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On which Wings hire a boat and record some music during time off from their holiday…
Track Listing: London Town (Silver Rain Came Pouring Down)/ Café On The Left Bank/ I’m Carrying/ Backwards Traveller/ Cuff Link/ Children Children/ Girlfriend/ I’ve Had Enough// With A Little Luck/ Famous Groupies/ Deliver Your Children/ Name And Address/ Don’t Let It Bring You Down/ Morse Moose And The Grey Goose
'If you want good eggs you better
feed that hen...'
Half of the album may
have been recorded on board two yachts navigating the Virgin Islands, but from
its title to its front cover to the music 'London Town' feels like a
home-coming. Back in 1976 few rock acts had ever been on a tour as extended or
thorough as Wings Over The World and while the concerts were gratefully
received by starved Beatles fans the tour was lengthy and tiring.Wings, never
the most fragile of groups, were splitting at the seams. Aware that the band
needed to take things easier if they were to stay together and again keen to
record somewhere unusual rather than the same old ugly studio, Macca asked the
band for ideas of where to record that might seem more like a holiday. It was
Denny Laine who suggested the idea of recording on a boat - he'd lived on a
houseboat in lieu of a house for a year when the Moody Blues money had run out
and Wings' hadn't arrived yet - and it seemed like the pefect solution. The McCartneys
quickly chartered three boats - one for the McCartney family, one for the band
and one for the equipment and Macca's old friend and Beatles engineer Geoff
Emerick (one boat was named 'The Grey Goose' and appears in song; the other was
named 'The Fair Carol' and wasn't - no one seems quite sure what the third was
called). The early sessions were reportedly idyllic, with songwriting and
recording sessions interrupted by frequent bouts of sunbathing and swimming and
the band 'conference' took place in the morning in the sea. However a series of
unblucky incidents turned the experience another disaster rivalling the Laos
experience of 'Band On The Run'. Emerick struggled to keep the studio together
with no chance of going back for spare parts or plugging into an electricity
board, accidentally electrocuting his foot quite badly as he set the studio up.
Wings quickly found that steep staircases, rocking boats and inebriated nights
out didn't go together and first Jimmy then Paul fell down the steep steps leading
down to their cabins, badly injuring a knee each. Then to top it all off local
customs officials heard a rock band were in town and decided to pay them an
unexpected visit - they were let off with nothing more stern than an 'official
warning', but Wings' elder navy captain hosts were less than amused and the
band got into an argument that left them back in the harbour stranded until
they could hire another boat (named 'The Wanderlust' - inspiring one of the
better songs from Paul's 1982 album 'Tug Of War'). The band finally packed
their grand idea in when Linda revealed she was pregnant with son James and
grudgingly decided that being seasick and pregnancy-sick while on board a boat
in the middle of nowhere surrounded by drunken musicians was probably not the
best place to be.
On their last legs
before the 'holiday', the band split up not long after despite a second set of
more ordinary sessions booked at Abbey Road. In a neat inverse of what happened
on 'Band On The Run' Wings were now once again down to a core trio of Paul,
Linda and Denny - but after the foreign adventure had taken place rather than
before (the songs recorded in the 'second half' with the 'core trio' are
Backwards Traveller, Cuff Link, Girlfriend the two Denny Laine songs and
possibly I'm Carrying- you might notice that only a few of these songs feature
drums! The Denny songs were a late substitute for 'Find A Way', a song of his
tried out at sea that was never finished, alongside the excruciating McCartney
punk song 'Boil Crisis' which will unfortunately set the tone for the next and
final Wings album 'Back To The Egg'). Jimmy handed his notice in more or less
straight away after getting the call from an excited Steve Marriott who wanted
him for a reunited Small Faces; rather chuffed to be called by a guitarist he
admired (McCulloch's style is a lot closer to Marriott's second band Humble Pie
than The Beatles), Jimmy handed his notice in straight away despite McCartney's
concern that Marriott's bands tended to never last very long. As it turns out
Jimmy's life ended before the band's did, after the guitarist died of a heart
attack brought on by morphine poisoning from all the drugs in his system in September
1979, a mere 18 months after this album's release. He was only twenty-six,
beating even the members of the infamous 'twenty-seven' club who lived too hard
too fast by nine months. Joe's departure was rather calmer - he'd loved being
with Wings but realised that recording 'Venus and Mars' down the road from his
home town was going to be the exception rather than the rule for a very
English-centred band. Having spent most of the[past three years away from home
and family, he grew increasingly homesick and asked for a heart to heart with
his boss about his future; the McCartneys, who'd never been keen on the rest of
the band having family around despite taking their whole family crew with them
wherever they went, realised they had to let him go. Interestingly much of the
theme of 'London Town' is homesickness - although it's actually for Europe in
general and England in particular rather than Joe's New Orleans hometown.
