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"Return To Pepperland"
(Unreleased 1987)
Lindiana/I
Love This House!/We Got Married (Early Version)/Beautiful Night (Early
Version)/The Loveliest Thing/Squid/Big Day/This One (Early Version)/Love Comes
Tumbling Down/Rough Ride/Christian Pop/Atlantic Ocean/Love Mix/Return To
Pepperland/PS Love Me Do/Same Love/Don't Break The Promise/Once Upon A Long Ago
"Dear old dad - wbat are you
writing now?!"
Though
never strictly released as an album and nearly always ignored in a discussion
of McCartney's work, 'Return To
Pepperland' is important enough to get it's own section. Unlike, say, Neil
Young (whose abandoned as many albums as he's released down the years) this is
the only McCartney project to have been entirely shelved not to feature Rupert
The Bear. Recorded in 1987 with big-name producer Phil Ramone on board, it
features Macca in the post-'Press To Play' loss of confidence over his work and
where it was going and has a similar feel in terms of the pop music
constructions and big booming 80s synths, although the songs are sadly not the
hidden gems of that record. Many of the songs try too hard to go back to the
generic McCartney 'sound' - silly pop songs in the vein of the 'Pipes Of Peace'
album, although one or two do, like 'Press To Play', do posess more of a
rule-breaking feel, posessing more of the adventurous 'McCartney II' approach
to 80s technology. Paul may have been influenced by what he heard of George
Harrison's recent recordings (released that year as 'Cloud Nine') which were
far more contemporary and lighter than anything he'd been doing for years - in
fact the Beatle-reference-heavy 'Return To Pepperland' is 'When We Was Fab'
without the fun, a 'then and now' shot to celebrate how Sgt Peppers was 'twenty years ago today'
and while an aweful song it's notable as the first truly nostalgic moment of
McCartney's songwriting. Never one to waste a good song or even a bad one, many
of these songs were released down the years - particularly during the 1997
years when Paul was in need of a B-side or were given their first airing during
Paul's 1995 radio series 'Oobu Joobu'. Most immediately, however, 'Once Upon A
Long Ago' was the only song released the same year it was recorded and is one
of the two best songs from the sessions, 'We Got Married' and 'This One' were
re-recorded in grander form for 'Flowers In The Dirt' in 1989 while 'Rough
Ride' was the only recording from these sessions to make an album intact. These
three songs are all the clear highlights and sensible choices to keep from the
sessions, but there are a few other songs of worth that deserve more than their
B-side status ('Love Come Tumbling Down' especially). Interestingly not all these songs were 'new'
either, with a few 'Broad Street' and 'Press To Play' leftovers recorded as
part of the sessions too (Macca always tended to be two or three records ahead
in terms of actual somngs during the 1970s and early 1980s, but had all but
fallen out of the habit by 'Press To Play'). To be honest, though, this record
would have been crucified if sent out to an already disgruntled fanbase and
music press (who still hadn't forgiven Paul for sitting through 'Give My
Regards To Broad Street') and is really a collection of B-sides rather than a
missing McCartney milestone.
Please
note that as this album never actually came out the track listing is vague -
and rather long by McCartney 1980s standards, suggesting that a few of these
songs (perhaps the instrumentals 'Squid' and 'Big Day') would have been held back for B-sides had
things gone as planned. However most bootleggers have gone with 'Lindiana' because it
'sounds' like an opening track. Clearly written for Linda, it's a song that has
the same stateliness and piano backing as 'Only Love Remains' but with a
nagging chorus and a very irritating synth line. The message of the song is an
interesting one as Paul urges Linda not to 'let go' because he's there for her
- interesting as almost all his love songs have their situation the other way
round (this is the oppposite take on 'Maybe I'm Amazed', although the
comparisons betwen the two sadly end there). First recorded after the end of
the 'Broad Street' sessions in the Autumn of 1984 and given a few 1987
overdubs, 'LIndiana' is one of the few songs from the sessions not to be given
a release anywhere. A shame because the power-pop chorus is rather good, even
if the song as a whole falls a bit flat.
'I Love This House' is another 1984 outtake with extras that's an intrioguing take
on McCartrney's love for run-down and well-loved things. Few of the Beatle fans
who longed to marry Paul in 1969 would have been jealous of Linda's Mull of
Kintyre honeymoon if they'd known about it, in a run-down cottage with a leaky
roof and a distinct lack of home comforts. But the couple loved it - Linda
because it was 'funky' and so far away from the airs and graces she hated; Paul
because it was 'his' - not Brian Epstein's, not the Ashers', but the first
piece of property he owned outright. 'I Love This House' uses the mataphor for
the couple's marriage - it's old, run down and rusty, but Paul wouldn't have it
any other way - it has too many memories and too much has happened in it to care
what state it's in. The song became one of many B-sides for the 1997 single
'Young Boy', featured as part of an extract from the 'Oobu Joobu' radio series.
An early
version of 'We Got Married'
is up next, which oddly given that the 'Pepperland' sessions use more
technology than any other McCartney project is actually a stripped-down affair
compared to the final version on 'Flowers In The Dirt'. I rather like the
funkier, rootsier early version which is more in keeping with Pauk's attempts
to depict a marriage as it really is, with ebbs and flows and lots of work.
Paul's more 'human' vocal is a delight too, while David Gilmour's guitar solo
(possibly recorded back to back with his work on 'No More Lonely Nights' given
the timing) is about the only passage to survive intact to 1989 and actually
runs for much longer when heard complete.
'Beautiful Night' sounds rather better than its 'Flaming Pie' incarnation too, but
then that's not hard - the final version is one of the biggest travesties in
Paul's catalogue. Paul doesn't know the song that well yet and this sounds like
more of a 'rehearsal' take, but that actually suits the song better than the
all-singing all-dancing all-Ringo affair of the finished product. The melody
and some of the lyrics still set the teeth on edge and it's still the weakest
song of the sessions, but at least Macca's vocal isn't quite so smug and an
added surge into the middle eight from Chris Whitten on drums (and ignored by
Ringo on the re-make) adds a nice touch to the song.
'Loveliest Thing' is a straightforward McCartney pop tune, another love song to
Linda that starts off like every other Macca love song since the year dot but
ends up somewhere smokey and jazzy and minor key by the end of the chorus line
where Paul reveals that his love is one-way, 'without permission given'. A
tortured middle eight adds much depth and darkness to the song as Paul pleads
with his loved one for a relationship to work before a guitar solo (by Paul
himself?) sweeps in to pierce the laidback jaunt of the main song. It's one of
the better songs from the project even if Macca's vocal is all too obviously a
'rehearsal' take he never returned to. The song was added to the 'McCartney
Collection' re-issue of the 'Flowers In The Dirt' album in the late 1990s.
'Squid' is an
itty bitty instrumental that isn't very much but is rather lovely for what it
is. It's nice to hear Paul going back to using acoustic guitars as his main
source of music and his twin-playing, later joined by a very 80s synth, is well
handled. Like many an instrumental, though, you can't help but think that this
song would have been better still with lyrics and doesn't really go anywhere
once all the instruments have been added. I'm also clueless as to what this all
has to do with a 'squid' - is this the ecologist McCartney simply going with
the first creature that popped into his head again? The song was released for
the first time in 1997 as an extra on the 'World Tonight' single as part of yet
another 'Oobu Joobu' extract.
Though
'Squid' was a 1987 recording fellow instrumental 'Big Day' seems to have been taped during 'Press To
Play' and given a few extras a year later. A noisy instrumental, not unlike
'Night Out' with lots of yelling and screaming and a tough-as-old-boots guitar
riff at its core, it's not unlike the sort of B-sides Paul's writing partner
Eric Stewart wrote for 10cc despite the lone credit to McCartney. It's a really
good middle eight in search of a proper song to contain it. To date this song
is still unreleased.
The demo
of 'This One' is one of
the record's high spots. A simple piano ballad with an accompanying drum track,
without all the gubbins that went with the 'Flowers In The Dirt' recording, the
song's melody sounds even prettier and McCartney's more heartfelt vocal makes
the lyrics sound ever more profound too. The only major difference is that the
song starts with the middle eight ('What opportunities did we allow to fly
by?...') instead of the chorus, with the whole middle eight sung a second time
in its more 'normal' position. A lovely song ends up sounding even lovelier,
although to date this version of the song has yet to be released.
'Love Come Tumbling Down' is a much under-rated song too, an intriguing twist on Macca's
usual love songs that alternates between a breezy major key verse and a
tighter, more claustrophobic refrain that suggests that love isn't quite as
easy as the narrator is making out. The melody is typically McCartney perfect
and sounds very much like a 'Pipes Of Peace' outtake (despite dating from
1987), while the lyrics recall the moment he fell in love for the first time
(with Linda? Or back with Jane Asher? Or even Hamburg-era girlfriend Dot?)
desperate to zoom forward in time and see if the relationship turns out to be
as great as he thinks it is from love at first sight. An atmopsheric drum
pattern really enhances the song, sounding like electronic raindrops and
there's a brief but glorious guitar solo too. The song was released as part of
yet another 'Oobu Joobu' sequence on the back of the 'Beautiful Night' single,
where it trounced the A-side hands down.
'Christian Pop' is perhaps the weakest thing here, a third instrumental that
seems to have been titled for the setting on Macca's synthesiser. Played
back-to-back with the similar doodles on 'McCartney II' (even the ones that
didn't make the album) it's obvious and cliched and not obviously
McCartney-like even if the urgency and deep bass piano rumbles does recall
'Listen To What The Man Said'. Macca's overdubbed piano playing is rather good
though! Some McCartney commentators note that the central tune got recycled
into the unlikeliest setting of all - the Liverpool Oratorio - although only
the grand sweep of the digital stings near the end has anything much in common
with this song.
'Atlantic Ocean' is McCartney with his dance hat on and in future years would
have been handed over to his pseuonym 'The Fireman' for release. 'Feel the
rhythm of the Atlantic Ocean' McCartney intones like a dance/house star half
his age as he half-sings, half-raps his way through a daft lyric about living
to nature's beat. It's not as bad as you might expect, but neither is it worthy
of release. Which is a shame because it did come out, as another 'Oobu Joobu'
extract released on the back of 'Young Boy' in 1997.
