PICKING UP ROCKS

Over the course of 2020, my friend Matthew Restall, author of the brilliant Blue Moves book in the 33 1/3 series & I (Hope) started spontaneously breaking down Paul McCartney’s entire post-Beatle discography as if we were writing an actual essay (like you do, if you are a nerd). Well, turns out we were. Welcome to The Wonder Of It All, a 4-part series featuring our endlessly unspooling, unhinged, proudly contrarian, ridiculous & heartfelt correspondence regarding the Macca solo catalog. Ram On…

I Can See The World Tonight: Just a note on the format of this essay, Matthew and I are going to be taking turns spilling our McCartney guts and our names will appear before our respective comments. Our album rating system is the classic best of 10, the pinnacle being 10 (it’s brilliant), the bottom being 1 (it’s terrible). Our opinions will diverge at points but we are as one in our love of Macca.

1990-1999: Off the Ground & into the Pie

MATTHEW: Considering how productive he was in the ‘70s (9 original studio albums) and ‘80s (5 of them), it is striking that Macca made only two albums of new material in the ‘90s. Yet the reasons for this being the least productive of his five solo decades are obvious: a series of huge world tours; and Linda’s long battle with cancer. Which excuses the weakness of Off the Ground and makes the strength of Flaming Pie all the more notable.

Off The Ground (1993)

MATTHEW: Off the Ground (1993), 2/10: This was Paul’s only pop/rock studio album between 1989’s Flowers and 1997’s Flaming Pie, but he was as busy as ever: he released the first of what would be several album collaborations as The Fireman; the first of half a dozen classical albums; and around the time when Off the Ground was being written and released, he put out no less than three live albums (Tripping the Live Fantastic in ‘90, Unplugged in ‘91, and Paul is Live in ‘93). All that activity, the live albums and massive world tours they captured or reflected, made OtG somewhat irrelevant to his public profile and career. It was certainly irrelevant to me; I was still listening to most of what Paul had created during the first 18 years of my life (1964-82), but I had given up on everything since then. I wasn’t alone; OtG did poorly (except in France, Germany, and Japan—a knock-on effect of his touring, perhaps). In retrospect, it is not an irredeemably terrible album; it has its moments. But, like PtP, it isn’t great; it lacks a single really great song (although I do like “Winedark Open Sea”), and we know that Paul can write those in spades.

HOPE: Off the Ground (1993), 1/10: As Matthew states so succinctly above, OtG lacks a single really great song. The only track I ever spent time with was, yes, “Winedark Open Sea”, a decent enough slow groove…but it’s still not worthy enough to make a post-Beatle Macca Top 100. Paul’s never made an album that could be scored as a straight-up zero out of 10 as his inherent melodic gift is always somewhere in the fabric of every full length he creates…which is to say there will always be at least a minute of head-spinning pop beauty on whatever he does. But out of all the latter-day Macca releases, those sweet bits are by far the hardest to find on OtG.

Flaming Pie (1997)

MATTHEW: Flaming Pie (1997), 8/10: I’d pretty much given up on Macca by this point, no longer listening to anything recorded by him after Wings disbanded. But “Beautiful Night” got my attention: it captured those elements of melody and inventiveness that made Paul’s pop so brilliant. I loved it and still do. It took me to Pie, a year or two later (yeah, I was a tad slow, but it was that mid-30s crazy busy career and family time for me), and suddenly I was one of those Beatle/Macca fans between youth and middle age revisiting and rebuying albums. (As I was getting back into ELO too, the Jeff Lynne varnish on much of the album appealed to me.) So how does Pie stand up now? As we write, the Archive Collection reissue recently came out, getting attention and praise. And the album is pretty damn good. In fact, I still love the first six tracks (nicely sequenced from “The Song We Were Singing” to “Calico Skies”); the title track grates a tad, and in the second half there are a few of those collaborative tracks that Paul had more fun making that I have listening to (often the case with his 80s-90s albums), but they are offset by gems like “Heaven on a Sunday,” “Little Willow,” and “Beautiful Night.” For me, this is by far his best album of his varied 80–90s middle period.

