Chaos and Mystery in the Backyard

Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' has become the focus of fans searching frantically for clues to the reasons for the former Beatle's marital breakdown. This follows claims in the press that the scathing lyrics of 'Riding to Vanity Fair' were addressed to his wife Heather Mills McCartney.
When the album was released, one critic in The Guardian described another track 'At the Mercy' as sounding "bewildered and despairing".
The lyrics throughout 'Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' certainly provide much material for speculation.
In an interview with Line Abrahamian published last year in the Reader's Digest, McCartney was quoted as saying: "Normally, if I'm hurt, I just swallow it and get on with my life. That's the kind of person I am - I just repress it.
But what I've found myself doing more on this album is to put those feelings into the song. So that particular song ('Riding to Vanity Fair') is about all the times when I've offered friendship to someone and it's been rejected, which happens to everyone, all the time."
On the BBC Radio 4 programme Front Row, broadcast in August 2005, McCartney admitted that 'Chaos and Creation in The Backyard' was a 'very personal album', adding: "I think it's a bit like therapy writing stuff. I remember, on many occasions, you'd just be so fed up that you'd have to go off into some little dark room somewhere and take your guitar. And it would be like talking to a therapist, you know. You're just moaning at the guitar. I've done it a million times.
I just go off often because I don't want to ... I don't want to let anyone hear me in this process. It's a bit embarrassing. It's a bit personal, you know. In the first ten minutes it may be terrible so you just…
I nearly always try and find the furthest away room, the darkest room, and go sit where I know no one will hear me. And then I just get my most personal thoughts out. And it may just change…
It may just turn into Desmond and Molly in the market place or it may just suddenly become symbolic of what I'm thinking. But often, you know, you just are moaning to your guitar."
The poignant image of a heartbroken Paul McCartney moaning to a guitar in a darkened room in 2002 is cruelly at odds with our memories of the triumphant young pop god of the 1960s.

(By John Vincent)