As well as the usual
array of Wings styles, 'London Town' features English sea shanties, traditional
English folk and even what might be termed traditional English rock and roll
('Name and Address' is more Johnny Kidd and the Pirates than Elvis). While
'Cafe On The Left Bank' is pure French travelogue, songs like 'Children
Children' 'Morse Moose' and 'London Town' itself are pure English songs in stark
contrast to the more Americanised pop of 'Venus and Mars' and 'Speed Of Sound'.
For a time the album was also set to be Wings' most SVottish album until a song
recorded late in the sessions was released as a single at the tail end of 1977:
'Mull Of Kintyre'. A best-seller with bagpipes, it was a last hurrah of sorts
(the last song to feature Joe and the last writing collaboration between Paul
and Denny - in fact it caused something of a rift betwene them as Denny agreed
to a proposal that he would get an 'advance' from the song in return for
handing over his rights, little knowing what a monster hit it would be; Paul's
decision to uphold the agreement, while technically well within his rights,
seems rather harsh given that he wasn't exactly in need of the extra money). The
'Kintyre' milestone also lifted a millstone around McCartney's neck: after
years of telling a disbelieving press that his best-selling work might still be
ahead of him, Macca finally broke a long-standing Beatles record for highest UK
sales (though 'Kintyre' was a major flop in pretty much every other country
where bagpipes are more of an acquired taste). 'London Town' the album suffers
a little from that too and for all the air and sea miles it built up over the
course of production it's a record that doesn't seem to have travelled well,
not much known outside it's native land.
Which is a shame
because despite being written off at birth and kicked by most critics ever
since, 'London Town' is if not necessarily the best or the most consistent
Wings album then easily their more interesting. Caught halfway between the
laidback feel of the holiday jaunt that never was and the tightness, confidence
and urgency of 'Band On The Run' which in similar circumstances saw the
streamlined band at their performance best, 'London Town' is the closest Wings
ever got to fulfilling their full potential and showing what a band they could
have been with better luck and a happier line-up. The album's peculiar mix of
laidback grooves and high-strung rockers may not be to everyone's tastes but it
does offer some inteiguing sounds you can't get anywhere else and shows off one
of the greatest factors in Wings' favour - their eclecticism - to great effect.
What other album from the 1970s can you name which goes from a traditional folk
song featuring flageolets to a raw and primal 50s spoof into a prog rock
masterclass featuring beeping synths and sea shanties? With a running time of
51:29 the album contains so much that it's easier to overlook the typical Wings
flaws (the 'Backwards Traveller-Cuff Link' medley is this album's 'what the?'
moment, while 'I've Had Enough' is one of the band's less inspired singles)
because even without them there's a full album's worth of excellent material
here (this is the longest McCartney album until as late as 'Flowers In The
Dirt' in 1989, which sahdes it by two minutes). What's more all of these songs
seem to be doing something different yet somehow they all seem to 'fit' as
wider pieces of the jigsaw - even the similar 'Venus and Mars' album had to
shoe-horn a half-concept in to make them work - and yet Geoff Emerick's
glittering production (for which he really should have had a bigger credit)
means that a bitty album recorded in two seperate chunks still sounds like an
album where every song 'belongs'. Though there's no real connection between the
songs here other than an aching nostalgia and a (very) vague theme of life on
the road ('Cafe On The Left Bak' takes it seriously, 'Famous Groupies' less so)
and the tracks verge from bawdy comedy to stark solemnity ('Don't Let It Bring
You Down' is one of the great un-sung Wings masterpieces). At long last Wings
have learnt how to merge the confidence, aggression and consistent production
sound of 'Band On The Run' with the more laidback grab-bag of esotericness of 'Venus
and Mars'. Had Wings survived another decade and needed to look back for
inspirition then this should have been their starting point - an album that
might occasionally reach the dizzying heights of past triumphs but trips over
its own big feet less and less. If the tracks aren’t all individually the
greatest things Wings ever did (what on earth is Cuff Link doing taking
up so much space?!), London Town still impresses by being quite possibly
the most rounded album Wings or maybe even McCartney ever made, one that at
last shows off the man’s ridiculously wide wingspan of talents on one
long-running slab of vinyl. Even the lengthy closing instrumental workout is
genuinely inventive and innovative, while the shorter pop songs seem sharper,
the rockers seem harder and the prime McCartney ballads are even more
gorgeously aching and fragile than normal.Why more people don't love this album
I'll never know - there's far more going on here than in either of the records
the other side of it and though you could make a case for 'Red Rose Speedway'
'Band On The Run' and 'Venus and Mars' for vartious reasons 'London Town'
remains my favourite Wings record.
