Howard Sounes: After the twin flops of Give My Regards to Broad Street and Press to Play Paul needed what was in effect a comeback record to remain an active headline star into the 1990s. He wasn't prepared to step off the merry-go-round as John Lennon had done. To help Paul achieve his ambitions, MPL got the star together with Elvis Costello, a talented singer-songwriter with whom Paul could write, sing and record, also a young man - Elvis turned 33 in 1988 - of strong character whom everybody hoped would be able to stand up to Paul in the studio, pushing him to do better than his usual 'I love you Linda' material.
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Costello found McCartney a disciplined, regimented writer.
Philip Norman:In the summer of 1988 [sic; 1987], he came to Hog Hill to work with Paul on the album that would become Flowers in the Dirt. Linda was equally pleased to see him since he'd converted to vegetarianism largely due to her assurance that it wouldn't be 'like joining a weird society'.
Howard Sounes:To record these new songs, the basis of the album Flowers in the Dirt, Paul assembled a band around the Scots guitarist Hamish Stuart, 38-year-old founder of the Average White Band, whose life was changed by hearing the Beatles' 'From Me to You' as a boy.
'It was the moment for me when things went from black and white to colour. It's amazing the number of people who describe it that way.'
Although the original idea was that Elvis Costello would co-write and co-produce Flowers in the Dirt, the old problems soon re-emerged. Paul wanted to do things his way, and Elvis was pulling in a different direction. 'It was pretty obvious pretty quickly that it wasn't going to work as a co-production, so things changed and it moved on and some stuff got discarded,' comments Hamish Stuart. 'They were kind of banging heads a little bit. Elvis had one way of working, and Paul was more about embracing technology at that time and it just didn't work, so Elvis kind of left the building.' The Costello sessions yielded several album tracks, though, including the poppy 'My Brave Face' and 'You Want Her Too', sung as a duet in the way Paul harmonised with John on 'Getting Better', McCartney's sweet voice undercut by Costello's caustic interjections.
The drummer in Paul's new band was Chris Whitten, who'd also worked on the CHOBA B CCCP sessions. Enlarging the group, Paul hired guitarist Robbie McIntosh from the Pretenders. These three musicians helped Paul complete Flowers in the Dirt and formed the basis of his new road band, adding 32-year-old keyboard player Paul 'Wix' Wickens, whom Paul and Linda were encouraged to learn was 'almost a veggie'. Increasingly, the McCartneys had little time for anybody who wasn't vegetarian. Paul was paying good wages, the new band members getting £1,000 a week as a retainer ($1,530), £3,000 a week ($4,590) for when they were rehearsing and recording, rising to £5,000 a week ($7,650) on the road, generous by industry standards. Paul had learned the lesson of Wings. He made it clear that he'd been hurt by the stories Denny Laine sold to the Sun after the old band broke up, and wouldn't appreciate it if anybody in the new group did anything like that.
