While the collaboration between Paul McCartney and Kanye West has resulted in a handful of hits, the former Beatle wasn't sure that it would work. In a new interview, McCartney admits that he went into the sessions knowing how he would get out of it if needed.

"My first thought was, 'Woah, what am I going to get into here?'" he tells the Sun. "He is amazingly talented but controversial and can make eccentric moves. I realized if it didn't work out we'd just say so and shake hands and leave."

The first song the two released, "Only One," was, as it turns out, inspired by one of McCartney's most famous tunes. "We sat around and talked an awful lot just to break the ice," he continues. "One of the stories I told him was about how I happened to have written 'Let It Be'. My mum came to me in a dream when she'd died years previously. I was in a bit of a state -- it was the Sixties and I was overdoing it. In the dream she said, 'Don't worry it's all going to be fine, just let it be.' And I woke up and thought, 'Woah' and wrote the song. I told Kanye this and he said, 'I'm going to write a song with my mum.' So then I sat down at the piano."

But is there any truth to West's claim that he helped restore some John Lennon-esque angst to McCartney's music? He didn't say, but he did note that their writing process was similar to how he and John wrote together in the Beatles.

"When I wrote with John, he would sit down with a guitar. I would sit down. We'd ping-pong till we had a song. It was like that."

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