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There are two conflicting stories
surrounding the creation of 'Blackbird'. One story simply
says that Paul woke up early one morning in Rishikesh to
hear a blackbird singing, picked up his guitar to transcribe
the bird song and came up with an album track. The other
more involved account suggests that he was inspired by news
reporting of racial tension in America and saw a blackbird
with broken wings struggling to fly a a metaphor of
oppressed racial minorities beginning to flex their
muscles.
The problem with the second story
is that the death of Martin Luther King - which provoked
riots in April 1968 - didn't take place until after Paul had
returned from the States, with the song already under his
belt.
One night in the summer of 1968,
Paul serenaded the fans gathered outside his home with an
acoustic version of 'Blackbird'. Margo Bird, a former Apple
Scruff (the term for the group of fans who used to
congregate outside the Apple offices in Savile Row)
remembers: "I think he had a young lady round, Francie
Schuartz. We'd been hanging around outside and it was
obvious she wasn't going to be leaving. He had a music room
right at the top of the house and he opened the sash window,
sat on the edge and played it to us. It was the early hours
of the morning."
Paul often cites 'Blackbird' as
evidence that the best of his songs come spontaneously, when
words and music tumble out as if they had come into being
without conscious effort on his behalf.
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