'Love Mix'
is a real curio, with such a
contemporary sound I'm surprised it doesn't come with a Stock-Aitken-Waterman
credit. You can easily imagine Kylie or Jason singing this, which is a shame,
but it would have been one of their better songs had they done it - McCartney
may be writing simple, catchy pop but he understands how it works better than
most writers. The intriguing chorus is quite postmodern too, refering both to
the 'mix' of the song and the mixtures
of the two lovers' personalities as they drop their differences and come
together in true McCartney fashion 'waiting for the sun to shine'. This was
another song that improved on A-side 'Beautiful Night' when heard as part of
'Oobu Joobu'.
The
title track 'Return To
Pepperland' is well intentioned but something of a mess. A sort of
social protest song about all the things that the hippie dream was meant to
solve but hadn't in two decades ('Twenty years later and who would have
guessed? Nelson Mandela still under arrest!' - the song became null and void in
1990 on his release). Unfortunately what could have been a sweet song of
then-and-now with a sweet singalong chorus is given one of those horrid cheesy
music hall backings - 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' meets 'Flaming Pie' - and the
cast of characters are diabolical, without Macca's usual 3Dness or
personalities. Had this track been released someone somewhere would surely have
been unkind and pointed out that the biggest difference between 1967 and 1987
was the scale of ambition for songwriters like Paul and this is not one of his
better ideas. Still, it's intriguing for long-term fans as Macca comes to terms
with the fact he has a 'past' to draw from as well as a 'present' and 'future'
for the first time and gets involved with EMI's own 'twenty years ago today Sgt
Pepper on CD' campaign and there are some nice Beach Boysy swirly harmonies and
backwards tapes loops at the end which are nicely psychedelic. Perhaps
mercifully the song has yet to have been given an official release (Twenty
years later who would have guessed a self-referencing song would be such a
mess?)
Keeping
with the nostalgic theme, Macca recorded the only two Beatles songs he 'owned'
(because John and Pau;l hadn't signed their 'Northern Songs' agreement yet):
'Love Me Do' and B-side 'PS I Love You' (to become 'P.S Love Me Do'). Both are lovely under-rated
songs (especially the charming flipside) and feature prime McCartney melodies.
However both songs sound a bit lost tacked onto each other (one is about trying
to be in love - the other a response to a long term relationship, so they're
not a natural fit) and the 80s sound is all the worse for being on a song you
know. Still, this 'Love Me Do' is better than Ringo's solo version on 'Vertical
Man' eight years later! The song was released, but only in Japan where it
appeared as a 'bonus' track on their edition of the 'Flowers In The Dirt' CD.
Perhaps
the most traditional song on the album, the piano ballad 'Same Love' is another album
highlight with another dreamy melody that recalls 'Warm and Beautiful' but
without the smugness let down by the slightly anonymous lyric. The tale of a
couple coming together after a pause, McCartney wonders whether the love will
burn the same way it did when they'd just met and all but breaks down as he
remembers the hugeness of 'the love you made to me' in a catchy chorus. Alas
the song is missing the extra 10% magic it needs to truly catch fire. This song
was another 'Beautiful Night' freebie that proved to be a better bet than the
gormless A-side.
Finally,
'Don't Break The Promises'
is an interesting song. A 'Press To Play' Eric Stewart co-write leftover from
the album sessions and given a bit of a production sprinkle in the 1987
sessions, it's a bouncy reggae-tinged song that's very 10cc-like. Oddly enough,
though, 10cc were the first to release their version, on their 1992 reunion
album 'Meanwhile...' - and that version is pure McCartney, slowed down to a
pretty piano ballad! Eric's version is arguably the better, although there's a
nice air of movement in Macca's version and there's a sweet tune underlying both versions.
McCartney's version was another 'Oobu Joobu' extract, this time from the 'World
Tonight' single.
Finally 'Once Upon A Long Ago' is the
version we know and love, the 1987 single included on 'All The Best' (the last
minute substitute for this record) that deserved better than to peak at a lowly
#10 in the UK charts (even so, it's still the last top ten McCartney has ever
had). The song features the same line-up as the rest of the album, with the
addition of two notable guest appearances: David Gilmour returns after
recoeding 'We Got Married' and a young and then not-that-well-known violinist
Nigel Kennedy plays a second memorable solo. For once the 'best' song was
rescued from these sessions - along perhaps with 'Rough Ride'.
An early
version of the single's B-side 'I'll Be Back On My Feet' with a different set
of lyrics is also known to have been recorded at these sessions (before being
re-recorded later in the year with Elvis Costello's input) but has yet to
appear on bootleg.
So,
would this album have reversed McCartney's declining fortunes the way that
'Flowers In The Dirt' will? Probably not sadly and keeping most of these songs
sin the vaults as possible B-sides for an album that sounded like a bunch of
B-sides anyway ten years later ('Flaming
Pie') is probably about right. However there is some good stuff here and even
at its worst the album is only at the level of the underwhelming 'Pipes Of
Peace' rather than something really bad (like 'Flaming Pie'). Caught halfway
between the commercial McCartney and his more adventurous side, 'Pepperland'
rather fell through the cracks but is an interesting project that deserves more
interest from fans than it gets at present.
"All The Best"
(EMI, November 27th 1987)
European
Version: Jet!/Band On The Run/Coming Up (Studio Version)/Ebony and Ivory/Listen
To What The Man Said/No More Lonely Nights (Ballad Version)/Silly Love
Songs/Let 'Em In/C Moon/Pipes Of Peace/Live and Let Die/Another Day/Maybe I'm Amazed/Goodnight
Tonight/Once Upon A Long Ago/Say Say Say/With A Little Luck/My Love/We All
Stand Together/Mull Of Kintyre
USA
Version: Band On The Run/Jet!/Ebony and Ivory/Listen To What The Man Said/No
More Lonely Nights (Ballad Version)/Silly Love Songs/Let 'Em In/Say Say
Say/Live and Let Die/Another Day/C Moon/Junior's Farm/Uncle Albert-Admiral
Halsey/Coming Up (Live In Glasgow)/Goodnight Tonight/With A Little Luck/My Love
"And when the cupboard's bare,
I'll still find something there!"
Having
given up on 'Return To Pepperland', McCartney needed another album quick for
the Christmas market and to keep EMI off his back. Luckily it had been years
since 'Wings Greatest' and he had a whole catalogue full of ripe tunes to
plunder, many of which had become increasingly rare, while simultaneously the
growing CD market which had imploded in 1987 meant that audiences were more
accepting of greatest hits albums than they used to be. Hence 'All The Best',
an album named by Paul's manager Richard Ogden after his typical McCartney
optimistic phrase to go alongside his signatures down the years. It's a clever
name for a canny album, although actually
it could have been even better had Macca stuck to his guns and released
some rarities and obscurities along with this record as planned ('All The
Biggest' would surely be a better title), with 'Maybe I'm Amazed' the only
non-top ten hit here (even 'Waterfalls', which peaked at #10 in the UK, didn't
make the cut, which is a great shame - 'Once Upon A Long Ago' actually peaked
at the same position but got in vecause it was the most recent single and had
yet to appear on an album). On the one hand, this is a cash-in pure and simple:
there's nothing new here, no brave choices, no real sense of understanding the
McCartney canon and viewing it in a fresh light and there's even a sense of
desperation behind the two very different track listings promoted on different
sides of the world, each tailored to the
recordings that had sold the best in each place (so no 'Mull Of Kintyre' for
America and no 'Uncle Albert' for Britain, which is a blessing for both halves
of Pau's fanbase to be honest). It seems odd, too, that the album should be
presented seemingly at random, with aeveral rock songs followed by several
ballads well out of sequential order: after all what better start could there
be to a compilation than the naggingly catchy #2 hit 'Another Day'?
However
there's still a touch of the old 'give them something extra' Beatles formula
about this album. There's a generous running time for a start in both versions,
which would have made this album a double set on vinyl, bordering on triple.
There are some lovely illustrations to go with each song, which were all
specially commisioned and all in keepoig with the essence of each track (a
flower for 'Coming Up', a kiss for 'My Love', a band literally on the run and a
megaphone for 'Say Say Say', although why Paul's Uncle Albert looks like Laurel
and Hardy I'll never know). It's certainly a big improvement on 'Wings
Greatest' by actually deigning to include all the big hits this time (although
it's sad that there's no room for 'almost' hits like 'Junior's Farm' or 'Helen
Wheels' 'Hi Hi Hi' 'Spies Like Us' and 'Press' in here), though equally this
album can't compete with 'Wingspan's real sense of who McCartney is and why
he's important.
"Choba B CCCP"
(Melodiya, October 31st 1988)
Original
Russian LP Version (1988): Kansas City/Twenty Flight Rock/Lawdy Miss
Clawdy/Bring It On Home To Me/Lucille/Don't Get Around Much Anymore//That's
Alright Mama/Ain't That A Shame/Crackin' Up/Just Because/Midnight Special
The
1989 re-issue added: I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday/I'm In Love Again
Revised
European Version (1991): Kansas City/Twenty Flight Rock/Lawdy Miss Clawdy/I'm
In Love Again/Bring It On Home To Me/Lucille/Don't Get Around Much Anymore/I'm
Gonna Be A Wheel Someday/That's Alright Mama/Summertime/Ain't That A
Shame/Crackin' Up/Just Because/Midnight Special
"Well, darling, I guess that's my
mind more at ease - but nevertheless why store up memories?"