Partly the reason the
record works so well is the series of contrasts cleverly interwoven - whether
by accident or design - throughout the record. The album cover comes with both monochrome
'winter' and technicolour 'summer' designs (actually something The Hollies had
tried first on 1966's 'For Certain Because...', a record recorded at Abbey Road
alongside The Beatles' 'Revolver') and that's reflected in the opening two
songs. Typically we're in London and it's wet for the title track (though its
the nicely descriptive 'silver rain' that's 'falling down') - next second we're
in a French cafe in the sunshine. 'I'm Carrying' has a package of love to go
along with the parcels Macca is carrying to give to his beloved - before
'Backwards Traveller' has him walking off in the other direction, as if
somebody's just flipped the 'reverse' button. After a brief foray for 'Cuff
Link' the album grows from the childhood of 'Children Children' to the
adolescence of 'Girlfriend' (and potentially out the other side to the huffing
and puffing of 'I've Had Enough'). It's a real shame that 'With A Little Luck'
and 'Don't Let It Brign You Down' aren't together: they're effectively the same
song but looked at from very different angles: 'Down' is the bitter
down-in-the-drumps heaving sighs of the night before, desperately trying to
keep it together until things get better very much back in the London Town
'rain' whilst 'Luck' is the happy sunshine of the following day when anything
can happen, the sunshine from France coming out with a smile. Denny's 'Deliver
Your Children' gets in on the act too: presumably McCartney gets a co-credit
for the most Paul-like line on the album ('If a thing goes wrong you gotta make
it right'). That leaves the humour of 'Famous Groupies' (the bawdiest knees-up
on any McCartney album and actually rather ahead of its time with its lewd
humour and risque jokes) and the fake sincetrity of 'Name and Address' (which
is a throwback to yesteryear when romantic pop songs could get away with such
daftness, performed with a knowing wink that says 'we couldn't get away with a
song like this today...'). That just leaves the icy sea-ridden tentacles of
'Morse Moose', a mad sea shanty that with shades of 'The Flying Dutchman'
leaves Wings forever lost at sea, sending out the album as a form of their
repeated distress code (though some books report that this song simply repeats
the morse code over and over, it was actually illegal at the time to repeat the
'SOS' code in a song and from what I can make out the rhythm translates closest
to 'CT' played over and over. Make of that what you will!) However, much like
'London Town', what comes over loud and clear isn't so much the distress of
making the album but the delight in the sheer challenge of making it and
overcoming the obstacles that got in their way to carry on great music. And if
that shouldn't survive to be Wings' swansong then I don't know what does.
Not co-incidentally for
such a great album, there's an awful lot of Denny Laine on this album,
Under-used and under-appreciated for much of his time with the band, Denny at
last has material and time on his hands and with Jimmy's and Joe's position in
the band fading and a pregnant Linda distracted this is his last chance to
prove himself as Paul's 'equal partner'. Another part of the reason 'London
Town' works so well are the bursts of glorious harmonies that surround this
album even more than normal. only CSN and the Beach Boys can rival Wings on a
good day and no album sums up this band’s three-part shine and shimmer like London
Town. Linda didn’t just find her spiritual soulmate when she met Paul, she
found her vocal soulmate too with the couple blending so well at times they
sound like one voice. Meanwhile, Denny Laine’s voice goes well with anything,
providing the ‘Crosby ’ glue that holds the
trio together and adding the icing to a particularly rich cake and his own
songs are gems that shine every bit as well as McCartney’s for the most part. From
the gentle Motown-style urgent optimism of 'With A Little Luck' to the
devestating depression of 'Don't Let It Bring You Down' to his own two songs,
the slightly wet 'Children Children' and the much smarterm folk-rock style
'Deliver Your Children' Denny is right there. As with 'Band On The Run' many of
these performances are ensemble pieces, with or without the other musicians
around, and there's a real sense that Paul and Denny know each other well
enough to get each other out of trouble now ('Morse Moose' is the sort of
grit-your-teeth-and-go-for-it jam session thyat only works with a band who know
each other well - 'Wildlife' features several examples of Paul assuming Wings
could fly before they could walk but now the band are capable of his bigger
concepts). One of my favourite bootleg tapes by anyone is the 'roughs' tape for
this album, full of all the rough edges the band got to removing back at Abbey
Road and while the finished product comes with the usual pristine layers of
polish, the raw takes reveal what a great time the band are having in between
all the incidents and accidents. 'Name and Address' is the only song that still
