OF ALL PAUL MCCARTNEY’S COLLABORATIONS, THE ONE FOR WHICH HE’LL BE BEST REMEMBERED IS WITH JOHN LENNON – BUT HE DIDN’T DO TOO BADLY WITH MICHAEL JACKSON

PAUL LESTER

Michael Jackson: “It was lots of throwing stuff at each other, and making jokes”

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It made sense for Paul McCartney to work with Michael Jackson: one of the members of the biggest rock band in history joining forces with the most famous entertainer on the planet. They first met at a party in 1975 to mark the completion of Wings’ album Venus And Mars, aboard a retired ocean liner in Hollywood. As Tom Doyle recounts in his excellent book, Man On the Run: Paul McCartney In The 1970s, the cream of the music and movie worlds was there, including Bob Dylan, Marvin Gaye, Cher, Led Zeppelin, Dean Martin and Tony Curtis McCartney was excited to meet the former child star. Shaking hands, the ex-Beatle told him, “You know, I’ve written a song for you.” That song was Girlfriend, which McCartney proceeded to sing to Jackson in front of the assembled revellers.

Jackson didn’t take the gift straight away. What happened instead was that McCartney recorded Girlfriend himself, for Wings’ 1978 album, London Town. A year later, however, this mellifluous number was mooted by producer Quincy Jones for possible inclusion on Jackson’s 1979 album Off The Wall. And so it became a track on side two of Jackson’s breakthrough LP, as well as its fifth hit when, minus its original middle-eight, it was issued as a UK-only single release in 1980.