C/D Paul McCartney Solo

I'm not massive on 'London Town' (the track), but 'Somedays' and 'Calico Skies' are two of Paul's best "late period" songs for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e8E6X4kios

the skype emojis thing is so dumb but jesus fucking christ what a joy it is to see him go from the moog to the xylophone to some super metal sounding guitar to the harpsichord just being a genius and having fun.

cool! sounds like Cornelius in a way.

Man, Back to the Egg is such a frustrating album. If you cherry-pick the tracklist it's got the makings of one of his best records, and certainly the last time (save arguably Run Devil Run) that "rocking" seemed remotely like a natural thing for him. "So Glad To See You Here," "Spin It On," "Getting Closer," those are all awesome, and even "Rockestra" for all that it's stupid, at least sounds good. "To You" I find kind of a chore but the "keep it outta my nose" part sounds good. And the chilled-out numbers, "Baby's Request," "Love Awake" and "Arrow Through Me" all have great melodies, great recordings.

But my GOD is the filler on this just garbage! "The Broadcast" is easily the most pointless "interlude" or "link" track he ever recorded, and "After The Ball" is just so clearly marking time and hoping that if he gets throaty enough, repeating the words "after the ball" over and over will turn it into a song. If it weren't for "Love Awake," there'd be nearly an eleven-minute stretch of side B made of bits and pieces waiting to get turned into real songs, and unfortunately he's not at Abbey Road level inspiration here.

Aren't you basically saying you don't like a couple of tracks here – "The Broadcast" and "After the Ball/Million Miles"? Unless you're also dinging "We're Open Tonight" (which to me feels like a sequel to "Venus & Mars") you've basically said you like pretty much everything else.

I mean, no, Back to the Egg isn't on par with Abbey Road. But it isn't exactly the band tracks from At the Speed of Sound either. It's basically another of Macca's half-assed concept records but has six or seven really good cuts by my count (confession: I also think "After the Ball" is one of his better Ray Charles tracks and it's short).

As for it "rocking," I think it had a lot to do with him having a new band on this that jelled well. IIRC, his pot arrest in Japan caused him to shutter the Wings moniker for good.

He has that himself quite explicitly.

"I think the Japanese episode as we can call it, was the end of Wings...the upshot was, we got there, I got busted, and I really thought, this band isn't gonna work. I'm not happy with it...There was something going wrong, something was trying to tell me something. So that was the end of Wings."

As for "Back To The Egg", After the Ball/Million Miles can fuck off then the rest sounds like a Blur album from the late 90s.

Back to the Egg is one of his best albums; certainly one of the most consistent, IMO. I don't think there are any bad songs on it. Even Denny Lane's song is good.

D'you think so? It's not bad but certainly not good. It sounds a bit unfinished and the "little woman" stuff makes it sound like something John Lennon would do to pastiche McCartney.

I agree that it's a pretty good album though.

MY SALAMANDER

certainly the last time (save arguably Run Devil Run) that "rocking" seemed remotely like a natural thing for him

Dr. C, I am so glad you didn't say rocking and ROLLING because "Get Me Out of Here" on the last album.

(Deluxe Edition version)

I was introduced to his solo work via Flaming Pie. "young boy" sounds like a beatles lost record and it was the highlight in there, I don't really remember much else. I only know his 70s work am I missing out?

Aren't you basically saying you don't like a couple of tracks here – "The Broadcast" and "After the Ball/Million Miles"?

Well, I'd say "Winter Rose" sucks too. And the thing about Rockestra is it sounds good while it's playing but it doesn't add anything to the album after it's over, y'know? It's a flourish, this thing McCartney wants to be awesome but is actually kinda ordinary. And then "We're Open Tonight" is an okay little guitar figure or whatever but it's not a "song" so much as a down payment on this being some kind of, indeed, halfassed concept album (hence its getting reprised near the end, Macca going back to the Pepper's/Band on the Run well but it's empty). And "Reception" isn't really anything. "Again and Again and Again" isn't horrible, but I would never think of it if I was listing Wings songs or anything.

I think he was low on material and wanted to get something recorded with this new band so they could tour on it. It feels like filler cause it is - there was nothing else on tape they could have used I don't think, and you can't put out an album with just six or seven songs on it so there you go. The only non-album b-side in this period is "Daytime Nighttime Suffering" which would improve this record a lot IMO - "Cage" or "Robber's Ball" apparently not even being good enough for b-sides I guess. They would have been better off doing some covers to be honest. Or even, if it's "back to the egg," work back over some early stuff that never got released or which evolved on the road or something. "Soily" and "The Mess" are dopey songs (though not any dopier than "Getting Closer," which I DO love)... but they'd sound good with this lineup and suddenly you start to have this "He's back, he's ROCKIN!" record.

The band sounds great, though it's hard to shake the sense of them as "shit, let's hire some young guys, we gotta stay current!" We were talking about that "Last Flight in Glasgow" live bootleg that's on Youtube a while back, right? They sound okay! It's not a radically different sound or anything but it sounds good and one or two things that are maybe forced on the record are already sounding a bit better. I'm disappointed they didn't try to rework "Mull of Kintyre" as another "response to new wave" or whatever but "Band on the Run" is just slightly more roaring and hard-hitting and it's cool. Were it not for the bust maybe they would have really gelled (and we wouldn't have gotten McCartney II, or who knows).