HOPE: Flaming Pie (1997), 5/10: True confession. In the years leading up to Pie I’d fallen completely under the spell of Britpop, utterly besotted with everything from Elastica to yes, unabashed Beatle worshippers, Oasis. And so when Pie was released I was not really receptive to it, as I was so entrenched and enraptured by big brash Britpop with its massive singalong chorus’s and druggy, sexy looks. And so I listened to Pie a few times, cherry picked the couple of songs I liked, popped them on a mix cd and filed it away. But over the years I’ve come to appreciate it a bit more. I get why some people find that Jeff Lynne production stamp irksome on the albums he produces but it’s not as intrusive here as it was on say, George Harrison’s Cloud Nine. The songs I like best on Pie actually remind me of vintage Wings tracks namely “Great Day” which sounds like a not so distant cousin of Red Rose Speedway’s groovy, dirty “Big Barn Bed” and “Heaven On A Sunday”a sort-of soul song with a really fine vintage Speed Of Sound guitar break hiding in it (from Paul’s son James ). Pie is a slow burn of an album, the kind you need to play on repeat for a while before it infiltrates.

End of Part 3

Coming in Part 4, the 21st century! Plus a whip ’round the Macca side projects and compilations. Get comfortable, it’s a big one…check it out here

Over the course of 2020, my friend Matthew Restall, author of the brilliant Blue Moves book in the 33 1/3 series & I (Hope) started spontaneously breaking down Paul McCartney’s entire post-Beatle discography as if we were writing an actual essay (like you do, if you are a nerd). Well, turns out we were. Welcome to The Wonder Of It All, a 4-part series featuring our endlessly unspooling, unhinged, proudly contrarian, ridiculous & heartfelt correspondence regarding the Macca solo catalog. Ram On…

Once Upon A Long Ago: Just a note on the format of this essay, Matthew and I are going to be taking turns spilling our McCartney guts and our names will appear before our respective comments. Our album rating system is the classic best of 10, the pinnacle being 10 (it’s brilliant), the bottom being 1 (it’s terrible). Our opinions will diverge at points but we are as one in our love of Macca.

1980-1989: Macca II to The Dirt

HOPE: The ’80s were a markedly confusing and dark time for many of the music world’s more established and beloved artists. With the new decade came a dramatic, seismic shift in pop sights and sounds. Sure there were the inevitable sonic advances in recording and such but the shift was mostly down to this one particular thing, an immense, all consuming behemoth called MTV that took near complete control of music culture (as well as my own teen brain). The garish, glossy videos they showed 24/7 became as crucial to an artist’s success as radio airplay, the visuals and visages as important as the songs themselves. Yup, once MTV hit, like some musical equivalent of Logan’s Run, any musician over 30 suddenly seemed genuinely old indeed. The acoustic sounds that had been so mega and pervasive only a handful of years before now seemed criminally dated.

The need to sound “modern” to stay relevant proved to be problematic for many of the established rock and pop superstars of the ’60s and ’70s, resulting in some truly disastrous sonic (enter sexy saxes) and sartorial decisions (hot mullet action). Of course there were artists who were able to transition and/or evolve with enormous success as the ’80s progressed, like Paul Simon, Bruce Springsteen and even, surprisingly, The Kinks. And there were others who while not necessarily progressive sound-wise, resoundingly found their niche as the decade evolved (Linda Ronstadt). But alas others stumbled. Hard. 

Which is to say welcome to Paul McCartney’s ‘80s. The decade began with Paul’s being arrested and detained for bringing a cache of weed into Japan where the Wings tour was set to begin. He was subsequently deported and plans to continue the tour were aborted (and as such the USA never got to experience the Back to the Egg live, to which I say dammit Paul, dammit). Once summer hit though, things in Macca world took a marked turn toward the better as Paul’s new single, an oddball pseudo-new wave chant called “Coming Up” ascended to the #1 spot in the singles chart. The success of that song then supercharged sales for the ponderously weird and uncommercial album it called home, 1980’s McCartney II, helping drive it up the charts to similar heights. Then on December 8 of that same year, everything changed.

