Paul McCartney posted a Top 10 hit in the U.S.: “Spies Like Us” released in 1985 and then as it rose to No. 7 on the Billboard pop charts early the following year.
Paul developed a friendship with Saturday Night Live head honcho Lorne Michaels through the years, and he has appeared on the show often as a live performer and occasional cameo actor in sketches. Perhaps it’s not surprising then that John Landis, who made several movies with SNL actors, called upon Macca for a song for his 1985 film Spies Like Us.
The film starred Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd, two Saturday Night Live legends, as a pair of bumbling spies.
“John Landis rang me and said he wanted an uptempo rock ‘n’ rolly thing,” Paul said in a press release at the time. “I thought I might have done a Bondy type song—the 75-piece orchestra, more melodic, with maybe an Eastern touch, the known ingredients for a ‘spy’ type of song. I think one of the fun things about what I’m doing now is varying those things a bit.”
As a result, “Spies Like Us” received a rollicking arrangement that’s far more playful than the pomp and circumstance of “Live and Let Die.”
McCartney plays every instrument on the track except synthesizers (provided by Eddie Rayner), while also getting some help from Linda and a few others on backing vocals. He even churned out an amusing video with the stars of the film to seal the deal.
With all the hype of the film and the video helping it out, “Spies Like Us”glided into the higher regions of the pop charts on both sides of the Atlantic. And then a funny thing happened: It was unavailable to purchase outside the single version.
It’s not unusual for artists to contribute a song to a movie without including that song on one of their own studio albums. The problem that developed with “Spies Like Us” is that it wasn’t included on the movie’s official soundtrack album either. That album was reserved for the film score by the legendary composer Elmer Bernstein.
Paul was in the midst of recording his "Press to Play" album when he took the time out to dash off “Spies Like Us.”
There are also subtle references to the characters played by Aykroyd and Chase. For example:
We get there by hook or by crook /
We don’t do a thing by the book, or Never needed special clothes /
How we did it no one knows /
Guess we must have had what it took.
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