The general view of The Beatles is that Lennon
and McCartney came from very different worlds and had nothing to link them
except geography. Actualy that's not strictly true: John and Paul may have come
from different social backgrounds but they had very similar musical influences
all round - it was what the pair occasionally did with their influences that
marked them out. Legend has it that Paul had been talking about doing an albu
of covers before John, mainly at Linda's urging (possibly with Wings, perhaps
as a solo album - he hadn't really thought it through yet) but after Lennon was
'trapped' into the record via a court case with Chuck Berry's publisher (he had
to record three Morris LKevy-published tunes on his next record as part of the
settlement for re-writing 'You Can't Catch Me' as Beatles song 'Come Together')
Macca never felt like doing his own - till here in the late 80s, during a bit
of down-time when his manager Richard Ogden hit on a great way to record the
album without having the music press jumping all over it as his next big
statement: release it in Russia. Paul had long had a soft spot for Russia, ever
since jokily hearing about the efforts of locals to smuggle illegal Beatle
records and other artefacts into the communist country where they were 'banned'
as examples of capitalist culture (something that's hilariously wrong given
whast a naturally 'communist' band The Beatles were at heart). Even before the
Berlin Wall came down in 1989, Communist Russia had been losing its
stranglehold on the hearts and minds of its citizens and Paul had been hearing
more and more about the lengths people went to to hear his music - and how
grateful Russian fans were to now be able to have access to his plentiful back
catalogue. So in a typically McCartneyesque display of brotherly love he
decided to release this album there first, as both a special purchase for fans
who'd be getting this album before their Western counterparts for a change
(originally we weren't meant to have been getting this record at all until the
positive reviews and ridiculous import prices encouraged Paul to re-work it
slightly for a Western release in 1991) and as a 'primer' for the history of
rock and roll his Russian fans had been missing. It was a typically generous
gesture from a man who could easily have sold more copies had the album been
released with his usual fanfare. The record was cheekily named 'Back In The
USSR' (but translated back into Russian) after Paul's jokey Beatles track which
had also done mouch to extend the hand of friendship to the fans who heard it
(an oh so American Beach Boys style song but sung with Russian place names and
an American accent!) and kept the name even when released in America and
Europe.
'Choba B CCCP' is effectively Lennon's 'Rock
and Roll' album some fifteen years on - Macca even covers three of the same
songs that John did back in 1974, 'Bring It On Home To Me' 'Ain't That A Shame'
and a different song titled 'Just Because'. While neither is the most creative
or satisfying album either Beatle ever made, fans can have fun compatring and
contrasting between the two. Interestingly too Paul tackles songs that would
normally be more associated with John (Bo Diddley's cheeky 'Crackin' Up' is a
very Lennonish song, while Fats Domino's you'll-be-sorry-when-I'm-Famous 'I'm
Gonna Be A Wheel Someday' has the teenage John written all over it) while John
sang more than a few songs that Paul did in the early Beatle days (particularly
'Be-Bop-A-Lula', a song Macca won't put on record until 'Unplugged' in 1991 and
yet often launched into for indulgent journalists asking for his favourite song
down the years). Typically, though, both solo albums would have been so much
better had they been just that bit more like the other, though less typically
it's Lennon's album that's overslick and characterless while Paul's is a bit
too raw and uncompromising.
The result is somehow equally frivolous and
pointless, adding little to the originals whilst not really revealing that much
more about the interpretor, all too audibly rattled off during some not very
intense sessions that seem the anathema of the ground-shaking rule-breaking
hell-raising entity that rock and roll was originally supposed to be. However
the album makes more sense when you realise that originally no one, not even
the Russians, was meant to hear it. Feeling, wrongly in my opinion, that he'd
moved too far away from what he was 'meant' to be doing with the under-rated Press
To Play album, Paul wanted to go back to making music for fun rather than for a
career and held a series of informal 'Friday night jamming sessions' where all
of his friends were welcome to drop in and play along. Visitors included Ram
session drummer Henry Spinetti, Ian Dury Blockhead Mickey Gallagher (who'd come
to fame playing with Lindisfarne's Alan Hull in their first band 'The Chosen
Ones'), new drummer Chris Whitten (who was too young back then to have played
on much at all but will be around for 'Flowers In The Dirt' and Macca's 1989/90
world tours) and most interestingly of all unsung 50s guitarist legend Mick
Green, once of Johnny Kidd and the Pirates (you might not know the work of
Britains' leading early 60s rock band but the groups of the 1960s certainly
did, especially The Who who styled themselves aftert the power trio and covered
many of their songs down the years).
The songs were meant to be fun and a chance to
let off steam rather than anything serious but Paul thought the recordings had
potential, so he invited as many friends as could make it into his home studio
for two lengthy recording sessions where some 22 songs were recorded in total.
Unsure as to what market there was for songs that had all too audibly been
recorded in a hurry, Paul then sat on the 1987 recordings for a year before
Ogden's big idea (initial Russian copies of the album included eleven songs,
the re-issue in 1989 contained thirteen songs and the 1991 CD had fourteen - Please
note that for the purposes of this review we're reviewing the 1991 CD
edition which is the fullest edition and
most readily available). A further two songs 'I'm In Love Again' and 'I Wanna
Cry' became 'bonus tracks' on the 'This
One' single in 1990 and 'It's Now Or Never' turned up on an Elvis tribute album
with the other abandoned songs including a re-make of Beatles classic 'I saw
Her Standing There', Beatles BBC favourite 'Lend Me Your Comb', Lonnie
Donegan's 'Take This Hammer' , Eddie Cochran's 'Cut Across Shorty' and an early
version of The Vipers' beautiful 'No Other Baby' re-recorded in stunning form
for Macca's second rock and roll album 'Run Devil Run' in 1999). The end result
is a sweet gesture that's a lot better than the options of either not hearing
these recordings at all or hearing them on hissy over-priced bootlegs but is
perhaps the least essential of all the McCartney releases to date, a trip down
memory lane that's curiously passionless and uninvolving. You wonder what the
Russian fans who adored this album at the time thought when rock and roll
became more plentiful and they got to hear how great the original versions of
these songs sounded.
'Kansas
City' is a Little Richard song
made famous by The Beatles thanks to their version on 'Beatles For Sale' in
1964. With the backing band seemingly unfamiliar with the 1960s reinvention
this version comes out more like the original, Macca's vocal sly rather than
loud and proud and the song slowed to a bit of a crawl, complete with the
middle eight cut by The Beatles from their version ('I might take a pane, I
might take a plane, but if I have to go on my bike I'm going just the same!')
Had we not known the version from a quarter century earlier this might have
sounded ok, but direct comparisons reveal this one as a lifeless pub-band cover
without any real skill or enthusiasm and Macca's vocal is a mess, pulling out
of his Little Richard whoops early on.
'Twenty
Flight Rock'
is a special song to Beatles followers - this Eddie Cochran number was the one
Paul 'auditioned' with to join The Beatles and so impressed Lennon back in 1957
(not that he let on at the time!) It's very McCartney, with a cheery vocal and
a fun and slightly subversive lyric about a lover walking up twnty flights of
stairts to see his lover and finding he's 'too tired to rock' with rock and
roll going back to stand for its oruginal euphemism for sex. Macca still charms
on the vocal, but he's done many better versions of this song down the years
and his paino playing is appalling.
Little Richard's 'Lawdy Miss Clawdy' is another sixties favourite
played by many bands slowed to a barely recogniseable crawl that's deeply
painful. I'm not sure I'd have held out any hopes for this band's history had I
been passing by the studio at the time.
Fats Dominos' 'I'm In Love Again' is a relative album highlight,
one that's less clumsy and more together than most on the album and a good
vehicle for McCartney's impressionable vocal - why was it left off early
versions of the album when it's about the best thing here?!
Sam Cooke's 'Bring It On Home To Me' is less impressive than
Lennon's version (one of the few decent covers on 'Rock and Roll') but another
better-than-average song for this album. The heavy echo makes Paul sound more
like his old partner than ever, though the tempo is a tad slow.
'Lucille' is enegertic but sloppy,
a million miles away from tha taut energy of The Beatles' BBC days (sessions
that hadn't yet been made available officially on 'Beatles At The Beeb' at this
point remember), more fun to play than to listen to.
Duke Ellington's 'Don't Get Around Much Anymore' has some great
backing for once, with some terrific Mick Green guitar lines and a much tighter
drum pattern. However Paukl's swamped-with-echo vocal is hard to hear and all
over the place, only really hitting the spot on the shouted chorus.
The album highlight is probably the jovial
version of the middle of three Fats Domino songs 'I'm Gonna Be A Wheel Someday'. The song may be full
of 50s slang - a 'wheel' is somebody 'moving' up their respective careers and
the lyrics are full of references to c'ool cats' and the like - but its silly
waddle is well suited to the very 80s arrangement, the players dropping away to
just the repeated drum pattern in an arrangement that's very like the pop songs
of the day.
I was surpised that there weren't more Elvis
songs on 'Rock and Roll' and again here where the only Presley song major fan
Macca tackles is Arthur Crudup's 'That's Alright Mama'. Macca's vocal is all but drowned out by the
echo which sounds so false and wrong on such an urgent, lively song and
compared to the playing on the original this is tired and over-played, though
Green's solo is still a thing of beauty.
The much-covered 'Summertime' is another highlight, Paul taking the
'Janis Joplin' approach to George and Ira Gershwin's classic which smoulders
the same way as most covers but with an underlying sense of threat and power.
Fra from being lazily helpless, this version is trying hard to fight back and
wrestle control of the narrator's life. The recording needs a bit more
rehearsal time and an extra take to get things fully right however.The Beatles
had this in their setlists in their Hamburg and Cavern years though no
recordings of it seem to have survived, sadly.
I actually prefer Paul's take on Fats' most
popular song 'Ain't That A
Shame' to John's: Lennon doesn't have much to offer the original except
a cackled vocal but Paul's thankfully un-echoed vocal is direct and right on
the money while the band seem to know this song much better than the others,
with Mickey Gallagher playing so much better than he does on the rest of the
album.
Bo Diddley's 'Crackin' Up' is another track that's better than
average and one of the few that would go on to be part of the McCartney band's
setlists across 1989 and 1990. Sensing the similarities between R and B and
reggae - two genres the McCartneys had long adored - Paul changes this song
around more than any other on the album and largely it works, with a swing and
ease that's actually pretty good for white Western players who usually sound
embarrasing at this sort of thing. The solo break in the middle is at least a
minute too long, though, and the recording runs out of steam long before the
end.