The tragic death of John Lennon invariably threw an intense spotlight on Paul and left many wondering how he might ultimately address this immense loss within his music…or if he would at all.  The answer came in the form of an album that he’d begun recording prior to John’s death, 1982’s Tug Of War. Within it he spoke eloquently and emotionally about John ( in the song “Here Today”) while also delivering one of the finest full lengths of his entire post-Beatle career. Little did we know at the time that it would serve as the high water mark for all of Macca’s ‘80s output. The quality of the releases that followed Tug Of War whipped wildly from intermittently strong to outright terrible. 

Check out any career-spanning album ranking list and you will invariably find the two studio albums that came in the wake of Tug Of War, namely Pipes of Peace and Press To Play as well as the soundtrack to Paul’s ill-conceived (disaster) film Give My Regards To Broad Street firmly lodged at the bottom. And in the case of Broad Street, it’s a two-fer as it’s also arguably one of the worst films of the ‘80s. While we can cast a legitimately critical eye at these albums with their mullets, smarmy, thumbs aloft videos and clunky attempts at modernity, we also can’t entirely dismiss them for there are in fact some true gems living within their grooves. But be warned, if you choose to listen to Macca’s ‘80s albums in their entirety, you are gonna get dirty.

McCartney II (1980)

MATTHEW: McCartney II (1980), 4/10: derided as a featherweight failed experiment at the time, especially in the US (where it’s chart showing was Paul’s lowest since Wild Life), it is hailed today as a bold, experimental, unappreciated gem. So which is it? Both and neither: it’s an experiment that works at times, but ultimately isn’t experimental enough. The electropop tracks are very 1980, but in a good way; they stand up pretty well (although surely “Frozen Jap” is an unnecessarily offensive title, even if Paul was still grumpy about his recent drug arrest in Tokyo airport). But they would have been more compelling if sequenced together—perhaps as a semi-instrumental Side B (like Bowie’s Low and Heroes). Instead, as if he was wary of asking fans to embrace something too novel, Paul interspersed them with more conventional songs. Two of those are great (the singles “Coming Up” and “Waterfalls”), but the other four are like forgettable outtakes from the pre-Egg Wings era (and “Bogey Music” comes unforgivably close to completely ruining Side B). Left off the album was “Blue Sway,” which would have been one of its better tracks (it is on the Archive Collection edition, which also has the excellent live Wings version of “Coming Up” and the extended—too long!—versions of the electropop numbers).

What’s the solution? The best I can come up with is a double EP (3-4 tracks on 4 sides, grouped by style, allowing for both versions of “Coming Up,” “Blue Sway,” and some longer edits). But a double EP was almost never done by anyone, for good economic reasons. Not a great idea. So maybe the solution is that we must be content with playing around with the original track and outtakes from what is a flawed, confused but ultimately worthwhile addition to the catalogue.

HOPE: McCartney II (1980), 5/10: The release of this album was preceded by the single ”Coming Up” a song with a cute modern haircut and no discernible melody. I’ve never liked it and at the time wished it hadn’t gotten to # 1 because I was genuinely worried Paul would take it as a sign to write more songs like it (I miss the days when that was the kind of shiz I was actually worried about). I know McCartney II has received a lot of latter day love for its prescience and supposedly ahead of its time electropop experimentation which I kind of get…but to my ears there aren’t enough fully fleshed out songs to latch onto. Which is to say several tracks feel like incomplete sketches and/or straight up noodling (“Front Parlour”, “Darkroom”, “On The Way”), not to mention that things get seriously cringey in a couple of places ( “Frozen Jap”,”Bogey Music”). On the up side, I love the ethereal and woozy “Waterfalls”; though it’s the most prototypically Macca-style song here, maybe the least adventurous, it is by far the most memorable track on all of McCartney II. And I want to award honorable mentions to a couple of deep cuts from the same cloth, “One Of These Days” and “Summer’s Day Song”. While not up to the melodic standard of “Waterfalls”, they are similarly hazy and hypnotic and often insidiously sneak into my Macca playlists when I’m not looking.

I was hoping that I would have an epiphany regarding McCartney II once I spent time with the Archive Collection edition, but apart from discovering the plush nighttime in the city groove of bonus track “Blue Sway”, nothing had changed; I liked the same three aforementioned songs I always did and felt nothing for the rest. I agree with Matthew’s assessment that while Macca sometimes colors outside the lines on McCartney II, he doesn’t go far enough to make it genuinely interesting…but think that applies the other way too, as in he skates around his melodic tendencies without digging in; there just aren’t enough hooks here and brilliant hooks are what define the best Macca songs and set him apart from the songwriting herd.

