C/D Paul McCartney Solo

'Press' and 'Only Love Remains' are two of my favourite solo McCartney tracks, and 'Pretty Little Head', 'Talk More Talk' and 'Strangehold' still work their way into my mind from time to time. I'm not really much of a fan of 'Good Times Coming' or... shit, I'm going to have to look at the tracklisting to see what else is on it...

*'Stranglehold', rather.

I love the "Feel the Sun" section of "Good Times Coming." And "Stranglehold" has pep, good horn chart, and nice chord changes -- I credit Eric Stewart. Also: first time "preamble" ever appeared in a pop song.

Guys, "However Absurd"

he sings at one point "however ABSOIIID"

'However Absurd'... isn't very good!

https://media.giphy.com/media/3oz8xLd9DJq2l2VFtu/giphy.gif

It wouldn't make it into my Top 100 post-Beatles McCartney tracks, to be honest. As a tune I find it pretty forgettable and his vocal on it gets on my tits. Down there with the scraps from Pipes of Peace and Off The Ground for me.

Varispeed vocal on the bridge is amazing.

Was listening to "Run, Devil, Run." Rhetorical question, but why does this can't-go-wrong idea sound so shitty? Great players, great sound, great producer but ... just sounds like shit, with horrible drum sound, horrible guitar sounds. OK, maybe Im exaggerating, but all they had to do was yell and rock out in a room! It sounds like session guys stuffed in a pillowcase.

that's one of his best albums!

I agree! (low bar)

I'mma pull it out today but idk I remember it being pretty great, maybe the best ever ''retirement-age rocker pulls out some beloved old rock tunes to cover'' type album? Title track, Blue Jean Bop, No Other Baby, She Said Yeah, Honey Hush and Coquette are all great recordings in my memory.

His theme song to "The Zoo Gang" is pretty good. He should've done less albums and more TV theme songs.

Yeah, I'm not a fan of '50s rock and roll played with big overdriven guitars so much either. There's some good stuff on that album but I'm most partial to ones like "Bluejean Bop" and "Movie Magg" where they go with vintage sounds.

Like I said, I like the concept. And I love fifties rock. I was just not impressed by how they took this no-brainer retro concept and made it sound kind of meh. Performances are fine, it just literally sounds bad to me.

I hardly ever listen to Run Devil Run ... probably one of my least listened to McCartney solo LP's overall.

Fantastic interview with Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson, and Mitchell Froom on the rerelease of Flowers in the Dirt:

http://www.superdeluxeedition.com/interview/in-their-own-words-the-producers-discuss-mccartneys-flowers-in-the-dirt/

Just starting in and it's pure candy to me so far. Thanks for the link.

so like candy!

Amazing how involved they were in the songwriting, or re-writing I guess! Forcing him to come up with a better bridge for Rough Ride, changing all the chords on Figure of Eight (!). Also super interesting that Froom kinda hates on the sound of the period and wishes he could remix "My Brave Face," pretty sure I've said something similar about that track on ILX once or twice.

This is particularly good:

Chris Hughes: Because he’s so good and can do something relatively quickly, and it can be up on its legs and making sense – I think there’s an element that he can be lazy in terms of him being great. Well… the song’s good, now I’m going to do a fucking amazing arrangement and amazing performances. Some of his records, his headspace, you get the impression that he’s doing it and it’s all right, and it makes sense, and it’s Press to Play. There’s other times where somewhere, someone’s obviously said – or he’s thought – “actually, this might as well be great”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJrD-QK6skE

^^^ Paul's version of a couple of these events. Gotta say the producers' account is a lot more convincing. Oh well.

I don't understand their fascination with "Rough Ride," a non-entity that stops the album dead.

I've always liked that one! I think they're responding to its degree of fleshed-outedness as a song, and maybe some kind of interest/possibility sparked by the title line? Versus something like "Motor of Love" which feels like a really flabby and shapeless composition where Paul is imagining it getting fixed through the recording process.

So odd that "Ou Est Le Soleil" would be his "Myth of Fingerprints" moment.

Firstly, I don't get Horn's fascination with 'Rough Ride' beyond the fact that he worked on it. I like the song, but I don't think it's anywhere near the best thing on there and doesn't work as the second track on the LP.