'Just
Because' is different to the moody
epic sung by Lennon on 'Rock and Roll', being the more obvious choice reorded
by Elvis in 1954 and treated to Macca's best Elvis impersonation (which isn't
all that close to be honest).It's noisy fluff best left in the vaults.
The album then closes with 'Midnight Special', a
traditional song from the American South first given a 'modern' setting by
blues singer Ledbelly, Given that it's really a blues song, Macca's version is
unexpectedly upbeat and rock and at times he seems oblivious to the lyrics he's
singing ('I'm penitentiary bound!' he sings with the sort of glee someone
usually has on their holidays).
Overall, then, 'Choba B CCCP' is a bit of a
mess, only occasionally displaying the crackling energy of the superior sequel
'Run Devil Run' and sounding more like something done as a hobby than as a
serious addition to the McCartney Collection. However the album was a big
success in Russia where they'd never known anything like it - the country only
had one record label anyway at the time and the initial printing of 50,000
copies (the most ever needed in the country) sold out in weeks, leading to the
400,000 edition extended version the following year. The album is remembered
fondly more for political reasons than music ones today but does atleast have a
couple of recordings of interest and the punchy no-frills recordings are
certainly a more suitable setting than what Phil Spector did to Lennon, even if
you long for the band to have been given some proper rehearsal time to really
nail the songs properly.
Denny Laine "Lonely Road"
(President,
'1988')
Land
Of Peace/Eyes Of A Child/Success/First Day In London/Lonely Road/True To
Me/Without Your Love//If I Tried/Burnin' Bridges/Money Talks/What Can I Do
Without You?/Fly With The Dove/Black Sheep/Peace Must Come Again
"If I tried, I could be someone
and not be all alone like I am now"
Some thirteen
years before his ex-colleague walked the same path, Denny Laine was heading
down a 'lonely road'. The first in a sequence of three albums largely written
and recorded on Denny's own using some fading 80s techology and recording
equipment he still owned, 'Lonely Road' is also the start of some rather sad
listening for long-term fans. Denny once had it all and more than has the
talent to have it all again, but he'd reduced to making ends meet on a series
of rushed, lo-fi recordings that are automatically ten years behind the times
and the songs too speak of frustration, isolation and despair. It's a long way
from the 'carnival' Wings records of the 1960s and you mourn for the fact that
had these records been done properly with cutting edge equipment Denny may yet
have had his success and been 'reborn' again. As it is, however good these
songs are, the overall effect if of listening to fourteen versions of
'Wonderful Xmas Time'. However Wings albums have taught us patience and the
ability to sift out the good from the bad and there is much good here despite
the production: 'Land Of Peace' is an intriguing sequel to 'Mull Of Kintryere'
complete with bagpipes and lyrics lifted from 'All You Need Is Love', 'If I
Tried' is a nice return to Denny's earlyu bluesy years with some nice guitar
playing, 'Money Talks' is a nicely feisty rock song about the financial
problems a 'lonely, hungry and cold' Denny has faced without it down the years,
while the overall highlight must surelyu be Denny going back to his early days
with The Moody Blues on the nostalgic 'Success' and 'First Day In London',
memories that must have seemed an awful long time ago for the near-penniless
musician. Overall, then, 'Lonely Road' is a sad album full of heartbreak and frustration
that isn't always an easy listen and the period trappings - which aren't even
from the same period - make it a struggle to sit through. However the album is
a welcome stepping stone towards Denny's great return on 'Reborn' in a few
years time and is still proof of an under-rated talent who deserved so much
more from his career. As ever with Denny, the album is hard to find on its pown
but several tracks have been jumbled together on various compilations - 'Blue
Nights' contains the most songs from this album.
"Tripping The Live Fantastic"
(EMI/Parlophone,
November 5th 1990)
Showtime/Figure
Of Eight/Jet/Rough Ride/Got To Get You Into My Life/Band On The
Run//Birthday/Ebony and Ivory/We Got Married/Inner City Madness/Maybe I'm
Amazed/The Long and Winding Road/Crackin' Up//The Fool On The Hill/Sgt Pepper's
Lonely Heartr's Club Band/Can't Buy Me Love/Matchbox/Put It There/Together//The
Things We Said Today/Eleanor Rigby/This One/My Brave Face/Back In The USSR/I
Saw Her Standing There//Twenty Flight Rock/Coming Up/Sally/Let It Be/Ain't That
A Shame?/Live and Let Die/If I Were Not Upon The Stage/Hey Jude//Yesterday/Get
Back/Golden Slumbers-Carry That WEight-The End/Don't Let The Sun Catch You
Crying
"If I was not upon the
stage...hang on hang on...no no wait a minute...what I meant to sing
was..."
Some ten years after Wings had last toured the
world, Paul was back with his next world tour enabling another Beatles-starved
generation to see the band in concert (Ringo's All-Starrs didn't get going till
the following year). The ad hoc band - who never did get their own name and
were always known as 'The McCartney Band' - were largely made up of the
musicians who'd played on 'Flowers In The Dirt' (guitarists Hamish Stuart from
the Average White Band, Robbie McIntosh from the later Pretenders line-up and
drummer Chris Whitten who'd been with Macca since 1987) alongside new find
keyboardist Wix Wickens. This time there was to be no doubting who the boss was
or attempts at a band democracy, although Hamish in particular would become an
increasingly close writing partner over the next few years. From the start
everything about this tour was 'big', with McCartney and co breaking the
records for the biggest rock and roll audiences in a single night (records that
would hold for a decade till the Rolling Stones broke it) and taking in
thirteen separate countries. It was a tour that lasted for nearly a year, saw
the band playing to a total of 2.8 million people and lasted for nearly a year.
And they called the 'Wings Over The World' tour of 1976 big...
From the start Paul had planned a souvenier
tour CD to help the band pay their way (it's a surprise, actually, there wasn't
a film crew alongside for a video) and a record 83 of the 103 gigs the band
played were recorded. Macca went right back to his past and revived more Beatle
songs than ever, includiong several that had never beern played live before:
'Sgt Peppers' 'The Abbey Road Medley' 'Magical Mystery Tour' 'Birthday'
'Eleanor Rigby' 'The Things We Said Today'
and 'Can't Buy Me Love', as well as some Wings highlights and lots of
songs from 'Flowers In The Dirt' in a desperate attempt to boost sales. As well
as the same basic three-hour set listplayed every night (heard almost complete
on this album), as a double-CD/four LP set 'Tripping The Live Fantastic' also
had space for the sort of whimsy that only several months on the road can do to
a band: revived oldies, soundcheck jams and indescribable moments of 'inner
city madness'. To the band who'd spent so much of their time in transit and
later returning to their natural lives without all the screaming and
hsitrionics it must have been a welcome reminder that this magical mystery tour
had ever taken place at all. However for the fans who attended this hodgepodge
seemed a curious mixture. The need to include the best sounding recordings
rather than the ones where the band were on top form means that the set comes
across sounding more slick and professional and yet more lifeless than it
seemed at the time, while the sudden slide once per side of the vinyl release
into basic soundcheck jams then makes it sound amateurish by turns instead.
Despite the laudible attempt to include 'everything' to make the experience as
complete as possible, it all comes off as rather missing the point somehow,
with none of the warmth felt by fans to and from the stage captured in this
worklike compilation.
Macca might have done better to have simply
chosen the gig where the band played best and ignoring all the rest - piecing
the set together like a huge jigsaw puzzle just doesn't work. Not everything is
bad - new songs like 'Figure Of Eight'
and 'Put It There' sound better suited to the stage than they did the studio
and the latter especially is rather moving, whilst it's hard to go wrong with a
song that has the strength and malleability of 'Eleanor Rigby' or 'The Fool On
The Hill'. Liverpudlian classic 'All My Trials', later released as a single, is
also a welcome addition to Mccartney's covers collection if a bit too late on
record to be the anti-Thatcher social protest it was intended to be. But few of
the arrangements add much to the songs, with tracks like 'Licve and Let Die'
and 'Hey Jude' trying hard but just missing the point of what made the
originals so special and even the better ideas such as a slinkier 'Got To Get
You Into My Life' or a nosier singalong 'Jet!' lose their way in the 80s
settings. It seems as if, after all that careful planning and the lengths gone
to make these shows special, all the wrinkles have been ironed out including
the ones that made the shows so alive. Even the album title sounds like it's
trying that bit too hard. Give this one a miss - even the highlights version
isn't much of an improvement - and save your money for either 'Wings Over
America' or 'Back In The World', which are just as tight but full of more
character than this set.
"Tripping The Live Fantastic:
Highlights"
(EMI/Parlophone,
November 28th 1990)
Got
To Get You Into My Life/ Birthday/ We Got Married/The Long and Winding Road/Sgt
Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band/Can't Buy Me Love/All My Trials/ The Things
We Said Today/Eleanor Rigby /My Brave Face/Back In The USSR/I Saw Her Standing
There/Coming Up/Let It Be/Hey Jude/Get Back/Golden Slumbers-Carry That
Weight-The End
"...Hey Jude, let's make it bad,
take a bad album and make it worse!"
With 'Fantastic' not selling as well as hoped,
Paul had a another go and decided to miss out many of the weirder, filler
moments from the set such as 'Showtime' 'Crackin' Up' and 'Don't Let The Sun
Catch You Crying'. However by diluting down an album that was only worth
listening to because you could hear the band throwing in a few unusual things
along the way the whole point of this album has been lost and all you have here
is a Beatles greatest hits moments, with a bit of promotion for 'Flowers In The
Dirt' left in and all the interestingn songs removed (and if you want to hear
the best of The Beatles then you're better off buying a Beatles compilation in
the first place). Worse still, this album is probably the first real non-value
for money McCartney release (though you could make a claim for 'Wings
Greatest'), making real collectors fork out for songs they already had all over
again in order to buy the solitary new tune: a woeful live recording of 'C
Moon'. Never has that song sounded more as if it was laughing at me. To be fair
there are some good moments here worth rescuing: stand-alone single 'All My
Trials' sounds good in context, tougher and more 'real' than most of the trips
down memory lane while 'The Things We Said Today' is a brave choice from the
Beatles collection and 'We Got Married' and 'My Brave Face' translate well to
the live stage, with an added toughness to the versions on 'Flowers In The
Dirt' (albeit with less subtlety). Really, though, you were still better off at
the time buying the double disc version - or buying 'Back In The World/US' if
you weren't there at the time.
