Sir Paul McCartney had to check whether he featured on the final version of ‘FourFiveSeconds’.
The 75-year-old icon collaborated with Rihanna and Kanye West on the 2015 hit, but Sir Paul has conceded that the delay between him recording his bits for the track and its release led him to question whether he ultimately featured on the record.
He recalled: "I was sitting around with Kanye for a couple of days and I didn’t think we’d written a song, ’cause I was just playing around, noodling. I was expecting for an idea to come out there and then, but his way of working is he takes all these little noodles away and he makes spaghetti.
"He’ll play with it and curate it and do this with it and get somebody else to do another bit. So, it was months later when I got a track in the post and it was ‘FourFiveSeconds’ and I listened to it and it’s Rihanna singing."
Sir Paul enjoyed Rihanna’s vocals on the track, but was still unclear as to whether his input had been used on the final version.
Speaking to ABC in Australia, he explained: "I thought ‘This is great, I love her singing it’ but I had to ring up and say ‘Am I on this?’, you know. Yeah, they said ‘You wrote all the guitar parts and that inspired us’. I said ‘Okay, great thanks’.
"They’d sped it up. That’s what I’m saying, I would do something one way that I’d recognise and – hang on – I’ll show you! I was doing this [plays guitar] and doing some chords and he brought a ‘I think I’ve had enough’ but what happened was he took it up to D. That’s where it is on the record. So, no wonder I didn’t recognise it."
Sir Paul McCartney recalls his Kanye West collaboration