has this sense of 'drama in the room' unfolding on the album (especially the
way it conmes to an uncomfortable full-stop, seemingly deliberately breaking
down) but originally great swathes of the album sounded this way, with an
especially gorgeous gruff version of 'With A Little Luck', a much funnier
'Famous Groupies', a punkish elongated version of 'Backwards Traveller' that
actually makes sense in a 'surreal Lennon' kind of a way and a more rambling
yet far livelier 'Morse Moose' (before the 'Grey Goose' sailed alongside) with
the energy of invention still very much in the room. Hopefully some or perhaps
all of these tapes will be on the McCartney deluxe edition of 'London Town' one
day - I predict here and now that 'London Town' will surprise and please a lot
of fans not expecting much, especially the 'raw' stuff (though they didn't use
any of the similarly good raw sessions for 'Venus and Mars' sadly; incidentally
for once I'm at a loss as to what they could use for the DVD - there are TV
clips of 'London Town' and 'With A Little Luck' and that's about it).
However as Wings learnt
so often during their career (especially with 'Wildlife') you can still lose
the record race if you release just the wrong record at just the wrong time.
Sent out blinking into the light of the day during the middle of the punk era –
which is everything this cleverly orchestrated, delightfully polished album
isn’t – London Town had more of
a struggle in life to overcome than most. With music suddenly becoming
deadly serious again almost overnight in the late 1970s during the second wave
of ‘art = pain’ musicians, London Town got dismissed at the time as a
millionaire superstar and his lackeys paying for his holiday by recording an
album full of doodles. At the time it was felt that there was too
much whimsy and too many ballads, but in retrospect 'London Town' has just
about the right mix of everything, a record where the band's whimsicalness
is at its most winsome and their rockers at their most loud and punchy. There’s
also a lot of quiet bravery about this record that many people miss, with Wings
attempting lots of new ideas that millionaire rock musicians could have gotten
away without doing in 1978 – but unlike other oddities in the McCartney/Wings
canon like Valentine Day and Loup (First Indian On The Moon) there is
some substance to tracks like 'Famous Groupies' and 'Morse Moose' and even
'Backwards Traveller' (of a sort) and they don’t exist for the sole purpose of
sounding outré and wacky as before. In short, London Town works
because more than any other McCartney album, Paul has let his guard down and in
essence its 50 minutes of Macca and co having fun and stretching their ‘wings’.
The impression that this record was a 'failure' (although it still went top
five in the album charts both sides of the Atlantic) took on such a hold that
even McCartney himself declared the album a lost cause (though not before
cutting off a member of his long-term staff who told him it wasn't up to his
usual standards), which is odd given that he still defends the weaker 'Back To
The Egg' most days. They're both wrong by the way: 'London Town' is a late
period Wings classic, a last joyous piece of escapism before Macca’s
songwriting got deep and serious again immediately post- Lennon’s death. Though
no McCartney album is truly perfect and 'Ram' probably has an ever so slightly
higher quota rating of excellence per song ('Band On The Run' too if you could
discount 'Picasso's Last Words') 'London Town' remains one of the very best
albums in his and his band's catalogue. Surely I can't be the only one to think
this? (Someone, somewhere, has to know!) With a little luck - and hopefully a
deluxe edition special - so other people will realise this album's worth too.
The
Songs:
Things start
promisingly with [103] London Town itself, a
pretty tune with some interesting social commentary-lyrics about how the city
never changes year upon year, mirroring Graham Nash’s then-recent Cold Rain
masterpiece from 1977's 'CSN' about how despite all the success and times he'd
experienced no one else around him seemed to move on when he went back home.
McCartney's voices again equate him to his favourite theme of the 'ordinary
people' but this time the ordinary people are suffering - 'holding
conversations that are always incomplete' while jobbing actors pretend to be
more successful than they really are. London, a city that once seemed so
glamourous to the Liverpudlian Beatles, has now lost its glitter, just another
land of missed opportuities where it rains a lot. Presumably written after
Wings returned to the mainland (Jimmy and Joe both appear briefly but the song
doesn't appear with the other Virgin Island tapes), it sounds like homesickness
in reverse - that a 'home' imagined as being beautiful and tranquil and safe is
actually anything but. However the record does the usual Wings trick of taking
a bad thing and making it better, adding in the production glitz and glamour
the characters in the song can never experience, the song's author only too
pleased to have gotten away with the life he's been living instead of theirs.