Denny Laine "All I Want Is
Freedom"
(EMI/Parlophone,
** 1990)
All
I Want Is Freedom/Game Set and Match/Light On The Water/Bad Money/Wedding
Dream/Get On The Floor/Rescue My World/Heart For A Ride/On The Radio/You Lost
and Found Me/Talk Of The Town
"When I was younger I was told all
that glitters is not gold, stars would shine from miles away and life is just a
game we play"
More of
the same from Denny, with a very 80s sounding from the 1990s that still
under-serves his talent while being better than the poor sales and critical
sluaghtering suggest. Denny struggles a bit with his voice and is overshadowed
by the over-powering backing vocals and musicians, but there's still lost of
characteristic Laine touches throughout this set that shine through. 'All I
Want Is Freedom' is Denny's own 'All You Need Is Love', a singalong anthem very
much in keeping with the Wings philosophy, whilst the reggae-ish 'Rescue My
World' suggests it wasn't just Linda buying up obscure reggae records during
holidays to Jamaica and the ballad 'Heart For A Ride' (is it about people
trying to make too much out of the Mccartney-Laine fights?) is a lovely song
ill-suited to its anonymous backing. However there are too many songs like
'Light On The Water' and 'Game Set and Match' which sound like what my year
nine music class were up to on ancient casio keyboards for comfort. Denny may
want his freedom, but a solo album made as completely solo as this only
restricts his talents and holds him back. Perhaps mercifully,this album remains
near-impossible to find on CD, although thankfully much of it was included on
the much more common 'Rock Survivor' compilation. However much much better is
just around the corner...
"Unplugged - The Official
Bootleg"
(EMI/Parlophone,
May 13th 1991)
Be
Bop A Lula/I Lost My Little Girl/Here There and Everywhere/Blue Moon Of
Kentucky/We Can Work It Out/San Francisco Bay Blues/I've Just Seen A Face/Every
Night/She's A Woman//Hi-Heel Sneakers/And I Love Her/That Would Be
Something/Blackbird/Ain't No Sunshine/Good Rockin' Tonight/Singin' The
Blues/Junk
"I want you to bring my rock and
roll shoes because tonight we're going to rock away all the blues!"
The
McCartney band was having a well earned rest in 1991 after touring round pretty
much all continents except Anatarctica during the past two years when they got
the call from MTV to appear in their new 'unplugged' format. The idea was
simple: rather than a band turning up to just play another ordinary plugged-in
noisy show the whole gig would be played acoustically - with the odd plugged in
instrument like an electric bass to make things easy. Wings always used to have
an acoustic set of course and Macca had toyed with one on and off ever since
(even performing solo for the first time at some 21st century gigs) so the
format would have appealed to him, although this is by far the longest acoustic
show Paul ever gave. Paul, however, wanted to do things properly or not at all
and his was the first show to be played entirely acoustically without any
amplifiers or even monitors as well as all instruments. It must have saved a
fortune on MTV's electric bill and made for an entertaining show too, with Paul
going back to his early skiffle days as he effectively 'busks' the whole show
which has a pleasant feeling of informality throughout. You wish he'd take the
show just that little more seriously actually as there's some good music to be
had here - some great dips into the rarer ends of the Beatles and solo
catalogues which is a very good idea ('And I Love Her' sounds especially good
and 'Every Night' especially poignant) and some even rarer dips into the early
rock and roll canon, which isn't (though Hamish's take on Bill Withers' 'ASin't
No Sunshine' is an unexpected joy). The biggest surprise is 'I Lost My Little
Girl', the very first song McCartney ever wrote as he proudly tells us in a new
middle eight written especially for the gig and the first public airing of the
song (though it appears on many a Beatles bootleg!) Well, actually no that's
not true - the biggest surprise of the night is what's missing, with none of
the usual live standards here - no 'Hey Jude', no 'Let It Be', no 'Long and
Winding Road' and not even 'Yesterday', which would have fitted the acoustic
segment rather well.
The
experience clearly reminded Paul of his early years learning to play and it's
that aspect of this show that's the most interesting - though viewed as a
concert rather than a history lesson it's slightly less edifying, with a slightly
anonymous and detached feel that still seems to have the slick McCartney feel
of a 1980s/90s album somehow despite being the distinctly non-period set-up.
One thing in this album's favour though is that his band are used well -
admittedly with six people on stage the sound gets a tad cluttered at times for
what should be a bare acoustic set but a lot of these players come with a
folkier rather than a rock background and Hamish Stuart, from the folkier end
of the crowded eclectic 'Average White Band' stage, is right at home with some
gorgeous singing and guitar work, while Robbie McIntosh is far more at home on
acoustic than electric and plays his best solos too. Chris Whitten had
abandoned ship not longer after the McCartney tour sailed home in 1990 so this
show also marks the first appearance of new drummer Blair Cunningham, who'll be
around for next LP 'Off The Ground' and yet he too sounds far more at home
here, ably getting his brushes out with a subtly Whitten - though perhaps a
stronger 'rock' drummer - could never have provided. Paul was pleased enough
wth the results to sanction the first ever MTV concert album, correctly
figuring that as the bootleggers would beat him to the punch anyway he may as
well release his own 'official' bootleg! Though ostensibly a limited edition,
no one seems quite sure how many copies it was limited to (500,000 was the
official figure banded around at the time - I'm sure I've seen more copies than
that down the years though and it did make the charts which suggests a figure
closer to the million mark!) as the album hung around for as long and sold only
slightly less copies than Macca's othger reason extra-curricular albums. Though
other live McCartney records are better and 'Unplugged' spends too long trying
to gee-up excitement into rock standards that don't fit to be a five-star
record, it's an intriguing and often excellent album that more than stands on
its own two feet away from the TV studios and makes for a more entertaining
insight into McCartney and band than 'Tripping The Live Fantastic' ever did. Originally
the show was even longer by the way, with further covers 'Mean Woman Blues'
'Matchbox' and 'Midnight Special' as well as Beatle favourites 'The Things We
Said Today' and 'The Fool On The Hill' performed - the idea was always to edit
down the full show to a tight brodcast length however; the wonder is that Macca
didn't cut down the record more as he usually did on his live albums.
'Be-Bop-A-Lula' is a rather undershwleming intro, with Paul's take on Gene
Vincent's classics sounding more Hollywood Dud than Hamburg Club. Macca is more
enthusiastic on the vocal than he sounded on the whole of 'Fantastic' however
and Robbie turns in a great acoustic solo, all slashed chords and flaying arms.
'I Lost My Little Girl' is up next and is a charming early song that shows a clear Buddy
Holly influence and is already a pretty neat match of the genuinely inspired
(that's a great chord sequence for a fifteen year old, already quite unlike
anything else around) and a typically Macca teeth-grinding mistake ('Her was
not expensive - it didn't always curl' - to be fair Macca does point this lyric
out as the weak link despite writing a lot worse down the years!)On this
evidence the Quarrymen were wrong to reject it be4cause it was 'silly' (even if
Lennon clearly looked on it fondly, often singing it whether Paul was in the
room or not - the middle eight, written in the modern age as a linking piece to
get back from B to A again, is arguably the weakest part!
It's
hard to go wrong with a classic like Revolver's 'Here There and Everywhere' which sounds great
whatever is done to it. However this accordian-drenched version isn't anywhere
near as lovely as either the original or the brass-drenched version from 'Board
Street'. Macca's breathless vocal is also struggling a bit on this song tonight
too.
Bill
Monroe's 'Blue Moon Of
Kentucky' is a country song that would have been better left to Ringo,
although Robbie plays some great authentic slide blues guitar for a nice bit of
colour and the harmonies sound mighty good. The song was written in 1946 and is
only four years younger than Paul, although oddly there's no record of The
Beatles ever singing it at Hamburg or (their favourite period for rock and roll
jam sessions) 'Let It Be' - instead the earliest on record we have is the Wings
'univerity' tour of 1972.
'We Can Work It Out' was long overdue a revival and is one of the few songs from this
set to remain in the McCartney band's setlists on their next tour. It's great
to hear in any form and Macca gets audibly (or if you're watching the video
visibly) choked during the Lennon-written middle eight about life being too
short for fussing and fighting - who'd have thought how it would end just four
years on from writing this song together eh?! However the Bavarian street theme
is an uncomfortable fit for a classic song, which doesn't ruin it per se but
does make you long to never ever hear an accodian ever again (take that thing
off Wix, somebody, please!)
Jesse
Fuller's mid-1950s acoustic rock 'San Franscican Bay Blues' is the closest the McCartney band get
to re-creating the feel of the original song the whole night. It's scrappy and
inconsequential, but fun and isn't really a blues at all but a happy-go-lucky
song very much in keeping with the McCartney character.
'Help!'
classic 'I've Just Seen A
Face' is one of the set's more obvious entries, one of the earliest
Beatle songs to be played live back in Wings' 1976 tours. Full og manic
goodwill cheer, it's acoustic rumble is well built for the style of a show like
this one although Macca does rather throw his vocal away in comparison to the clever
vocal control he displayed in the original.
So far
the set has been catchy but not very deep, so thank goodness for 'Every Night', one of Macca's
deeper and more emotionally resonant songs from the McCartney album. While the
original was deliberately solo - it's
the most worried and troubled song in the McCartney canon after all,
wondering what the point of going on really is - this new version goes in quite
a different direction, with some gorgeous harmonies and a much calmer feel
making the bitter origins of the song seem a distant memory. Macca proved the
song wrong - there really was a reason for getting out of bed to make his music
and he's still surrounded by the woman he loves and wanted to be with
twenty-odd years before. A special version of a special song, with a lovely a
capella section near the end that's almost Beach Boys.
