Slidin’

‘Slidin’’ is a song on McCartney III, Paul McCartney’s solo album written and recorded in 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Slidin' came from a soundcheck jam when we were playing in Dusseldorf in Germany. During soundchecks when I’m checking my guitar, I like to try and make something up and the band will join in #TimsTwitterListeningParty #McCartneyIII

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) December 21, 2020

His bass is flat nearly all the time [on the desk], sometimes I’ll add a bit of mid but 9 times out of 10 it’s just straight in. I have a couple of compressors, Urei 1176s that I’ll use on the way in, but the tone just comes from him.

For the distorted sound on Slidin’ we reamped the DI signal. There’s a couple of different pedals on that. There’s the Little Big Trees which is by Audio Kitchen. It’s like a little 2.5-watt valve stompbox and it sounds amazing. Then I also put it through an Electro-Harmonix Bass Micro-Synth. So it’s just a mix of that and the clean signal. I think there might have been a bit of Decapitator going on too!

We used our Studer J37 Tape Machine on this track. The drums were recorded at double speed #TimsTwitterListeningParty #McCartneyIII pic.twitter.com/1DSVlF6BlR

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) December 21, 2020

The song was originally recorded during the sessions for Egypt Station, McCartney’s 17th solo studio album, which was released in 2018.

I started jamming and this riff came out that I liked, it stayed in my brain, so we recorded it for Egypt Station with my band but it didn’t work out. I had it half finished and I changed some things here and there, and it became Slidin’ #TimsTwitterListeningParty #McCartneyIII

— Paul McCartney (@PaulMcCartney) December 21, 2020