Tug Of War (1982)

HOPE: Tug of War (1982), 9/10: If you are a hardcore Macca fan chances are you have a pretty tough skin. When haters want to trash post-Beatle Paul they tend to wave the same tired pieces of dirty laundry in the air to make their point. And the Exhibit A of total suckery is always the same. Yes, “Ebony and Ivory” is ridiculous. When they premiered the song on one of the big NYC radio stations back in the day I remember being embarrassed on Paul’s behalf after it had finished. Still, while it’s clumsy as hell and I don’t care if I ever hear it again, I know it’s heart is in the right place and the tune itself is kind of sweet. But yes, I get the hate. We all do. I just wanted to get that out of the way before we talk about all the beauty and joy surrounding it.

Critics were falling all over themselves to praise ToW upon release…which even in my youth I recognized as unusual having become so accustomed to their bashing him. In fact it sort of seemed like the extra praise was their way of offering Paul sympathy and love after what happened to John. I admit I thought this, like oh now you think Paul is good, feeling ever so slightly pissed at his prior treatment and their convenient new magnanimity. But then again, ToW was pretty great.

I love the overall sequencing on ToW…how the handsomest stuff is served up first and how the lesser lights are discreetly tucked away ( those being the other sadly pedestrian Stevie W collaboration “What’s That You’re Doing” and the Carl Perkins duet “Get It”). And there couldn’t have been a better opener than the epic and wistful title track. I love, love “Take It Away”, it is one of my all-time favorite solo Paul tracks, right down to it’s fantastical video with John Hurt as “some important impresariooooo”. The harmonizing in the coda is straight up heavenly and I could listen to it playing in an endless loop forever. “Wanderlust” often gets singled out as the album’s finest ballad, but I’d nominate the rainy “Somebody Who Cares” with its slightly mournful melody for that accolade (plus it sounds like “Waterfalls” little brother). I think ToW is a great record, literally, in that it is so perfectly suited to be absorbed on a turntable, having to be flipped over. It’s never boring and remains utterly listenable in every way.

MATTHEW: Tug of War (1982), 7/10: In the early 80s, I was a fanatic, chart-obsessed English consumer of pop music, and thus a witness to the stumbling of ’70s rock and pop stars that Hope describes. I was also part of their problem, quick to give up on the likes of the Stones, Floyd, Supertramp, Elton John—and Paul McCartney. I was not alone in dismissing these artists as no longer uncool even while still listening to their “old stuff”; that sounds contradictory, but their nostalgia status was part of their uncool-ness. Macca was really up against it, lumbered with the albatross of Beatles uber-nostalgia and the deeply unfair resentment of Lennon mourners. Back to the Egg and McCartney II were still cool to me because I read their experimentalism as Paul not caring what we thought. But the run of albums from 1982-86 suggested he cared too much, trying different duet partners, different producers, veering into children’s music, capitalizing on old Beatles songs but with inferior new versions. The embarrassing “Ebony and Ivory” seemed to set the tone for the decade. It tainted ToW for me at the time, and each subsequent album (not to mention the Rupert the Bear moment) seemed to confirm and further lower my expectations.

None of that was particularly fair, and as a result I failed to give Tug of War a fighting chance. But I came back to it in the late ‘90s, when Macca lured me back with his creative renaissance and when I no longer cared what was cool or uncool. And yes, both Stevie Wonder duets are still embarrassing (calling each other “girl” and squealing “What’s That You’re Doing” to each other would have been less awkward had it been deliberate). But in retrospect ToW sounds like a sequel to pre-Egg Wings, with a few new collaborators, and the same mix of catchy melodies, pseudo-oldies (“Ballroom Dancing” was leftover from Egg days, I believe, and sounds like it—that’s a compliment!), disposable oddities (“Get It”), memorable ballads (“Wanderlust” is great, and “Here Today” is by far the best ode to Lennon by any of the Fab survivors), and solid singles (I love “Take It Away” too). ToW was a hit then, it held up well, and it positively shines in comparison to what followed it.