'Help!'
B-side 'She's A Woman'
is not an obvious choice for an acoustic set given that the song was originally
one of the fab's heaviest rockers and this sort of fusty blues version isn't
exactly the perfect fit. Without the attack in Macca's voice the song seems
less frivolous somehow, but it's nice to hear him return to this song for the
first time since the Candlestick Park gig in 1966!
'Hi-Heeled Sneakers' by Tommy Tucker was a popular song around Liverpool which every
local band seemed to do (though The Searchers were the only one to put it on
record) and arguably is a lot more known nowadays than it was in the 1950s,
even when Elvis sang it. Paul puts on his best American twang for the slightly
menacing song about dressing up to go out, but reducing the song to the bare
bones reveals it as a not-that-great 12 bar blues slog.
'And I Love Her' has never sounded so good though, with a lovely harmony-drenched
arrangement that sounds stately and, well, loved. Macca and Hamish sing with
more care than they do on the rest of the record and the slightly slower feel
even compared to the 'A Hard Day's Night' original really suits the song, which
now sounds like an 'older' grown-up version that's still very much in love.
Robbie does a good job at embellishing George Harrison's original solos without
changing them too much.
A revved
up 'That Would Be Something'
is one of the few songs here that turns something was originally a bit
insubstantial (there's only one verse!) into a 'fuller' song. A nicely bluesy
take on the song really brings out the best in the funky riff and the song is
now more forceful and sexy than the playful original on 'McCartney'.
'Blackbird'
- introduced as 'Blackboard' after the cleaning lady accidentally requested the
song by the wrong name - is another natural fit, with Paul and Robbie
performing it on twin guitars just as Wings once did in their set (though
without the lively bass part from 1976). This 'White Album' special still holds
its own after so many years and is arguably the best acoustic song in Paul's
multi-decade back catalogue anyway, hard to ruin and thankfully played with
care here.
The
surprise highlight of the album is another cover, Bill Withers' slow and sultry
'Ain't No Sunshine'
which is given over to Hamish to sing while Wix at last gets off his beloved
accordian and onto the piano where he plays some exquisite blues thumping.
Blair is right on the money with his lively drum part as well, nodding this
ballad into the right side of rocky, although this is Hamish's greatest hour,
with a delicious vocal full of delight and longing. For the last time in his
career (so far) Macca is a spare part, looking on democratically from the
drumkit as he lets his band shine without him, just like the 'Wings at the
Speed of Sound' days.
Elvis'
second single 'Good Rockin'
Tonight' is less welcome though, another of those curiously unloveable
Macca 50s re-treads which is treated as a joke rather than a charming period
piece.
Marty
Robbins' 'Singing The Blues'
is a much better fit, an originally sad and slow ballad about things going
wrong turned in typical McCartney style into an upbeat rocker about having the
chance to move on. Wix again stars on the piano and Hamish gets to add a truly
lovely harmony part on the best McCartney-sung cover on the set.
Closing
encore 'Junk' -
actually technically its 'Singalong Junk', the instrumental, despite how its
listed on the sleeve - is a third song from McCartney that sounds rather good
done like this. Slightly slower than the album, full of the same weary unloved
feel, but with a lovely flamenco jazz guitar part from Robbie that makes the
song sound more confident and hopeful - it's a neat reminder of just how far McCartney
and band have come after so many years. It's hardly 'Junk' at all.
Overall,
then, 'Unplugged' is a bit of a mixed bag that's pretty evenly half and half
between what works and what doesn't. I'm impressed, however, at how willing
McCartney is to use the excuse of this new format to do something a little bit
different, reviving some old songs of his own he's longed to play and some even
older songs by other people he never had a chance to (odd that of all the cover
songs here only 'Be Bop A Lula' was ever played by The Beatles with any
regularity at any time). By and large you can see why Paul made his name as a
rock/pop electricity-loving plugged in musician as this acoustioc folk style is
not his natural 'world' - he tends to under or over-sing the vocals while
there's usually one instrumental part too many in most of these songs (usually
that flipping accordian!) However if you're enough of a McCartney fan to want
to hear everything then 'Unplugged' is an unexpected treat for offering such a
different style and sound you can't get elsewhere and there are just enough
good performances here to make this now rather rare set worth your while
digging for. In terms of AAA unplugged sets its somewhere in the middle - below
Oasis' stunning and even more inventive set from 1996, about level with Neil
Young's semi-inventive set from 1994 and a little above CSN's slightly boring
Unplugged gig from the same year.
Paul McCartney and Carl Davis "The
Liverpool Oratorio"
(EMI/Parlophone,
October 7th 1991)
Movement
I (War)/Movement II (School))/Movement III (Crypt)/Movement IV (Father)/Movement
V (Wedding)/Movdement VI (Work)/Movement VII (Crises)/Movement VIII (Peace)
"I know I'll never lose affection
for people and things that went before, I know I'll often stop and think about
them..."
Paul was approached with
the idea of writing his first classical piece by Liverpool's Royal Philharmonic
Orchestra, who wanted something special for their 150th anniversary concert in
1990. Macca missed the deadline by a hair but was uprfront about being ever so
slightly busy, having been in the process of touring the world and
re-establishing his pop career. However the commision came along at the right
time - Paul had grown tired of trying to keep pace with what the pop world was
up to and wanted to make something more substantial than 'Return To
Pepperland', thealbum he'd just abandoned when the Philharmonic came a-calling.
When the Beatle-world heard that Macca was working on a classical piece we
expected something a bit more 'mainstream' - a record more like the one
'Working Classical'; turned out to be full of short pieces with singalong tunes
that could easaily have become pop songs if played on different instruments.
However McCartney was keen to do something bigger and used the Liverpool
commision and his roots to his home city to explore questions that had been
bothering him for a long time - where he came from, the world he was born into
and how his Northern background had shaped his outlook. Though many people
compared this work to 'Handel's Messiah' and other Oratorios (strictly speaking
it's not an oratario which has tobe based on a 'sacred religious text' to
qualify, although the size and scale and sense of history is in keeping with
the genre) for me the closest comparison is Lennon's 'In My Life' - a song
already with a classical nod thanks to McCartney's inspired tune and a sense of
weariness and change as well as love.
Though all the actual
melodies are McCartney's - some obviously (the entire second 'school' section'
sounds like a classical take on 'Band On The Run'), some less so (the opening
choir section 'War' is impressively un-McCartney like, with the scope and range
that most pop writers turned classical composers can't manage) - he needed help realising his vision into a
full piece. American composer/conductor Carl Davis was nominated as his
companion and helped add the classical touches needed - though to be honest I'd
have preferred it if Macca's fertile imagination was left to wander without
having to be contained to classical rules and traditions (The Beatles were
great because they broke the pop mould, not because they were contained by it
). At it's worst the Oratorio plays things far too 'safe', sounding like an
outsider writer desperately trying to join a different club rather than a
writer with a different melodic eye who can perhaps see things that the
classical world are too bloind to realise. That problem will gradually be
solved across the next four classical McCartney works and counting but is
perhaps the biggest problem of this work: that in trying so hard to sound like
a 'proper' classical work it doesn't have enough McCartney. On the plus side,
it's impressive just how far Macca has got away with this. Imagine if a
contemporary classical writer had been asked to write a pop song to compare to
'Blackbird' or 'Yesterday'; they just wouldn't understand the concept, the need
to get emotions over in words and song in such a short space of time. Expecting
McCartney to expand his vision to 80 minutes with a very different background
is a similar challenge - and one that, largely, he's moe than up to.
For fans who come to this
work from a more 'pop' based setting the most interesting part is the fact that
for the first time since 'Penny Lane' Paul has gone back to his childhood.
Traditionally the take in interviews was that Macca's childhood was idyllic and
that even the sad death of his mother only brought him closer to his brother
and his dad. However there's a real sense of tragedy and darkness across this
work that McCartney rarely hints at. The work starts with Liverpool at war,
bombed into submission while McCartney's parents try to make do with a newborn
baby and make ends meet (though Paul is carefully to keep the autobiography
down, this is clearly 'his' parents' experience). The 'Childhood' section is
also very dark and seems taken straight from Pink Floyd work 'The Wall' with
ex-army veteran's who've seen everything they once knew blown up in their face
giuven the task of teaching the nation's children - a recipe for disaster in
retrospect yet the case for so many veteran's looking for work. The next two
movements' Crypot' and 'Father' are more interesting, touching on McCartney's
religious beliefs - although the 'God'
the central character calls out for isn't specific as much as the more general
'mother nature' figure many of Paul's pop songs reach out for. Disc two moves
further from the autobiography and even further from Macca's emotional
resonance, with tales of a generic Northern 'wedding' and the hard graft 'Work'
which couldn't be less like the Paul and Linda story or his adventure with The
Beatles. However it's worth hearing just to see how Paul thinks his life might
have turned out had John Lennon not been around that fateful fete day in 1957
when their lives changed forever. The last two sections 'Crises' and 'Peace'
move closer to Paul's natural style again, though, a sort of classical 'Tug Of
War' as Paul enjoys himself being as noisy as he can before soothing all that
angst away again with a typically soothing peaceful McCartney melody that puts
everything right. The end result is a mammoth work, one which runs a mere five
minutes shorter than 'The White Album' and longer than any other solo/Wings
work (its even a fraction longer than 'Wings Over America'!)
