Studio B, CBS Studio Building, New York City
Producers: Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney
Paul and Linda McCartney worked on the songs ‘When The Wind Is Blowing’ and ‘The Back Seat Of My Car’ for the Ram album on 20 October 1970.
‘When The Wind Is Blowing’ was written by McCartney in 1969. It was inspired by a print of Picasso’s ‘The Old Guitarist’, that McCartney saw hanging in the Avenue Clinic in north London when his daughter Mary was born.
I remember when Linda and I had just had our first baby which was Mary – we already had Heather but our first baby together was Mary. And Mary was born and I was at the hospital basically the whole week, you know, just while Linda recovered and took it easy – and we liked the chips in this place too – so we’re sitting around all week and enjoy just having had this lovely baby… And there was this Picasso print on the wall of an old man playing the guitar and I looked at it all week, and towards the end the week I thought what chords he’s playing on the guitar what was he playing. I noticed he’s just had two fingers here… You get that chord there guys… Just two fingers there and so I thought well I’ll try and see you know what the chord is… How it sounds anyway… I tried to use that as the inspiration and tried to write a song that only had used two fingers so I’ll play a bit of these. Note carefully, two fingers all the time, my hand never leaves my wrist. That’s how it goes anyway.
Parkinson
The song initially had the working title ‘Rupert’, and was earmarked for a mooted Rupert the Bear animation, and an early version was recorded during the sessions for the McCartney album. Wings recorded another version in 1978.
It was renamed ‘When The Wind Is Blowing’ by the time of the Ram sessions, which took place at CBS Studios in New York City.
McCartney played chords on his Martin D-28 acoustic guitar, and David Spinozza added classical guitar-style lines. Denny Seiwell was on drums.
During the session an early version of ‘The Back Seat Of My Car’ was also recorded. Again, the song dated from the Beatles years, and McCartney can be seen working on it during the Get Back documentary.
This session’s version was worked on for several hours, but a satisfactory arrangement proved elusive so it was set aside for another day.