However this Eleanor Rigby-type observation of frustration and
loneliness is rather clouded by a surreal last verse which among other things
involves a policeman (non-British citizens might not know that a 'rozzer' is a
slang tewerm for a 'cop') wearing pink balloons on his foot ('toot toot toot
toot tut!'), an unexpected slice of psychedelic surrealism (no wonder the band
were gtiven a drugs warning...) Forget the words if you want, though: the
haunting swooping tune to this song is prime 70s McCartney and is well balanced
between simple pop song and orchestral epic. The haunting lilt of the melody
and catchy ethereal synthesizer are a joy in their own right and the Wings
harmonies throughout this song are among their best.
If the last track is firmly keeping with the pre-punk Macca then [104] Café On The Left Bank
is one of McCartney’s wittier responses to the new wave bands trying to
overtake him. Like many of Macca’s best 70s tracks, Cafe charges along
in classy rocker style with Jimmy McCulloch giving the band the perfect leaving
present with his colourful guitar riff which takes this song instrumentally to
a higher level. That’s possibly just as well, because the lyrics of this song
are again a little bit odd when you study them closely, continuing the ‘day in
the life’ theme of the last track but are set in France
[105] I’m
Carrying really is simple, however; a rare return
to the sweet acoustic Yesterday-like ballad that people always assume Macca
albums are full of. Even George Harrison picked this track out in The
Beatles Book magazine as being one of his partner’s best songs in many
years during an interview and, well, I wouldn’t dare argue with George. Again,
it’s the lyrics that let this delightful tune down, with some very Macca-ish
rhymes (‘while’ and ‘style’ for instance) that ruin what could have been a
great lyric. In case you didn’t quite catch it (Macca’s vocal is
uncharacteristically hard to hear in this song) this song is about the narrator
carrying a torch for someone else in secret, afraid to admit his feelings even
to himself and working out how to make a return into the life of a girl he’s
already said goodbye to once. It’s lovely to hear Macca back playing acoustically
again (by my reckoning this is his first fully acoustic song since 1974’s Bluebird)
and underneath all the sonic air and sweet melodic strings, this
performance still has intact all the live-in-the-studio magic of the backing
track and vocal.
From the deceptively
simple to the outrageously complicated, [106] Backwards Traveller shows the breadth of this
album in the space of about four minutes, with Macca gleefully stapling onto
this simple slow-paced rocker some of the most impenetrable lyrics he ever
penned. The narrator tells us early on that he is ‘always going back in time’,
but the next few verses actually take us into the future, with their picture of
‘wailing on the moon’ while some space-age sound effects burble past our ears.
Like many of his ‘nonsense’ songs (Smile Away from Ram for instance),
Macca sings the song far straighter than normal, belting out the lyrics with
such a passion that they sound as if they really mean something to him. I’m
really not at all sure what these lyrics mean, however; it’s really just an
excuse to sing lots of peculiar sounding words that shouldn’t go together, like
Lennon used to do so often in his career. In many ways it’s a shame though: the
tune to this song is very impressive and could have been a classic in
McCartney’s canon had he spent more time on it. The time travel and space
references would also have made a better fit on Venus and Mars and might
have helped to flesh that album’s sketchy plot out a bit.
A sudden splurge of
synthesizer then drags us into [107] Cuff Link – the first and rather lesser of the
two electronic instrumentals that adorn this album and make it sound like an
early prototype for McCartney II, another one of those badly
under-estimated one-man band albums that sound terrible to non-fans but Macca
Maniacs have more than a soft spot for. There really isn’t much more about this
song to add: one synthesizer doodles a riff, another joins it in harmony, the
bass and drums suddenly crash in and then a sensitive string-come-brass arrangement
sweeps in, making this piece sound like something out of a 1980s film score.
Dull by McCartney’s better standards, this is a good riff put to rather poor
use and is almost certainly a recording improvised up during Wings’ Virgin Islands vacation.
