1969 was a bit of a heavy time for Paul McCartney. He was desperately trying to keep The Beatles together via a project that would force them to play together once again. Maybe it was only natural that his mind would wander off to more innocent days.
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It was around that time that McCartney started writing the teenage-themed “The Back Seat Of My Car”. Although he’d never record it with The Beatles, he and his wife Linda would eventually make it the closing track of their 1971 album Ram.
Taking a “Back Seat”
On The Beatles’ 1968 double LP The White Album, individual members often went their separate ways in the studio to record songs without input from the others. With the Get Back/Let It Be project that began in early 1969, Paul McCartney sought to bring everyone back together into a tight musical unit.
He did this via an album that they planned to build from scratch in rehearsals, all while being filmed. As we know, the project ended up exposing more rifts than repairing them. After the rooftop concert at the end of January, the album/documentary was put on ice for over a year, by which time the band had broken up.
Band members were encouraged to bring whatever musical idea they had to the proceedings for possible inclusion on the album. Paul McCartney began working on the bare bones of “The Back Seat Of My Car” at one of those sessions. But he abandoned it before the rest of the band could give their input.
He brought the song out of mothballs to make it the stirring closer of Ram, the 1971 album credited to both Paul and his wife, Linda. In an interview with Mojo in 2001 (as reported by The Beatles Bible), McCartney explained where his head was at when he was writing “The Back Seat Of My Car”:
“Back Seat Of My Car’ is very romantic: ‘We can make it to Mexico City.’ That’s a really teenage song, with the stereotypical parent who doesn’t agree, and the two lovers are going to take on the world: ‘We believe that we can’t be wrong.’ I always like the underdog.”
Examining the Lyrics of “The Back Seat Of My Car”
McCartney takes the role of the teenage paramour in the song, trying to convince his girlfriend that there’s a better world away from adult concerns and constraints. “Speed along the highway, honey, I want it my way,” he sings to begin. He certainly comes off as a headstrong, confident (maybe too confident) youth.
The girl, on the other hand, seems to be the more practical one of the two: “But listen to her Daddy’s song, don’t stay out too long.” He claims that they’re just “sitting” in that back seat. But we can imagine that they’re up to the things you might expect from lovers left to their own devices.
“Making love is wrong,” the father insists. Once again, the youths have other ideas. “We believe that we can’t be wrong,” McCartney bellows in the chorus. We don’t find out if they make it to Mexico City. In their heads and hearts, they’re already free anyway.
A sweeping orchestral section punctuates the song, as McCartney was getting back to more ornate productions on the Ram album. “The Back Seat Of My Car” is a song for all the youthful lovers and dreamers, even the ones who might only be young in spirit.
Photo by Anatoly Maltsev/EPA/Shutterstock
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