“He’s very resourceful,” McCartney said. “I said, ‘I’d like to show you something on guitar, but I haven’t got my guitar with me. And he said, ‘I’ve got a guitar.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, but I’m left-handed.’ He said, ‘Well, I’ve got a left-handed guitar.’”
They jammed, and McCartney returned the next day with lyrics and a vocal melody. “Suddenly,” he said, “we had a song. From a cup of tea to a song. Doesn’t it sound easy?”
(In a subsequent interview, Watt — who is left-handed in all things except guitar — admitted that he’d jolted awake in a cold sweat the night before McCartney’s visit, realizing that he had no left-handed guitars on hand, and began feverishly calling around until he found a friend to loan him a clutch of lefty Hohners, Martins and Rickenbackers, just in case a cup of tea led to something more.)
Watt still enjoys making pop music; over the summer he spent some time in the studio with Jung Kook, of the Korean pop juggernaut BTS. Jung Kook speaks some English, but not fluently, and Watt speaks no Korean. So he acted out what he wanted, they sang to each other, Watt did his Richard Simmons routine, and when the song was released in late July it went straight to No. 1.
The experience of walking into a room with practically nothing and coming out with a song never gets old, Watt said. But of course it feels different to share in the creative process of an Elton, a Mick or a Paul.
“There’s people in the industry who say to me, ‘Why do you work with people that are so much older than you?’ But I don’t care what anyone thinks,” Watt said. “I want to do what makes me happy. And getting to work with the guys who wrote the book — you get to learn so much. They still have so much to offer the world.”
“For a while,” Watt added, “I always thought I was born in the wrong generation. Like, ‘Man, if I was born when my dad was born, or a little after, I would be in some rock band now. And that would’ve been great.’ And recently, within the last year or two, my perspective on that has completely changed. And I feel I’m right where I’m supposed to be.”
