’t go back and take out any songs to do with her. That one was written during a good time with Heather.

I don’t want to deny those times. When you’re going through a separation it’s always tempting to put all that behind you, but I don’t think that’s right.

Paul playing bass at his absolute best. There was a bass fix that we needed to do, right before the bridge, which I asked him to do. He played it and was just goofing around – he was playing all over the place, like only he can play; just amazing stuff. So I asked him, ‘Can you play from the beginning of the song the same way?’ And he goes, ‘Sure,’ which he did. When we were done, I said, ‘Well, that could be the bass part,’ and he said, ‘I don’t know…’ He thought it was too busy, but after he listened to it, he said, ‘That’s really cool.’

We just kept doing more and more drums and loops, just getting the groove right and the tempo. We gave it several tempo changes.