I’m pleased to say that
the underused Denny Laine gets two chances on this album to make his voice
heard on this album, although the first of these tracks – [108] Children Children – isn’t exactly an album
highlight either. The track is credited to Mccartney/Laine and it actually
sounds more like the former’s work than the latter’s. Usually Denny’s tracks
are the leaner, meaner material sandwiched between a couple of towering
McCartney epics, but on this uncharacteristic track he’s using every trick up
Wings’ sleeves: chirping sound effects,
chiming zithers, large dollops of synthesizer, a riff played on what sound like
electronic pan pipes and a fiddle solo. The highlight of this powerhouse
arrangement though is Wings’ backing vocals, sounding gleefully childish in
their simple harmonies, especially when they plead with the storyteller to
continue his story and ‘start all over again’. As for the lyrics, they borrow
the oft-used children’s song motif of a hidden imaginary world where kids are
always playing and follows a rocking, rolling lullaby like rhythm that must
have been a good one for getting the McCartney children off to sleep to on the
boat. One of Denny’s more complex arrangements matched to one of his more
simple lyrics, this song out-apes McCartney in it’s tale of childish innocence
and freedom.
There’s no disputing
the authorship of [109] Girlfriend, however – this is
McCartney’s first all-out pop song since Silly Love Songs a couple of
years before and shares with that song it’s breathless excitement and sweeping,
rounded melody which as ever with Macca seems to go off on a random, meandering
journey but always meets up at the beginning again. That man of a thousand
voices Mr McCartney is back again, singing falsetto for most of the song,
although this clever arrangement makes the most out of Macca’s contrastingly
deep vocals on the middle eight and Denny’s falsetto harmonies on the last
verse are delightful. Lovely Wings harmonies, pretty tune, clever lyrics,
perfect pop construction with the end going back to the beginning; this
original version make’s Michael Jackson’s better known cover from his Off
The Wall album sound like amateur hour, big hit that it was. Not very
groundbreaking it’s true, but with consummate pop like this thrown away as an
album track, what more can you ask?
Macca’s other vocal
extreme – a deep throaty growl – can be heard on I’ve Had Enough, a largely failed
attempt at tongue-in-cheek humour that undoes much of the good work of London Town
The album’s true hit
single [110] With A
Little Luck goes one stage better than either of the other singles
on this album by marrying Macca’s pure pop concoction to some exotic, other-worldly
synthesizer and some slightly deeper lyrics. This slow-burning favourite is
among his best tracks on the album and (to his most devout and caring fans) one
of his best tracks of all. Fans of the single (included on every Macca
compilation to date) should find this album version worth getting too, as it
features a false ending and an extra verse not heard on the 45 version, with
Macca finally sacrificing the crystal-clear voice he has used on the rest of
the song for a burst of pure emotion that would surely have made the song an
even bigger and more enticing hit (albeit one that would have confused several
disc-jockeys!) Many people dismiss McCartney’s seemingly ‘over-produced’
records, but hear a record like this where the production values enhance rather
than distract from the song and you understand why he does it. The lyrics on
this song – telling us that things are always going to get us down at some
point in our lives, but in the words of another ex-Beatle ‘all things must
pass’ – are also very Macca. Realistic yet optimistic, encouraging without
being foolishly jolly, this song is sensitively performer by the three-piece
Wings, with Paul Linda and Denny playing the synthesizers and adding more of
their joyous harmonies. Listen out too for McCartney’s swooping bass playing, a
fine return to his Sgt Pepper’s trick of playing against rather than
with the tune and a technique that he was only just returning to back then, now
that Wings had been together a few years ands could handle such eccentricity. A
question for fans out there – is that Macca or Joe English playing the drums on
this track? (It sounds like Macca’s playing a la Back In The USSR and
Jet especially, but then Joe English was a pretty good mimic of drum
styles).
Next on side two, Macca
gets the chance to show off an un-developed side of his songwriting which had
all too often been his downfall in the past 10 years. [111] Famous Groupies
is - finally - hilarious, the kind of
jokey song that Rocky Raccoon and Maxwell’s Silver Hammer tried
to be (but so badly failed to be) because rather than insulting some
genre-staple (Westerns and psychopaths respectively), Macca seems to be
laughing at a subject he knows best – the rock and roll lifestyle. Now that he
had been married to Linda for nine years and was fully grounded in family life
(what other musician takes the whole of his family on the tour-bus with him?!)
