C/D Paul McCartney Solo

I like 'jet' and the start of 'C moon' and I like 'maybe I'm amazed' and 'no more lonely nights' and 'silly love songs'!!!

It's an odd collection because it is missing some good bits ("Maybe I'm Amazed" "Helen Wheels" "Take it Away"). I'll probably just end up getting his lps eventually, like I usually do with artist I admire (sigh).

-- Alex in NYC

There's no difference!! Paul was the, what do you say, "auteur"...

Paul McCartney is one of those artists that I bet there's a potential CD-R or two's worth of stuff I would absolutely adore - really he needs to be a lot more obscure than he is, so some loving curator could trawl through his albums and B-Sides and make some selections. As it is his commercial/historical clout means the available compilations take the path of least resistance a bit too much.

Beatles beat the rest hands-down - that much we know. Beyond that, RJG is probably right. But the best post-Beatles Macca I know is VENUS & MARS - a bit of a 70s masterpiece. TUG OF WAR also has great stuff; his work with Costello has its moments; and so does the FLAMING PIE LP (1997).

I did the CDR thing with McCartneys back catalogue a year or two ago and managed to get 4 really good chronological comps. I would guess that a lot of people would like much of this stuff if they sat down and listened to it. McCartney solo though is almost dismissed and I don't think that the Wingspan comp kicked off the resurection of the post Beatles stuff that I or probably he expected.

What I really can't get over is the fact that Paul himself doesn't realise how rubbish he is nowadays. Wake up!

He really seems to think his solo work is comparable to the Beatles. It's not. Maybe it was always going to be a dissapointment by the Beatles standards, but by _any_ standards it's awful. And still he doesn't get it.

Maybe if we all stood outside his house with placards saying "Paul, your music is now shit!" he'd get it. But I doubt it. He'd probably think "Hey those guys have spelled 'hit' wrong".

Dud.

Favourite videos: Goodnight Tonight, Pipes of Peace.

Also C: "Jet," "Too Many People," "Let Me Roll It," "Spin It On" (Wings go thrash!)

good old dad.

I don't think I've even seen a copy of WINGSPAN in a record store.

I reminded my dad about the 'all the best'-for-christmas thing on friday night when we were in a car. he didn't really remember. he said "and why did she [my mum] buy you that instead?" and I told him again and he understood. then he asked "and why did you want 'faith'??" and the answer was...I was six...I had seen it advertised on television.

Yes, COMING UP is great.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316860328/qid=1045408789/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-5101041-0610836

It's an intimate scrapbook.

Capitals are the new italics.

If that's not a special offer I'll EAT MY HAT. Note controversial opinion expressed herein: the best solo Paul McCartney work did not appear until FLOWERS IN THE DIRT. Before anyone rushes to order it, please note that it appears to be two-dimensional.

I used to listen to my mum's copy of "All The Best" all the time. On vinyl, too.

amazing.

Love Coming Up and C Moon too.

And then I wake up.

I had "All the best" on CD for many years, never listened to it, but I'll agree that "Venus and Mars" is a neglected classic, as is the first McCartney LP, very primitive but rather homely.

I had dreams about WINGSPAN last night. or it featured in my last night's dreams. I think it was really big and cost one hundred and twenty-five pounds or twenty-five pounds and was sealed in plastic and didn't tell me the tracklisting.

record shopping w/ allyC, yesterday, we saw many mccartney/wings albums. WINGS AT THE SPEED OF SOUND looked OK but was on cassette and three pounds fifty.

Does anyone else like 'Hope of Deliverance'? I think it has a haunting melody.

p.s. 'for your love'+'bus stop'=gouldman.

maybe it would have helped him if he'd politicised his back to the land smoke weed every day thing in the same way lennon politicised his beatles withdrawal existential crisis heroin dick flick thing - but it's never been paul's way. instead he did the look how happy I am without you thing which was much more effective at pissing off his intended target but gave nothing for the radical chic rock intelligentsia to chew on

"Another Day" stands out because it isn't really a happy song - there's an interview somewhere with Paul saying it's kind of apiece with "For No One," which is a different story but also has melancholy and less specifically heartache at its core. I'm not sure how much of "Another Day" was done by 1969 (just the music or the lyrics too), but I don't think it was that common for a major male rock star at that time to write a song that's about a woman's existential dread, and even when you came across one of those, it's likely it wasn't all that sympathetic to the character involved.