Pipes Of Peace (1983)

HOPE: Pipes of Peace (1983), 6/10: When I went to purchase this album upon release the guy at the counter told me it was “shit” (turned out he was 10 years off and had the wrong album but I digress). PoP is for all intents and purposes a watered down version of ToW , in other words, not awesome but a long, long way from the shiz pile. I do want to note that while the albums pair of duets with Michael Jackson “Say, Say, Say” and “The Man” have become problematic for me because of MJ’s well-documented issues, I do believe they are two of PoP’s strongest tracks. In fact “The Man”, was my absolute favorite track on PoP for ages. I found its lightness, slightly eccentric lyric and hook impossible to resist; it sounded like a pop-ified version of “San Ferry Anne” off of Speed of Sound. And Paul’s vocal on the track is downright exquisite, just absolute sweetness. I also confess that the “Say Say Say” video enhanced my experience of the song as it provided ample opportunity to swoon over how hot Paul was ( of course at the time I was a teen and Paul was over 40 but let’s just look at it as a tribute to how well he was aging). And I have to shout out plush, corny, epic, arms-wide-open-on-a- mountain anthem “Through Our Love”; it is pure ’80s glory-osity and just plain rules. Now the bad news…and excuse me for acting “like a dustbin lid” for a second if you will ( please listen to track three of PoP if I just confused you with that characterization). While PoP has some undeniably engaging hooks threading through it, it also has filler, the latter half of the album making for a particularly tough trawl ( up until “Through Our Love”). Which is a shame because the first 6 tracks are genuinely lovable in their own individual, idiosyncratic ways.

But what I want to say most regarding PoP is that it makes me genuinely sad. Not for its inconsistency but because I miss this version of Paul, when his default button was set to “melody”, where every song was seemingly built for that thing called “radio”. And so while it isn’t perfect, PoP remains a sweet document of the straight up “Pop Paul”, a throwback to his ‘70s styles which were never to be seen again after this in such a fulsome way. And hey, NYC record store guy, wherever you are, I think you were wrong.

MATTHEW: Pipes of Peace (1983), 5/10: I’m tempted to give this a lower rating because of the Jacko duets, but that’s far from being Paul’s fault and the songs aren’t bad. Actually I did rate it down for that. Sorry. There’s also the “Tug of Peace” mashup, which reminds me of the turd that was sequenced after “Amazed” on the first album; only this is worse, because it’s a turd pile one has to leap over to get to the closing ballad—which is pretty good. In fact, the whole album is only a little less good than ToW. Which really damns it with faint praise (and a very unoriginal evaluation on my part). But it’s surely less of a drop-off than Bowie’s Tonight was to Let’s Dance (although I admit I prefer both of those to both of these). I think “The Other Me” and “So Bad” and “Through Our Love” are underrated pop nuggets that sound great in Macca mixes. I put my favorite dozen tracks from ToW and PoP in a playlist along with “No More Lonely Nights” (from the Give My Regards to Broad Street fiasco) and the result is a fine hour of Paul pop. I did that last week, and I rather wish I’d done it decades ago.

Press To Play (1986)

MATTHEW: Press to Play (1986), 2/10: Hope says PoP makes her sad; Press to Play makes me very sad. It’s the first Macca album that in real time struck me as an end. I thought, poor Paul. He still has the skills, but the creative genius is gone. The fact that buried in the very middle of an otherwise almost unlistenable album is one of his best ballads—“Only Love Remains,” a modest UK hit soon forgotten because Paul’s magical chart run of two decades was over—only makes Press to Play more depressing (depress to play? Oh dear. I apologize). In fact, to give it a full chance and dig a bit deeper, there are some good moments in here, in parts of songs (in “Feel the Sun,” “Footprints,” “Pretty Little Head,” and a couple more); but the songs as a whole aren’t great, and great is what Paul has given us too many times for this to get played much again.

Nothing from the album made it into any of the versions of All The Best, the big hits collection released the following year—which made #2 in the UK but only #62 in the US, perhaps reflecting the damage done by Broad Street and Press.

