McCartney Wants to Finish Prince’s Beatles Cover. Prince’s Own Words Stand in the Way.

Paul McCartney told BBC Radio 2 earlier this week that a photographer who worked with Prince sent him a rehearsal recording of Prince covering The Long and Winding Road. McCartney called it “really great” and “kind of rocky,” noting the guitar work. He then said he would “ask them” about turning it into something substantial. “I could make it into something really good,” he said.

Prince did perform the song publicly in 2007, bringing Elton John onstage for it during his O2 residency in London. A rehearsal tape from around that time would carry no real surprise. The surprise is that McCartney might attempt a posthumous collaboration with an artist who, 26 years ago, made his position on the matter unnervingly clear.

In a 1998 Guitar World interview, Prince was asked if he would ever use technology to jam with a dead musician. “Certainly not,” he said. “That’s the most demonic thing imaginable. Everything is as it is, and it should be.” He then referenced the Beatles’ own “Free as a Bird,” the 1995 single built from a John Lennon demo, as precisely the kind of project he would never allow. “What they did with that Beatles song, manipulating John Lennon’s voice to have him singing from across the grave… that’ll never happen to me,” Prince said. “To prevent that kind of thing from happening is another reason why I want to do certain things while I’m alive.”

McCartney has not detailed his plans, and no label or estate has confirmed a release. Any move to complete the recording would have to reckon with the fact that Prince did not leave his intentions ambiguous. He drew the line in public and tied it directly to McCartney’s own work. That makes this more than a question of taste. It’s a question of whether an artist’s explicit refusal should outlast him.