Prolific songwriters and rock gods Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello look back on their 1980s Flowers in the Dirt Sessions, where the pair teamed up to form probably the greatest power couple of all time.
With the Flowers in the Dirt sessions soon to be released as a deluxe box set on March 24th, the two got together to discuss their fruitful partnership.
“We would write in the same method that me and John used to write” McCartney says. This came to be a little unnerving for McCartney, who was trying to avoid sounding too “Beatle-y”.
But, undoubtedly, the sessions became more and more productive as the duo reportedly sat face to face as they strummed their guitars and finished each other’s musical phrases.
The sessions produced four tracks, including You Want Her Too and Costello’s Veronica.
The deluxe box-set of Flowers in the Dirt is soon to be released, including rough acoustic recordings, extended and full band versions of the tracks.
The box set could be described as a record, frozen in time, of their prosperous partnership that ended in mutual growth and extreme success.
The two exhibit their musical chemistry in the rough recordings, with McCartney acknowledging that “the energy and the performances on the demos were better [than the studio versions] in some cases”.
Costello was pleasantly surprised when we heard about the release of Flowers in the Dirt sessions. “I’m the person that stands between Michael Jackson and Kanye West and Rihanna. You just didn’t know that about me.”