HOPE: Press to Play (1986), 2/10: Matthew, believe me when I tell you, Press to Play makes me sad too…but even more than that, it makes me angry knowing what Paul is capable of. There are flourishes of divine melody on PtP and melodically epic ballad “Only Love Remains” is an underrated gem…but, and it genuinely pains me to say this, the lyrics throughout the album are atrocious. I admit that at the time of release I found the video for PtP’s first single “Press” pretty irresistible for reasons that had zero to do with the song. Watching classic “cute” Paul mugging, grinning and running his hand through his lustrous hair as he surprised commuters on the tube was kind of all kinds of charming & I totally wished I’d been there, on that train. Pause. Damn. As I have been writing these blurbs, it’s become clear to me that MTV had a cult-like influence over me and seemed to rule my entire waking existence in the ’80s. Shit, maybe those angry PRMC ladies were onto something. Right, so back to “Press” the song. The tune was nice enough, but the chirpy, winking sexuality in the lyrics was embarrassing especially in light of what Prince was kicking out with such wit and brilliance at that same juncture. And I found the “I love you very, very, very much” bit in the song to be particularly grating ( it’s right up there with Kiss’s “crazy, crazy, crazy, crazy nights” on the irritation scale). Oof. Fittingly (?) the album closes with the overwrought “However Absurd” which sounds like a substandard Rutles song, right down to its title. PtP is Paul on autopilot and simply put, it just kind of sucked.

Flowers In The Dirt (1989)

MATTHEW: Flowers in the Dirt (1989), 5/10: With only one original studio album in the six years since PoP, and it relatively unsuccessful, this was a potential comeback record. It did well enough (#1 in the UK), and was generally considered a “return to form” (forgive the cliche); but of its four singles, only “My Brave Face” was Top 25 hit on both sides of the Atlantic. Hope says there is nothing essential on here and I agree (I like “We Got Married” and “Motor of Love,” but they’re hardly essential). The Elvis Costello collaboration was heavily publicized, but it sounds far more like a Crowded House album than a Costello one—reflecting the influence of Mitchell Froom, lead producer (after Paul) and also producer of the first three Crowded House albums (1986-91). I was a huge CH fan at the time, so the comparison helped me like this more—but not as much as the CH albums. It still is, for me, in that quite-good category with VaM and PoP. It gave me hope that Macca would make a few great albums in the ’90s…but it would turn out to be merely the high point of a low patch lasting most of the ’80s and ’90s.

HOPE: Flowers in the Dirt (1989), 3/10: It’s true that to my ears there are no essential tracks on Flowers. It was certainly a step up from its studio predecessor PtP but nothing stuck to the wall for me. It’s one of my least played Macca albums. I was working at CBGB’s Record Canteen at the time this came out and as I was playing it one day, one of my co-workers, who like me was in her early 20’s said, “Wow, I think my Mom would like this album”. While she hadn’t meant it as an insult and was just making an observation, I admit that it changed how I heard Flowers for a minute. To make matters worse, she’d made the remark while my favorite song off the album was playing, the catchy, poppy and goofy “Figure of Eight”. Flowers was indeed polite, clean, undemanding and overly cloying ( “Put It There”, ”How Many People”, ugh). Which is to say it didn’t feel especially cool. In other words, your Mom and Dad would very likely enjoy it ( this despite the participation of Elvis Costello and Mitchell Froom who gave the whole thing some credibility amongst both critics and nerds). I’ve periodically revisited Flowers hoping something might resonate but it’s just never happened. My best memory of this release is that it preceded the first Macca tour of the U.S. since 1976 (!) and thus prefaced my first opportunity to see him play live. It didn’t matter that it was from the back of a stadium in New Jersey in the presence of the asshole guy I was seeing and Paul was a barely discernible dot on the horizon, the important thing was that after what felt like a lifetime of waiting, I was there, in the same “room” as Macca, finally .

