Paul McCartney has paid tribute to Prince, calling him “a wizard” and praising his guitar work in a new interview for Radio 2’s Tracks of My Years. McCartney chose “Kiss” as one of his selections on the programme and said he could have picked “Purple Rain” instead, but that the smaller hit was the one that caught him.
“I could have easily chosen ‘Purple Rain’, but ‘Kiss’ is such a crazy little record. There’s hardly anything on it, if you listen to it,” McCartney said. “It’s just so simple, again to pull that kind of thing off, you can do a kind of simple thing, and it can just sound simple but not great, but his sounds simply great. He’s a wizard.”
The remarks land two years after McCartney was told that Prince had rehearsed “The Long and Winding Road,” one of the former Beatle’s own songs. A recording of the cover was later sent to him after Prince had died in 2016. McCartney said the performance was “really great” and added that he could “make it into something really good,” calling the version “kind of rocky.”
That memory gives the interview its weight. McCartney was not just revisiting a favorite artist; he was describing the moment he realized Prince had been listening closely enough to work his way into one of his most familiar songs. “He took a lot from Hendrix, but he was a great player… There’s something about it, you know he knows that instrument. I like his playing,” he said.
Prince’s death has clearly stayed with him. McCartney said the loss made him wish he had known him better and regretted never having been able to say, “Hey man, what’s going on?” He called Prince “a special guy” and said, “It’s such a shame, there’s such talents.” The comments are part admiration, part missed chance — the kind of reflection that only comes when the work is still there but the artist is gone.
The interview also arrives just ahead of McCartney’s new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, which is set for release on May 29th. For listeners, the timing gives the tribute an extra edge: a veteran songwriter looking back at another, while still in the middle of his own new chapter.
