C/D Paul McCartney Solo

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.

I see McCartney as both an exercise in just messing about and seeing what happens and an excuse to get rid of a couple of his Beatle-era compositions that the band didn't record a final version of, like 'Junk' and 'Teddy Boy'

Grateful Dead did a cover of "That Would Be Something."

"Roots rock" is as much a collection of attitudes about recording music as it is a sound.

Not sure I'm following you, Alfred - are you saying "My Brave Face" is roots rock?

Talking about McCartney's more personal lyrics, it makes me chuckle every time I listen to New where he essentially gives Beatle fans a bollocking on 'Early Days' for giving Lennon credit for stuff he did.

(xposts) That makes total sense--there's a real Grateful Dead feel to it, and, without having thought about it, that's probably a big part of the song's appeal to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMHaE5AP8G8

(The Grateful Dead, as is their habit, de-fragment it...)

Not sure I'm following you, Alfred - are you saying "My Brave Face" is roots rock?

― timellison, Sunday, March 26, 2017

Not at all -- I'm responding to the idea that we should've stripped down those FITD productions.

A track like 'We Got Married' would lose most of its appeal for me if it were done in, say, the style of McCartney or Wild Life.

Just listened to the demos on the Special Edition of Flowers in the Dirt – pretty sure that I enjoyed every demo on this set more than any song on the album proper. The interplay with Costello is legit and a number of the songs they didn't otherwise record are excellent.

Pretty clear to me based on the record itself and that interview (which was excellent – thx for sharing, Alfred) that McCartney had no idea what he wanted to do on this record. Five different outside producers (thankfully no interview with David Foster), a major collaborator for songwriting, tossed off jams mostly written by outsiders does not a masterpiece make. Of course the talent was still there—as evidenced by said demos which are required listening for Macca fans—but the feel for the market wasn't. Man, when that goes it goes quickly.

I see it as McCartney's attempt to record his own multi-producer project, so common in the '80s starting with Private Dancer, but had been in control too long to cede it.

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.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Sunday, March 26, 2017 10:04 PM (yesterday)

i agree w/ this totally. for all its fragmented, half-finished nature, mccartney's first album has always been one of my favorites. the songs feel vibrant and alive the way a great artist's casual sketches sometimes do. i imagine a lot of paul's best songs began something like "that would be something" -- just a hint of a tune and a couple of lines he woke up singing to himself. i think what makes the album special -- and gives it a very different feel to anything he'd done with the beatles, or anything he'd do with wings -- is that there's no sense that paul's singing with an audience in mind. this feels like something he did entirely for himself. in a way it feels as personal as lennon's first solo album.

""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."

things like this make me really wonder...when a bunch of people I toherwise completely respect, whose taste seems to be pretty on the mark...wtf. that song sucks. so does soliel.

I see it as McCartney's attempt to record his own multi-producer project, so common in the '80s starting with Private Dancer, but had been in control too long to cede it.

― the Rain Man of nationalism. (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, March 27, 2017 12:24 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup, this is the way that I see it too. This was a bit of a "comeback" record for him after Press To Play and was about to go on tour, so I guess he wanted to ensure that he had an album in the bag that was bang up to date sonically... and what better way of doing that than use the best producers available? Because he could, because he's Paul McCartney.

Also, this wouldn't be the last time he'd make a multi producer record. His last one had several, too.

And just like that my Twitter feed turns up this lucky penny:

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2015/09/12/never-like-this-paul-mccartneys-press/

ha! You inspired it all these years ago!

mccartney? poor man's emitt rhodes

Greg Kurstin is producing the new album.

"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"

nah, folks who have issues with 80s production are usually opponents of gated reverb on drums and chorus effects on guitars. that's it, really.

that's my point!

My review of the reissue.

More interviews with Costello and McCartney about this

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/after-john-paul-mccartney-found-another-partner-to-get-the-most-out-of-him-the-proof-is-finally-emerging/2017/03/16/ae2fe91c-09a7-11e7-a15f-a58d4a988474_story.html?utm_term=.3c1c977a15a8

Costello did politely urge McCartney away from the instrument he was using, a modern bass with five strings. (“A perversion of nature,” says Costello.) He asked McCartney to pull out his old Hofner. The bass still had a Beatles set list taped to it.

Costello: I wasn’t being funny or being in any way sentimental. I honestly thought [the new bass] disguised his musical personality when he was playing. He actually played his Rickenbacker on a lot of the tracks. He played the Hofner on “Veronica,” that he played on my session [for Costello’s album “Spike”]. Because he knew I liked the sound of it. But he flew around on that Rickenbacker, and it was suddenly like, “My God, this is one of the great instrumentalists of the rock-and-roll era.” His voice comes through. It’s as if you gave Louis Armstrong a plastic horn to play.

I really, really, really will never understand the fascination with that fucking Hofner bass.

nah, folks who have issues with 80s production are usually opponents of gated reverb on drums and chorus effects on guitars. that's it, really.

― Darin, Monday, March 27, 2017 6:43 AM (ten hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

and synths, and early digital recording, and producers making heavy use of the Fairlight CMI and/or Synclavier, and the obsession with keeping everything as perfectly in time as possible, and the way producers liked to minimise "bleed" on tracks to keep everything as pristine sounding and easy to mix as possible, and reverb on everything, and saxophones and fretless bass.

Not that there's anything particularly wrong with any of these things.

and synths, and early digital recording, and producers making heavy use of the Fairlight CMI and/or Synclavier, and the obsession with keeping everything as perfectly in time as possible, and the way producers liked to minimise "bleed" on tracks to keep everything as pristine sounding and easy to mix as possible, and reverb on everything, and saxophones and fretless bass.

man this is like Orson Welles reciting a list of Jake Gyllenhaal's yummiest parts

xp

things were far more out of sync in the 70s

i typically like gated reverb etc but listening to flowers in the dirt this morning I was really bothered by the snare sounds, they just sound shitty throughout the record.