As with many Western artists, the Beatles’ music was subject to an import ban between the 60s and 80s, which was tantamount to a listening ban. Now Paul McCartney says that the Beatles liked the idea of Russians secretly listening to their music. He shared this on the podcast “Paul McCartney: A Life In Lyrics”.
In it, McCartney says: “Everyone in Russia remembers the time of the Beatles and how you had to smuggle records, or how there were little rooms where you could [die Musik] could play and didn’t want anyone to know. They didn’t want the authorities to know that they were listening to this banned group, and we loved the idea that we were being smuggled along with Levi’s jeans. It was like a real cultural arrival.”
Furthermore, the bassist believes that a ban on their music shows that their music was perceived as dangerous by the Russian government. “We always thought that we were on the right side, that if we were dangerous, we were only dangerous to the Russian authorities, and for us that meant they weren’t that good,” McCartney said.
He continues: “That’s how we felt, and I think it was true to a large extent: that they were trying to suppress this Western influence, and that’s still going on… I know there really was a time when where you thought, ‘oh, everything is fine again’, but in reality the oppression is back in full force… God knows what the politics and the realities behind it are.”
“Paul McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a podcast in which the bassist talks to host Paul Muldoon about the most important Beatles lyrics. The first of 12 episodes was released on Monday (October 4th) and discussed the content of “Eleanor Rigby”.