Paul McCartney really wants to hear the Prince cover of a Beatles classic — you and me both, Paul.
Following his death a decade ago, Prince left behind a sizeable vault containing thousands of unreleased songs, most of which sadly will never reach fans’ ears.
There’s one song in the vault that McCartney wants to hear more than the others: a cover by the genre-blending legend of the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road”.
“I was with some guy couple of years ago, so it was after Prince had died, and this guy said, ‘Have you heard Prince do ‘Long and Winding Road?’” McCartney said on BBC Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years (as per Rolling Stone). “I said, ‘Well, no, that’s one of my songs. I don’t think he ever did it.’
“He said, ‘Well, he did. He did it in rehearsal. He was rehearsing it for something.’ So, he said, ‘I’ll send it to you if you want.’ He sent it to me and it’s really great.”
According to McCartney, the guy in question may have been a personal photographer for Prince.
He described the recording as “kind of rocky,” adding, “He plays some really good guitar on it.”
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So keen to hear what Prince’s version sounds like, McCartney proposed the possibility of asking Prince’s estate about the recording. “I could make it into something really good,” McCartney insisted.
McCartney didn’t know Prince well while the latter was alive, but game recognise game.
“He took a lot from [Jimi] Hendrix, but he was a great player,” McCartney said of the late, great musician. “If you watch him play, he’s got that sort of style. Bow! It’s just there’s something about it. You know he knows that instrument.”
McCartney added: “He’s a special guy. It’s so sad these people, you know, suddenly he’s not here, and it always makes me wish that I’d known him better and that I could sort of say, ‘Hey, man, come on. What’s going on?’ It’s such a shame because there’s such talents.”
