This song just speaks to me of family - I always imagine a family gathering for a festival (in their case it might be Christmas or Thanksgiving) and everyone is arriving at one place (Paul's house).
It's also quite surreal for me because my dad had this clock installed at home and it used to play a tune at every hour followed by the number of chimes. And the tune that plays at the beginning of this song used to play at 12 O'clock! Here it's the doorbell, but for me, it's the time!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2mnHA51NQE
Here's what Paul said about it
"Someone’s knocking at the door/Somebody’s ringing the bell’ – I’m imagining this is in Liverpool. A party of some sort. When we were in Jamaica, all the Jamaican guys would say to Linda, being blonde, ‘Hey Suzy, Suzy!’ To them a blonde, white woman was ‘Suzy’. So, Linda got a group and called herself Suzy and the Red Stripes, after the beer brand. So, ‘Sister Suzy’ – that’s Linda. ‘Brother John’ is either her brother, John Eastman, or John Lennon. ‘Martin Luther’ is Martin Luther King Jr, ‘Phil and Don’ are The Everly Brothers, and then you get ‘Brother Michael’, so that’s my brother, or it might have been Michael Jackson – the timing’s right for that, as we’d invited The Jackson 5 to the Venus And Mars album party on the Queen Mary the year before. And then ‘Auntie Jin’, which is spent with a J rather than a G because her name was Jane. But in Liverpool that sounded too formal, so she would say, ‘Just call me Jinny.’ Then ‘Uncle Ernie’ – my cousin’s name was actually Ian, but they called him Ern. And by this point, I’m not really fussed. I’m just playing with words. ‘Uncle Ian’? Oh, come on guys, you’re just not paying attention. Never mind. There is no Uncle Ian… and he certainly was not married to Auntie Jin.
Then the strangest of strange happenings: fast-forward a million years and I marry Nancy Shevell, whose sister is named Susie and whose brother is named Jon. So, suddenly I’m singing about Nancy’s family: ‘Sister Suzy, Brother John’ It’s quite a coincidence."
Paul McCartney
The Lyrics: 1956 To The Present
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