PAUL MCCARTNEY Photographed By Linda McCartney On His Farm In Scotland, In 1971.

PAUL MCCARTNEY photographed by Linda McCartney on his farm in Scotland, in 1971.

PAUL: The style [of ‘Simple As That’] is one of my favourites – reggae. I remember vividly the first occasion I really got interested in reggae. It was when I was painting my roof in Scotland. It was summer and we had a reggae record on – Tighten Up – one of the original albums with various artists on it, what they used to call a compilation album. It was really good, and it suited the atmosphere: a sunny Scotland day, up on the roof painting it green, reggae playing. It made me feel great. As a family, we used to go quite often to Jamaica on holiday. There was a hotel in Montego Bay that we liked, so we’d go and stay there and listen non-stop to the radio. Jamaica had a great radio station called RJR, and it played reggae all day long. In town, there was a little shop called Tony’s Record Shop on Fustic Road, and it was very funky. You’d leaf through the 45s and you’d see something that you liked the look of. Often it was just an acetate disc, a demo disc; they didn’t necessarily have proper labels from a company. So I would ask the assistants, ‘What’s this one like?’ ‘Oh yeah, man, that’s great.’ I remember one that I bought. The song was called ‘Lick I Pipe’, and I just thought, ‘That’s great. Whoever made that up, and whatever the hell it means, it’s good.’ Lick I pipe! So I’d get a little pile, and we’d take them home, and we discovered some fabulous little songs. […] When Bob Marley came along, he solidified the genre of reggae and brought it to the mainstream. I never met Marley, unfortunately. I came very close once or twice. One night he was playing at the Lyceum Theatre in London, and we got halfway there and just changed our minds. I was thinking I might get a bit noticed in the crowd. It’s stupid really, because it would have been worth it to see him live and then to meet him.

The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present.