The Oratorio could then
be cut in half without losing too much and in common with all of Mccartney's
classical works there are at least as many boring moments of recitiaves and not
much happening as there are genuinely inspired moments. Too often in this piece
Paul proves to be a novice classical songwriter with repeated cliches and
moments that too often sound in the thrall of past writers. However there's
enough of worth here to make the piece worthwhile as Paul tries to use a
different set of tools to tell a similar story of his generation and their
experiences growing up in a changing world. Given an epic premiere at Liverpool
Cathedral, broadcast on the BBC with Kiri Te Kanawa and Willard White in the
main roles, the work was perhaps given too much of a build-up at the time and
was far too pompous and un-McCartney for what should have been an introduction
for many to the classical world. The performance more than the music was
slaughtered by critics who either expected the work to be Beatley and tuneful
or scoffed at the idea of a mere pop writer having a go at all. The album
proved to be a lot more popular with the public than the critics, though, and
is still today one of the highest selling classical pieces by anybody, spending
longer at the top of the classical charts that any Beatles album that wasn't
'Sgt Peppers' and even registering at #36 in the 'overall' pop chart - a first
for a non-compilation classical release.
Ultimately 'The Liverpool
Oratorio' is something of a proud but inevitably doomed failure - like many
'short story writers' Macca finds it a whole new experience writing a novel and
falls into many traps of filling in time where inspiration should be or
repeating refrains and motifs past the point where they remain interesting.
Though it's not without its worth, there isn't always enough going on to hold
the listener's interest and there are several parts to the piece that could and
should have been whittled down to a more respectable size. Though each movement
has something interesting in them somewhere, there's not enough of interest for
each part to last fifteen-twenty minutes (it's the like the bad old days of the
pop album, if you like, when one three-minute classic pop single allowed you to
get away with anything for the rest of the side). However in many ways the
'Oratorio' is a lot better - and certainly longer and deeper - than it had any
right to be. Writing a piece of work in an environment this alien without
messing up too badly is perhaps the single greatest achievement of Paul's
musical career - certainly it's been his biggest musical challenge to date. Though
many complaints have been filed against McCartney the usual one heard down the
years is that his music always sounds the same and he never stretches himself.
Though the Liverpool Oratorio is far from perfect - and perhaps even the
weakest of his five classical pieces to date - you could hardly lay that
complaint at Paul in this period; what other writer of 'pop' songs would even
consider the request for a classical work, never mind make it one of the
longest, heaviest and most involving pieces of the modern classical world?
However for all that this is a project that would still be better sampled on a
'highlights' work and is at least an hour too long.
"Paul Is Live!"
(EMI/Parlophone,
November 16th 1993)
Drive
My Car/Let Me Roll It/Lookin' For Changes/Peace In The Neighbourhood/All My
Loving/Robbie's Bit (Thanks Chet)//Good Rockin' Tonight/We Can Work It Out/Hope
Of Deliverance/Michelle/Biker Like An Icon/Here There and Everywhere//Magical
Mystery Tour/C'mon People/Lady Madonna/Paperback Writer/Penny Lane/Live and Let
Die//Kansas City-Hey! Hey! Hey!/Welcome To The Soundcheck/Hotel In Benidorm/I
Wanna Be Your Man/A Fine Day
"All we
This was a souvenier of the 1993 world tour
which somehow managed to be even more disappointing than the last one three years
earlier and features the same line-up, give or take a drummer. Now a single CD,
though one with a rather generous running time, Macca tries to include as many
of the 'new' Beatle songs revived for the last tour as possible alongside a few
repeats and probably more songs from 'Off The Ground' than anyone ever wanted
to hear. Again, the McCartney band were cooking when you were in the same room
with them but the sound didn't translate to record very well, the band all
sounding a little distant from each other and rather over-slick despite the
lack of studio re-touching. Though there are less blowing-off-steam oddities on
this record than 'Fantastic',which makes for an easier listening experience all
round, 'Paul Is Live' desperately needs something of the like with many of the
Beatles recordings coming across as over-reverential and the new songs too
stodgy. That said there are highlights: what a thrill to be able to hear Paul
revive 'Paperback Writer' after twenty-seven years (a track not heard as often as
tour as some of the others), a singalong 'All My Loving', a
reclaimed-from-Ringo 'I Wanna Be Your Man' or a strident 'Penny Lane' making
its live debut. Some of the 'Off The Ground' stuff sounds ok here too -
'Looking For Changes' is built for the live stage even if this recording is not
quite as 'together' as the album cut while 'Peace In The Neighbourhood' and
'C'mon People' have a certain weight and gravitas. Best of all Macca revived
Wings live favourite 'Let Me Roll It' and it sounds extra menacing here, oozing
a confidence that the retro rocker curious and tossed away Beatle revivals
can't match.
On the negative side, the improvised 'Hotel In
Beindorm' tapes at a soundcheck is a real waste of our time, a silly reggae-ish
song that's woefully bad, while the noisy six minute jam 'Fine Day' is anything
but, a noisy and very overlong band jam that simply proves again how out of
synch with each other this band of individually great musicians could be. I
stioll don't understand why 'welcome to soundcheck' onvolved 45 seconds of
rainforest sounds: whose playing at this gig - The Animals? The Monkees? The
sleevenotes defensively warn that these last three 'may not be suitable for
people of a critical disposition'. Which is everybody who didn't play on them, surely?
Had this record cone out at a lter date we would probanbly call these 'bonus
features', although even then we'd feel cross at forking out so much money for
so much dross. Even without such lapses this set should have been better still:
what a great excuse to have on your second time round the world to play all
your really good songs you don't often get a chance to play, the 'Little Lamb
Dragonfly's and 'Through Our Loves' that would have accelerated McCartney to
true hero status in this era. Why should fans have to sit through yet more
messing around rock covers when there are so many gems in the Mccartney
catalogue screaming for another chance? There's also a sense that even the best
moments from this album are lacking...something compared to 'Wings Over
America' , without the same soul or emotional impact. Even more than
'Fantastic' you can tell this is an 'arena' album where the band can't see the
whites in their audience's eyes and are losing touch with them. The best thing
about this album is the cover, a hilarious spoof of the ‘Paul Is Dead’
conspiracy from the 1960s, with Paul re-creating the Abbey Road cover with his son
James' sheepdog (who looks just like Martha did) and a ‘beetle’ Volkswagen
parked at the side of the road just as in the olden days, only instead of ’28
IF’ it sports the tag ’51 IS’ (Macca’s age at the time). Sadly much of the
music begs to differ just how 'alive' Paul is on this album.
The
Fireman "Strawberries, Oceans, Ships Forests"
(EMI, November 1993)
Transpiritual Stomp/Trans Lunar
Rising/Transcrystaline/Pure Trance/Arizona Light/Celtic Stomp/Strawberries
Oceans Ships Forests/4-4-4/Sunrise Mix
"There's
no smoke without fire"
Sometimes
people forgtet just how 'weird' McCartney can be for a 'mainstream' artist.
Always musically curious and more interested in what those around him are
listening to than most, Paul has led his followers down more merry musical
cul-de-sacs than possibly any other living artist in his quest for something
that excites him. The three 'Fireman' projects of which this is the first are
probably the greatest examples of this. At the time this record was released
hot on the heels of the very mainstream pop record 'Off The Ground' McCartney's
involvement was only a 'rumour' and not that widely believed by anyone. After
all, even the fans who recognised the McCartney 'scraps' layered into this
musical collage (bits of speech from 'The Broadcast' in 1979, a sample lifted
from 'Cosmically Conscious' and that very recgnisable throaty roar Macca has)
had no reason to think that the additions were McCartney additions or that the
insistent trance riff was played by him. But they were, with Macca
collaborating with producer 'Youth' on a straight collaboration that was
intended to be a straightforward remix of some 'Off The Gorund' tracks for some
B-sides but quickly grew into a new project where Paul could 'be' a younger,
hungrier version of himself without the pressure of the McCartney name on his
shoulders (the 'Paul McCartney Goes Too Far' solo album first mentioned as far
back as 1966?) Though the actual sound and texture of the two albums couldn't
be less like each other, in many ways this is the sequel to 'Thrillington', a
chance for Paul to do something entirely unexpected with his own music. In a
way it was a sad day when he 'broke' his own anonymity in a webcast to promote
the second album - although even then many weren't still convinced this oh-so
modern approach to music making was by a man in his 50s with nothing to prove
until Paul finally camer clean to promote third and most musical album
'Electric Arguments' in 2007. Originally intended as a series of 12"
remixes by Youth, it somehow got turned into one long LP by McCartney, which is
where the trouble begins. Entering a new world can be fascinating for a few
minutes and Macca's instant musicality is actually very well suited to this
sort of thing (as 'Ou Est Le Soliel?' demonstrated six years earlier). However
across 78 minutes this album loses much of its impact and even the new and
alien landscape is in danger of becoming old and staid by the end. There's
actually very little in the way of variety here, with these nine songs
effectively forming only slightly different versions of the same track , which
is a disappointment given your response when you start playing an album such as
this one. Some sections do stand out though: the trippy psychedelic 'Arizona
Light' with its hint of sitars and the folkier 'Celtic Stomp' with its
mellotron-set-to-flite-settings sound that Macca has used so much since discovering
it for the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' intro. Overall, though, this is a curio
and a collector's item rather than a truly daring piece and it doesn't quite
fulfil it's potential, even if it is nice to hear McCartney doing something so
different with his talents and going back to his 'tape loop' way of working for
the first time in nearly thirty years.