― birdistheword,

I belive him, but his arrangement is so cheerful!

rock critics were like there goes paul with his happy sappy another day because they don't listen and don't care about women and were like who needs to listen to this pussy whipped sadsack when we have real feminists like john lennon to tell us what's up

honestly the way paul writes about women is so striking and unusual for a rock star in a way that I've only seen people starting to acknowledge recently and it's so weird considering how clueless he can be IRL about gender and feminism related things

I think Linda and "Linda" as concept are the only prisms through which he understood women as anything other than groupies, though Jane Asher was her own woman too.

mother mary, lovely linda, famous groupies

he's also loved old ladies since he was young but maybe they're all mary too

actually maybe if he *doesn't* want to fuck them they suddenly become more interesting to him as human beings which is a weird kind of sexism but he's a weird person

It was noticeable, seeing him live at Glastonbury, that there wasn't a single woman on stage, and only one in the long list of worky thanks (the one in charge of the big screens). It got me thinking how rarely he has collaborated with women in his solo career other than with Linda. Maybe he just doesn't trust himself, the old horndog.

i definitely don't hear "another day" as cheerful or celebrating domesticity, it's more ambivalent than that, there's some melancholy to it as paul apparently claimed

every time this thread gets bumped i just think about how "silly love songs" is one of the greatest songs ever recorded

i definitely don't hear "another day" as cheerful or celebrating domesticity, it's more ambivalent than that, there's some melancholy to it as paul apparently claimed

― ufo,

The bridge for sure.

Yep - “sad, so sad, sometimes she feels so sad / alone in her apartment she dwells, till the man of her dreams come to take her hand”. It’s all existential dread and quotidian numbness. Nothing remotely domestic about it.

oops “comes to break the spell” is it?

the most remarkable thing is how he's taking the perspective of so many women he fucked (over) for whom he was the man of their dreams

for no one is kind of like a bridge between another girl and another day in terms of perspective and empathy and I like to think it demonstrates real growth

I mean those guys were in a bubble in a hugely sexist society from the age of 18 onwards, so it’s unsurprising they would have warped views of relationships from a current perspective.
I like the anecdote that the French horn player saw the chart music titled “For No One” and thought the group had arrogantly decided it was going to be a number one hit.

what I can't decide is whether it's secretly a bit queer or just sexist for mccartney to be offloading his emotional baggage onto all these semi-fictional women he sings about

it wasn't just a bubble it was both a surrogate family and (semi-open) polycule

I don't think any of them were ever not weird about relationships during or after that and how could it be any other way

Thread takes a turn.

All this talk about Paul and fucking kind of makes me realize how devoid of carnality his post-Beatles music is. There are a few – “Eat at Home” is a particularly hilarious one. But by and large, there is very little lasciviousness to Solo Paul and I wonder how much of that was what fired the resentment of the likes of Xgau.

why do you think I love "Press"?

that's it yes

some people never forgave linda for taking the biggest slut of the 60s off the market as it were

I assume that goes for a lot of the ostensibly straight boomer rock guys too since they would never shut up about how pretty he was and how he should have done better (married jane and kept fucking around I guess)

You are proving my point, Alfred.

"For No One" is def. ice cold. But I am failing to see evidence that Paul was some toxic misogynist if that, indeed, is what is being suggested by some here.

I always thought Junior's Farm was nonsense lyrics, but it's actually a clever little thing about capitalism, isn't it? Looking forward to One Hand Clapping coming out.

― timellison, Saturday, 4 May 2024 20:47

?? There's one line about inflation, that's all I can see. The poker stuff is about Beatle/Apple breakup negotiations, innit

re: carnality: "Hi Hi Hi!"

^^^ definitely about fucking a banana

Let's not forget Fuh You

Actually, let's forget Fuh You

https://i.imgur.com/4dR9bVN.gif

(xp) I only wish I could.

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/78/d2/d4/78d2d413459d6f77bf405e78b050065e.jpg

coming up!

I don't find any of the Beatles a bit attractive. Maybe young George? But he would've sulked me to death.

not sure why I posted that it seemed vaguely relevant to the fucking discussion

there are some really hot ones out there but this isnt a thirst trap thread unless the thirst traps are songs which he has plenty of

I find each of them attractive or unattractive at different times in different eras

pepper john is the hottest john not sure if that's a hot take or not

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/nov/21/fireman-electric-arguments

apprently not his finest hour.

― titchyschneiderMk2, Friday, November 21, 2008 4:19 PM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

but close to it. "sing the changes"!

"fluid" on rushes is the nearest he ever approached bitches brew (released just a month or two before let it be)

This has been pegged by the more excitable tabloids as a hate rant against Heather Mills

lol i'm sorry but this word choice is a low blow

I always thought Junior's Farm was nonsense lyrics, but it's actually a clever little thing about capitalism, isn't it? Looking forward to One Hand Clapping coming out.

― timellison, Saturday, 4 May 2024 20:47

?? There's one line about inflation, that's all I can see. The poker stuff is about Beatle/Apple breakup negotiations, innit

― glumdalclitch, Monday, May 6, 2024 8:48 AM (six hours ago)

Yeah, but specifically about MONEY and how it's earned. Or not earned, you just have to play the game. And what happens in the seats of power - "We all chipped in for a bag of cement." And what someone is willing to do for a couple of pence.

Re. sexuality in his songs - "Alligator" on New.

coldblooded, that one

Actually, the next song on that album ("On My Way to Work") also.