Paul McCartney Explains How Bach Influenced "Blackbird" -
If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.
For most of humanity, this might mean nabbing a lick or two from Paul McCartney’s playbook.
For Paul McCartney, it meant borrowing from Bach – the fifth movement from Suite in E minor for Lute, to be specific.
As he explained during the above 2005 appearance on the Parkinson Show, when he and his buddy, George Harrison, used to sit around teaching themselves basic rock n’ roll chords, their show off move was a bit of semi-classical fingerpicking that Sir Paul modestly claimed to be “not very good at:”Thusly did the chord progressions of Bach’s Bourree in E minor – a piece which “I never knew the title of, which George and I had learned to play at an early age; he better than me actually” – inspire Blackbird:
Source: openculture.com