Moka, there's scattered good stuff in the 80s/90s, I don't think he ever just entirely lost it but the hit/miss ratio does change kind of suddenly at a certain point. McCartney II is a totally different kinda trip, that's great. Tug of War is probably his strongest and best-recorded set of material between that and Flaming Pie, though YMMV - it can be a bit too precious and polished and there are some duds. Flowers in the Dirt has very good songwriting, the sound and performances may or may not be your bag though depending where you stand on adult contemporary pop-rock in 1989. The others you have to really cherry pick though I know ILX has some Press to Play stans.

Oh - and if you like "Young Boy" you might like "Hope of Deliverance" and some other stuff on Off the Ground...

see also: MACCA SOLO ALBUMS!

Shut up, I love Press to Play and FITD.

I like it too! See that other thread. I really think if he'd swapped out the last couple tracks for some of the b-sides ("Motor of Love" is ghastly and leaving off "The Loveliest Thing" is insane) and gone for a slightly less cloistered and dinky sound (I stand by my "the rockers should sound like Mellencamp 'Cherry Bomb'" theory) it would be really obviously his best post McCartney II.

Thanks Doctor. I think I'll try to listen to his whole discography on Sunday. I'll post when I finish.

Sincerely looking forward to that!

I fucking love Back To The Egg, undoubtedly one of my favourite Wings albums!

yeah, i come back to 'back to the egg' heaps and have never understood all the bad reviews. it's got a positive energy that really feels like they thought they'd got it together with the new line-up. obv i skip 'after the ball/something something' and that other 'name/name' one next to it because imo they haemorrhage the flow.

'rockestra theme', eh. if you don't know the conceit or why it's called what it's called, it just sounds like a fun stadium filler. this and tracks like 'old siam, sir' are best cranked.

tasty

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/news/more-hints-at-new-macca-best-of/

revived only to scare Josh in Chicago

U bastard

really tempted to start a Macca song a day project from 1975-1989 or something

like, reviewing or covering or what? i think it's a great idea. not for the first time, i lament the non-completion of my wildly ambitious double-disc mccartney covers project which i think got as far as two kinda complete recordings and six other songs where i'd learned how to play mayyyybe 1-2 parts on keyboard. sigh.

like we did with the Eagles, solo Eagles, and Elton.

oh mannnnnn.

I'd totally take part, but it'd take an eternity to get through even that part of his career!

eternity = Eagles posting

Eternity=Eagles' codas

where's your kickstarter

Got the 2 CD version of "Pure McCartney" and really enjoying Sir Paul's non-chronological sequencing of the tracks. Hearing his wearier current voice up against the Macca of yore is also poignant to say the least. Groovy remastering job as well.

I see he's still trying to bury his best solo song ever, "Give Ireland Back to the Irish"

this 1978 interview on the South Bank Show is pretty good:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZDq6LSx5vA

this is a p cool thing he did post-Oldchella

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T73eXT41uTc

I'd love to see what a McCartney setlist would look like if he forced himself to work on a live show without any Beatles songs in it. I mean, I know what my favourite tracks are and what my choices would be, but I'd be very interested in which songs McCartney himself considers to be his solo best.

Again, I think it boils down to the fact that I'm bored of McCartney's interviews endlessly talking about The Beatles or his relationship with Lennon, and I'd be happy with any thoughts, anything at all, regarding his solo work (I include Wings in that of course)

I don't think he thinks it matters what his favorite solo material is. He's not there to entertain himself, he's there to entertain his audience - is how I think he breaks it down.

which is sorta the opposite of the more cantankerous/unpredictable Neil or Bob

Of course, but surely there must have been times, from 1970 up until present, when he's written something and thought "yeah, I'm proud of that one!"

He's always liked BOTR and performs many of its songs. Not a bad doc:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfQaqJn7dC8

He sang “Queenie Eye” from his 2013 album, “New” and "Four Five Seconds" at Oldchella in addition to Wings and Beatles songs

he seems quite down on McCartney II, I saw an interview where he says he thought some of the songs are good but the synthy production was too "cold". I get the impression that he's pretty influenced by the critical reaction his records get, so maybe the bad reviews for McCartney II explain it (and why he rates BOTR)? I remember seeing him talk about Back to the Egg being a relative commercial failure, and how in recent years he's met younger people who tell him it's quite cool to have some relatively obscure albums, like cult hits or whatever, anf how McCartney found this idea totally alien to him.

He gets defensive about Ram, which was his idea of a great record in 1971; he still tells the story of bumping into a guy while skiing who told him, "Great record, Paul."

I think soref sadly might be close to the mark regarding McCartney being easily swayed by critical opinion or even the amount an album has sold, which is a bit sad because surely he must have believed in many of those songs enough to record them. I just wonder if there's ever been a moment when a critic has savaged one of his solo tracks and he's thought "nah, fuck off! wrong!"

I think Morrissey might be a good parallel. First band that burned bright but fast, which has informed every little thing he's done since (and influenced countless other acts in its wake). McCartney's written some great tracks, he's written some terrible stuff, he's written a whole bunch of generally null set stuff, but I'm not sure how well even his good stuff stands up outside the context of the Beatles. Big difference obviously is that McCartney is a musical savant, which perhaps makes his MOR-ness more disagreeable.

Yesterday I learned that McCartney co-wrote and played on this worthless Steve Miller track, which sort of provided the seed for "Fly Like an Eagle."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lT2JGBeew00

woah, never heard that. cool.