McCartney seems to be looking at all the excess going on around him and
giggling his head off now that he no longer feels a central part of it. Risque
as Macca songs go, McCartney turns in one of his best vocals as the witty,
worldly wise musician who recants some of the more outrageous stories he’s
heard in his time in the music business (or quite possibly made up). Thankfully,
the humour doesn’t get in the way of a good song, as there is an inventive
tune, a singalong chorus and a slow and a pompous church-like organ riff that
make the song sound grounded too, whatever the flights of fancy filling
McCartney’s imagination on the top of them. Quite what Linda thought of her
husband writing about groupies and mattresses in the back of vans was never
recorded at the time, but she and Denny seem to be having a whale of a time on
the backing vocals.
Denny Laine’s second
song on the album may sport a similar title to his other effort, but [112] Deliver Your Children
couldn’t be more different. Similarly tongue-in-cheek yet far more ‘earthy’,
this song uses a typical Denny trick of mixing a laidback, slow burning and
rather straight-faced backing track rocker with his own increasingly frustrated
and emotional vocal over the top. This song sports a particularly killer
acoustic riff and some interesting (if hard-to-follow) lyrics that find the
narrator in various difficult situations. Sounding like an embattled war
correspondent, Denny’s narrator tells us about being trapped in a flood as he
prays to the God he doesn’t believe in to come and help him. He then gets
comedic in the second verse, when he tells us his house-bound wife spends all day
‘with the washing machine’ and then spends her nights ‘getting dirty’ out on
the town. A third verse sees the narrator’s car breaking down and stranding him
without money to pay for it – so he forces the dealer to work at gunpoint,
desperately pretending to the listener that he’s the ‘good’ one telling the man
‘you’ve robbed me before – so I’m robbing you back’. A peculiar debate,
perhaps, on how extreme our characters can become when put under pressure, its
hard to work out what on earth this all has to do with the nonsense chorus
about making sure your children grow up well ‘with a fork and knife’. Learning
from his colleague on the last track, Denny sings the song straight despite
some jokey couplets spoofing the narrator’s cod-philosophy (‘If you want good
eggs you better feed that hen…’) but it’s the choruses rather than the more
serious closing theme of the song (‘but if a thing goes wrong you’ve got to
make it right’ and take the matter into your own hands) that sticks in the
memory most. One of the album highlights, this is a folky CSN rocker with a
hint of 10cc in the lyrics.
Even funnier than the
last two tracks is the enthusiasm with which Macca turns Wings into a 50s
be-bop band for [113] Name
and Address, with the group having so much fun that they even leave
on the ending where the song literally falls apart (although this too sounds
fake to me – on the band’s early demo the performance really does fall apart
and this take is probably a Macca attempt at recreating the magic rather than
inventing it). Macca’s vocal somehow mixes Elvis and Buddy Holly and he sounds
genuinely caught up in the moment, turning in a 50s rocker that works better
than almost all his rock and roll re-makes on 'Choba B CCCP' and 'Run Devil
Run'. A simple tale that recalls 'No
Reply', the song is about love gone cold and Pau's narrator urging his loved
one to leave aq forwarding address (although it's really just a chance to rhyme
the word with 'in a mess' there's
although the very Mccartney rhyme of 'addresses' and 'caresses'!) Wings also
sound mighty good as a sort of basic bar-lounge boogie band, especially with
the return of Jimmy McCulloch who turns in an absolute stormer of a guitar solo
which is far more impressive than anything played by Macca’s Rockestra
all-stars the following year.
Side two is quickly
turning into end-of-term-silliness, with three comedy songs in a row (must have
been all that holiday sunshine). Yet amongst all this fun and catchy pop,
something else is going on too. [114] Don’t Let It Bring You Down is moody Macca at
his zenith, serious and delicate with some exotic instrumentation and a vocal
that shows off Paul’s alarming range from sweet falsetto to deep growl, as if
the narrator has been taken well out of his comfort zone. ‘We all have bad
times but things change so don’t let them get to you’ sings Macca, again
echoing George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass, but if anything this
piece sounds even more melancholy and vulnerable with lines about 'should the
sands of time run out on you'. Macca is often at his best when trying to cheer
his listeners up ('Someone Who Cares' from 'Tug Of War' is a similar take on
the subject, but throws in a much happier chorus) and the song's stately
prim-and-proper vibes really enhance the song. Jimmy McCulloch’s very last
leaving present of a fuzz-guitar solo also mirrors the narrator’s frustrations
perfectly, sweeping away the muted acoustic setting in one fell swoop. That’s
Paul and Denny playing the unusual flageolet woodwind part at the start of the
track and doubling on the delicate acoustic guitars for the most part of the
song. A gorgeous sweeping McCartney melody, that sounds so perfectly formed and
obvious its amazing no one had used it before, is perfectly matched by Wings’
three-part sweeping harmonies that make them sound like angels. A rare glimpse
behind the eternal McCartney optimist, this fabulous song suggests Paul should
open his heart during his darker times more often.