"Oobu
Joobu" (Radio Series)
(Broadcast on Westwood One May 27th
1995-September 4th 1995)
Show One (27/5/95 Extended Debut)
(Unreleased Tracks Only): Oobu Joobu (New Theme Tune)/Take It Away (Demo)/Biker
Like An Icon (Soundcheck)/I Wanna Be Your Man (Soundcheck)/We Can Work It Out
(Soundcheck)/Ou Est Le Soliel? (Demo)/Atlantic Ocean (Unreleased Song)/A Fairy
Tale (Macca at home)/Don't Get Around Much Anymore (Outtake)/They Call My Baby
Baby (Soundcheck)/Boil Crisis (Unreleased)/C Moon (Rehearsal)/Put It There
(Rehearsal)/Ebony and Ivory (Rehearsal)
Show Two (29/5/95) (Unreleased Tracks
Only): Ain't That A Shame (Outtake)/Back In The USSR (Rehearsal)/The Lovers
That Never Were (Demo)/Hey Jude (Rehearsal)/Spies Like Us (Demo)/Can't Buy Me
Love (Soundcheck)
Show Three (5/5/1995) (Unreleased
Tracks Only): I Love This House (Unreleased)/We Got Married (Demo)/Got To Get
You Into My Life (Rehearsal)/Blackbird (Rehearsal)/Singing' The Blues
(Soundcheck)/Rock Island LIne (Rehearsal) Guest: Pete Townshend
Show Four (12/6/1995): Love Mix
(Unreleased)/Stop! You Don't Know Where She Came From (Unreleased)/Fool On The
Hill (Rehearsal)/New Moon Over Jamaica (Demo)/Bring It To Jerome
(Soundcheck)/You Know You Are Such An Incredible Thing (Jam)/Fixing A Hole
(Rehearsal)/I Lost My Little Girl (Soundcheck)/Let It Be (Rehearsal)
Show Five (19/6/1995): Lookin' For
Changes (Soundcheck)/Peace In The Neighbourhood (Soundcheck)/Mother Nature's
Son (Soundcheck)/Off The Ground (Soundcheck)/How Many People? (Rehearsal)/We
All Stand Together (Demo)
Show Six (26/6/1995): 20 Flight Rock
(Rehearsal)/Summertime (Soundcheck)/Drive My Car (Rehearsal)/Doing It All Dat
Long (Unreleased Film Score)/Give Us A Chord Roy (Jam)/Oh Mama Et Papa
(Soundcheck)
Show Seven (3/7/1995): Untitled
Instrumentals x2/No I Never (Jam)/Crackin' Up (Soundcheck)/After You've Gone
(Demo)/Yellow Submarine (Rehearsal)
Show Eight (10/7/1995): Jet!
(Rehearsal)/Keep Under Cover (Demo)/Get Out Of My Way (Soundcheck)/Three Cool
Cats (Rehearsal)/Don't Break The Promises (Demo)/Peacocks (Unreleased)/I've
Just Seen A Face (Rehearsal)/Music For A Glass Harmonica (Rehearsal)/Winedark
Open Sea (Rehearsal)
Show Nine (17/7/1995): Miss Ann
(Rehearsal)/She's A Woman (Rehearsal)/Live and Let Die (Soundcheck)/SMA
(Heather McCartney)/Cut Across Shorty (Rehearsal)/Hi Heeled Sneakers (Rehearsal)/Let
Me Roll It (Soundcheck)
Show Ten (24/7/1995): Shake Rattle and
Roll (Rehearsal)/Honey Don't (Soundcheck)/Motor Of Love (Demo)/Your School
(Unreleased)/Get Back (Rehearsal)/Tomorrow's Light (Soundcheck)
Show Eleven (31/7/1995): Matchbox
(Rehearsal)/Blue Sude Shoes (Rehearsal)/Yesterday (Rehearsal)/Ballroom Dancing
('Broad Street' Film Soundtrack)/Little Daisy Root (Unreleased Fragment).
Special Guest: Carl Perkins
Show Twelve (7/8/1995): Mean Woman
Blues (Soundcheck)/When The Wind She Blows Cool (Jam)/Coming Up
(Unedited)/Another Day (Rehearsal)/Praying Mantis (Demo)/Mambo Baby (Demo)
Show Thirteen (14/8/1995): Sweetest
Little Show In Town (Demo)/Gonna Set The Town On Fire Tonight (Rehearsal)/Mr
Froggie Went A Coirtin' (Rehearsal)/Soundcheck Song (Improvisation)/Every Night
(Soundcheck)/Be A Vegetarian (Demo)/The Things We Said Today
(Rehearsal)/Don't Let The Siun Catch You
Cryin' (Rehearsal)
Show Fourteen (21/8/1995): Lady Madonna
(Soundcheck)/Bring It On Home To Me (Rehearsal)/Tequilla (Rehearsal)/Wanderlust
(Demo)/Pull Away (Soundcheck)/Hey Jude (Rehearsal)
There was also a double-length
'highlights' show broadcast on September 1st 1995 with new links but no new
songs
"Oobu
joobu we, are, erm, confused by you!"
Imagine
Murray The K twinned with your McCartney bootleg collection and you get 'Oobu
Joobu', the Macca response to the 'Lost Lennon Tapes' of the late 1980s (both
were broadcast on American station Westwood One). Both radio series are
compilations of unreleased material designed to draw in long-term fans to a
corunocpia of unissued and often unlistenable material that neither Beatle
could porbably get away with releasing on record in their own right. It would
have been fascinating to know what John would have made of his own series (whose
first broadcast came in New York eight years after his death, with Yoko's
blessing) and what he'd have thought
about his adult-life-long hobby of recording everything and anything for his
own pleasure let loose on an unsuspecting public. Despite the worries before
the start, though, that Lennon's legacy would be badly damaged by lots of
low-level hissy barelys worked out versions of old friends (the equivalent of
revealing the Wizard of Oz to be merely human) Lennon's reputation came through
unscathed, his achievements all the greater for the more 'human' stumbling ways
many of his greatest songs sounded. McCartney, a radio aficianado with a large
personal tape collection himself, was understandably intrigued and more than a
little jealous.
There
are a number of big differences between the radio series' though which meant
that 'Oobu Joobu' never quite reached the same peak of affection in Beatlefans'
hearts. Firstly and most practically the series never ran as long as 'The Lost
Lennon Tapes' so never matched that series' big piles of unreleased material
(most of which dates from the 'Retun To Pepperland' era of 1987, with only a
handful from the 1960s and 1970s). Secondly, less people were listening to
radios in 1998 than in 1988 so Macca had a dwindling audience to start off
with. Thirdly, unlike Lennon, McCartney was alive and well and keen to make
this a 'real' radio programme, breaking the unreleased material up with a
series of 'other' bits - some of which are genuinely fascinating (such as his
memories of the more obscure songs he doesn't get asked about very often or his
ad hoc 'interviews' with friends and musicians he's worked with down the
years), others of which are downright boring frankly (Linda's regular 'cook of
the house spot' or yet another take on why Paul loves Elvis - although Linda's
own regular 'unreleased' song slot was often as good as if not better than her
husband's, in the years before the 'Wide Prairie' compilation saw their first
official release). There are also full entire records from people he admires (John
Lennon and 'Beautiful Boy', Little Richard, Neil Young, Elvis Costello, Oris
Redding, The Bonzo Dog Doodah Band, even The Human League and there'as a
regular slot for unknown-to-the-Western-world reggae originals from the 1970s
picked up by the McCartneys on holiday) - worthy and revealing in a sense too,
but less interesting than the all-Lennon Tapes, although Macca's take on the
'Beatle covers' he plays is quite interesting. Lastly and most importantly,
McCartney is a more natural songwriter than Lennon - note that's 'nraural' not
better; John and Paul were very different yet very equal - which means that his
songs tended to come out more or less as he thought of them so that his demos
aren't quite as fascinatingly different or went through as many changes (part
of the glory of the Lost Lennon tapes was being able to hear a song like 'She
Said She Said' slowly come together over a period of time - Macca does return
to his songs but its for fun, not because he's thought of anything different). Lennon,
perhaps thankfully, never had as many near-enough-identical-soundchecks to sit
through either. All you need to know about the differences between the two
series is that the Lost Lennon Tapes released on bootleg went up to something
like fifty editions whereas the bootleggers got bored after four volumes of
'Oobu Joobu'.
However
'Oobo Joobu' remains an overlooked part of McCartney's output. There are some
real treasures played on these shows - many of which will be brightening up his
CD single releases for years to come - and its great to see Macca being so
generous with his time. He's also rather a good and natural radio host, taking
to calling up friends and offering up titbits of stories as if he's been doing
this sort of thing all his life. In a way its McCartney spinning fans a few
records saying 'ooh hey have you heard this?' and payng his dues to the artists
who inspired him and kept him going, along with the only airing some of his
private tapes are ever likely to get (there's only so many soundcheck jams fans
will buy!) It is the first real evidence we've had in years of the 'cheeky'
persona last seen on Beatles press conferences in the mid-60s and the shows are
great fun - if ultimately less revealing than the Lennon Tapes ever were. Even
the 'new' theme tune is 'fun' but 'daft', Macca's take on Alfred Jarry's comic
play 'Ubu Roi' (thought to be the 'founder of surrealism') and the programme is
similarly disjointed, bitty and downright odd in places. Very McCartney, in
other words, with the perfect showground for his mercurial talents and a
bonkers musical range from classical (Paul talking about Holst's 'The Planets
Suite' makes for particularly interesting listening) to rock and roll to a
regular reggae spot celebrating unknown bands (including to the McCartneys
sometimes, given that the home-made writing had rubbed off their own copies!)
There
are still however many highlights in search of a 'proper' homewell worth
looking out for, including the London Town-era take on the pre-war standard
'After You've Gone', a 1973-era P{aul reading out a fairy story to his children
with a few piano improvisations along the way, a softer, gentler take on 1982's
'Take It Away', the London Town-era take on punk 'Boil Crisis' (which isn't
quite as bad as people always say!), some great demos with Elvis Costello that
have much more 'life' than the finished versions, Macca's rough demo of the
song he gave to Johnny Cash 'New Moon Over Jamaica' complete with delivery in
his style!, a cosy demo of 'We All Stand Together', an energetic demo for
1983's 'Keep Under Cover', Macca's first recording of Leiber and Stoller's
'Three Cool Cats' since the infamous Beatles Decca audition tape of New Year's
Day 1962, Macca's version of 'Don't Break The Promises' with Eric Stewart that
was re-made later by 10cc, a lovely tour band rehearsal of 'Winedark Open Sea',
twelve-year-old Heather McCartney's punk song 'SMA' based around the
ingredients of baby milk (which is a lot better than 'Boil Crisis'!), a lovely
effects-less demo of 'Motor Of Love' from 'Flowers In The Dirt', Macca memory
song 'Your School', a far-lighter-on-its-feet 'Sweetest Little Show In Town'
from 1983 and a lovely demo of 'Wanderlust' with even more of a drug-haze than
the finished version on 'Tug Of War'.
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
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