Ron Sexsmith covers McCartney (Wings)

I absolutely love stories behind songs. Knowing a bit of the background illuminates the song in a whole new way. That’s why when I was reading an article about Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith, I found this irresistible (from Eye Weekly):

” . . .After chatting to his buddy Paul McCartney about Sexsmith, Chris Difford of Squeeze took Ron over to the ex-Beatle’s house for an impromptu jam session. Maybe you’ve heard this story, but you know you want to hear it again. Difford makes the introduction, they all have breakfast and before you know it, Ron’s singing ‘Listen To What The Man Said’ with Paul taking the harmonies.

‘Well, I didn’t know what to play,’ Ron says, ‘And [McCartney] does this thing when you talk to him — if you say something humorous, he’s got these huge eyes, and he sort of gave me this look like I was being a wise guy or something. Well, it’s a song I’ve always played for myself… and it was cool. I was singing lead and he was doing the harmonies and stuff.’”

I had to hunt down the cover, for me and for you. This version is live with Sexsmith only – I doubt a recorded version exists of them duetting. But I’ll bet that it would sound very nice because (although I have never realized this before) McCartney and Sexsmith have extremely complementary voices.

Listen To What The Man Said (Wings cover) – Ron Sexsmith
From Paris 9/26/04