Secondly, thanks to Horn and Lipson for contributing to making 'Figure of Eight' a highlight of the record and not just another Macca old-style rocker.

Thirdly, Froom is fucking wrong about '80s production.

and he says it at least three times

I want to remind Froom's clinkety-clank "'90s production" on the stuff he worked on that decade sounds words

I always enjoy reading about things getting tense between McCartney and producers in the studio, whether it be Lipson or Padgham or Godrich or whoever.

i like froom's 90's production. and I agree with him that my brave face doesn't sound great (nor does most of this album) mainly due to the production, which is unfortunate since some of the songs are really good.

see I don't find a thing wrong with "My Brave Face."

Hahah I think we've had this discussion several times. I like it fine with its bright poppy 80s sound - I just imagine a version of that track and this album that's much closer to a "roots rock" sound, and I like that version better.

Ha, yeah. "Roots rock" is as much a collection of attitudes about recording music as it is a sound. Look at Froom's befuddlement about what constitutes '80s production -- he thinks it's "artificial" or something.

I think 'My Brave Face' is actually perfect - like Alfred, I can't find a thing to fault with it.

"Rough Ride" is dreadful. It is beyond comprehension to me that Trevor Horn, Steve Lipson and Paul McCartney would think otherwise all these years later.

Know all the '70s singles, love exactly two: "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Junior's Farm." Don't own any of his solo albums--I've got Band on the Run and, still, my high-school copy of Speed of Sound--and the window on buying them basically closed when I moved out of my teens. (By which I mean that, for me, the Beatles, the first Lennon album, and a handful of George/Ringo singles were all I needed.)

Long preface to explain how I managed to hear a Paul song from his first album for the first time ever last week. I've forgotten already how I stumbled over it, but I sure do love it. (Searched "something" on this thread and it seems to be absent.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHTCWY7Lvpk

Having just finished a rewatch of Mad Men, I really wish they would have ended a season-7 episode with that.

It's a good one!

It's just such a (to coin a phrase) early 1970 song, pitched halfway between the White Album and the singer-songwriter moment. Think I've listened to it 20 times the past week.

I like how he showcases a different instrument he's playing, often with just a note.

It's a mere scrap of a song, IMO, and not really essential McCartney material for me.

Not surprisingly, I'd say that's no small part of what makes it so great--you start formally arranging that song, and adding on some of the goop McCartney was prone to, and I think you'd lose it's beauty. The White Album's filled with what are basically scraps and fragments.

i was going to say, thrown-off fragments is a very mcartney thing -- overcompletion is often his flaw

clem, have you heard this?

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

Ah, 'Every Night' ... that's more like it!

I think I auditioned that one last week after I found "That Would Be Something." Also nice, and I'm going to get hold of the first album. Obviously I was wrong to ignore it all this time.

The thing I love about 'Every Night', aside from that it's an excellent song and one of the highlights of McCartney (IMO) is that it's lyrically a real reflection of where McCartney's head was at when he wrote it, and his feeling low circa The Beatles splitting.

The fragments on that album represent some of his most realized work, I think, partly because ordinarily his attention span doesn't let him think songs through, therefore the arrangements are supposed to solve the problem. Your point about those Paul songs as midway between TWA and '70s singer-songwriter rock makes sense. He didn't fit in with Mitchell, Taylor, Young, et. al, or even with the Richard Thompson faction in England. His attraction to whimsy and affect is closer to Ferry-Bowie.

and closer to music hall too -- which means it still remains ideologically close to Ferry-Bowie.

Hmm. I vastly prefer McCartney in "big budget" mode, rather than the tossed-off goofing of McCartney, McCartney II, Wild Life and some of his tracks on the white album.

where McCartney's head was at when he wrote it, and his feeling low circa The Beatles splitting

I generally avoid trying to figure out what musicians are feeling, and just stick to what I'm feeling, but along with that--which makes sense--maybe he also suddenly felt great freedom: new decade, new wife, and all of a sudden he could do whatever he wanted musically. That's what I hear in "That Would Be Something," amazement and surprise and discovery.

Well, McCartney himself has gone on record as confirming that that is what 'Every Night' was about - feeling miserable and depressed about the end of The Beatles, but yes, also being obviously glad that Linda was there to support him and see him through it.