So, all in all, London Town London Town
A NOW COMPLETE LIST
OF PAUL McCARTNEY ARTICLES TO READ AT ALAN’S ALBUM ARCHIVES:
'McCartney' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-73-paul.html
'Ram' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-47-paul-and-linda-mccartney-ram.html
‘Wildlife’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/paul-mccartney-and-wings-wildlife-1972.html
'McCartney' (1970) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/news-views-and-music-issue-73-paul.html
'Ram' (1971) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-47-paul-and-linda-mccartney-ram.html
‘Wildlife’ (1972) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/paul-mccartney-and-wings-wildlife-1972.html
‘Red Rose Speedway’ (1973)
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/paul-mccartney-and-wings-red-rose_2844.html
'Band On The Run' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-87-paul.html
'Venus and Mars' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-64-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Band On The Run' (1974) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/news-views-and-music-issue-87-paul.html
'Venus and Mars' (1975) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-64-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Wings At The Speed Of
Sound' (1976) http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/paul-mccartney-and-wings-at-speed-of.html
'London Town' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-71-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'London Town' (1978) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/review-71-paul-mccartney-and-wings.html
'Back To The Egg' (1979) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/wings-back-to-egg-1979-revised-review.html
'McCartney II' (Original Double Album) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-106-paul.html
'Tug Of War' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-122-paul.html
'McCartney II' (Original Double Album) (1980) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/news-views-and-music-issue-106-paul.html
'Tug Of War' (1982) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2011/11/news-views-and-music-issue-122-paul.html
'Pipes Of Peace' (1983) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/paul-mccartney-pipes-of-peace-1983.html
'Press To Play' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/88-paul-mccartney-press-to-play-1986.html
'Flowers In The Dirt' (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-40-paul.html
'Press To Play' (1986) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/07/88-paul-mccartney-press-to-play-1986.html
'Flowers In The Dirt' (1989) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/news-views-and-music-issue-40-paul.html
'Off The Ground' (1993) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/paul-mccartney-off-ground-1993.html
‘Flaming Pie’ (1997) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/paul-mccartney-flaming-pie-1997.html
'Driving Rain' (2001) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/paul-mccartney-driving-rain-2001.html
'Chaos and Creation In The
Back Yard' (2005) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.nl/2016/08/paul-mccartney-chaos-and-creation-in.html
'Memory Almost Full'
(2006) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/paul-mccartney-memory-almost-full-2006.html
'Electric Arguments' (as 'The Fireman') (2008) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2008/11/news-views-and-music-issue-13a-paul.html
'Kisses On The Bottom'(2012) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/news-views-and-music-issue-141-paul.html
'New' (2013) http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2013/11/paul-mccartney-new-2013-album-review.html
‘Egypt Station’ (2018) https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/09/paul-mccartney-egypt-station-2018.html
The Best Unreleased McCartney/Wings Recordings http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/the-best-unreleased-mccartney.html
Surviving TV and Film Footage http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-surviving-tv-appearances.html
Live/Wings Solo/Compilations/Classical
Albums Part One: 1967-1987
http://www.alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands.html
Live/Wings/Solo/Compilations/Classical/Unreleased
Albums Part Two: 1987-1997
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands_21.html
Live/Wings
Solo/Compilations/Classical Albums Part Three: 1997-2015
http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/paul-mccartney-and-bands_28.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
One 1970-1984 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/paul-mccartneywings-non-album-songs.html
Non-Album Recordings Part
Two 1985-2015 http://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/paul-mccartney-non-album-songs-part-two.html
Essay: Not So Silly Love Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/essay-paul-mccartneys-not-so-silly-love.html
Key Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-mccartney-five-landmark-concerts.html
Essay: Not So Silly Love Songs https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/03/essay-paul-mccartneys-not-so-silly-love.html
Key Concerts and Cover Versions https://alansalbumarchives.blogspot.com/2018/05/paul-mccartney-five-landmark-concerts.html
Having made an 'African' album followed by a couple of 'American' albums, Wings came back and made this great 'British/European' - at times almost 'Celtic' album. Perhaps that's why I love it so much.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting point - I hadn't picked up on that! Goodness knows what 'country' Back To The Egg came from though (outer space maybe?!) Thanks for posting! 8>)
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