End of Part 2

Coming in Part 3, a dissection of Paul’s ’90s discography. Let the resurrection begin. Read it here

Over the course of 2020, my friend Matthew Restall, author of the brilliant Blue Moves book in the 33 1/3 series & I (Hope) started spontaneously breaking down Paul McCartney’s entire post-Beatle discography as if we were writing an actual essay (like you do, if you are a nerd). Well, turns out we were. Welcome to The Wonder Of It All, a 4-part series featuring our endlessly unspooling, unhinged, proudly contrarian, ridiculous & heartfelt correspondence regarding the Macca solo catalog. Ram On…

So Glad To See You Here: Just a note on the format of this essay, Matthew and I are going to be taking turns spilling our McCartney guts and our names will appear before our respective comments. Our album rating system is the classic best of 10, the pinnacle being 10 (it’s brilliant), the bottom being 1 (it’s terrible). Our opinions will diverge at points but we remain as one in our eternal love for Macca.

HOPE: By 1976, something weird was brewing in Beatle world. Thanks to the consistent radio plays, latter-day exposure to the Beatle movies and the influence of millions of older siblings, cousins and babysitters, a new generation of fans were starting to discover them. And so began the first pop music perfect storm. These newbies were kids who’d been born in the late ’60s and beyond and hadn’t experienced the band in real time. They were frequently referred to as “Secondhand Beatle Fans”, a short-lived, semi-official moniker that was both condescending and lovingly true.

One of the best parts about becoming a Beatle fan in the mid-’70s was that not only were there innumerable older albums to consume and catch up on, but a constant stream of new releases by the now solo Beatles to look forward to. This was something of a divine gift for the Secondhand fans, for while they couldn’t experience the excitement of buying a newly recorded album by The Beatles and being part of the cultural zeitgeist that surrounded them, they could still enjoy something that felt like theirs, something new. And when it came to releasing new music, the most motivated and driven ex-Beatle by far was Paul McCartney aka Macca. He proved to be staggeringly prolific out of the gate, kicking out nine studio albums plus a triple lp live album between 1970 and 1979 alone, as well as a stellar array of stand-alone singles.

Paul was just plain unavoidable in the ‘70s, which is to say, he was f-ing everywhere, emanating from every radio, appearing on countless magazine covers, invading every city to rock every coliseum and filling the charts with a continuous stream of, well, stuff. Paul’s star wasn’t flatlining, it was manically ascending, his music becoming as omnipresent as that of The Beatles as the decade unfolded. This goes some way toward explaining and understanding why the post-Beatle Paul McCartney catalogue meant so much to the latter day generations of Beatle fans. It was as close as they could get to experiencing the Fab Four in real time. Like the tagline for the short lived 1977 Broadway show Beatlemania so hopefully and desperately declared, “Not The Beatles, But An Incredible Simulation!”. That was Paul McCartney in the ‘70s. And as it happened, it was a damn good simulation…so good that you could sometimes forget about that other band he was in, especially if you were a kid at the time.

And with that, welcome to THE WONDER OF IT ALL : Paul McCartney’s Solo Years !! Join Secondhanders Matthew and I (Hope) as we bravely trek through 50 years worth of the post-Beatle Macca discography, dissecting its contents, grading the albums and generally over-sharing for context (half truth, it’s mostly because we get exceedingly emotional when discussing Macca). We will be exulting the underdogs, nudging the sacred cows and venturing into the darker corners of the catalogue fearlessly, heartlessly exposing what lives there (yes “Mumbo”, consider that your official warning). And oh yes, one last thing, we will occasionally spew cutting references to the McCartney Archive Collection, the ongoing deluxe reissue project begun in 2010 in regards to their nonsensical, non-chronological order of release which has been a major source of frustration for Macca nerds ( feel free to turn it into a solo drinking game). Yes, there’s something here for everybody, young and old, dabbler and obsessive and we hope you like it.

MATTHEW: Yes, throughout the 1970s, the Beatles were omnipresent and inescapable.  There was always something in the papers, on the TV, or on the radio from or about the Four, either from when they were Fab or from their post-Fab musical and personal lives.  As Bob Stanley noted in his book Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!, for most of the ‘70s, “the States were still pretending the Beatles hadn’t split” (p.247, also see my 33 ⅓ book on Elton John’s Blue Moves, p.61; forgive shameless plug). Although Beatlemania (and that Beatlemania show) was, ironically enough, bigger in the US than the UK, the phenomenon was similar on both sides of the Atlantic.  Re-released Beatles songs and new solo releases charted quickly and sold well.

At the top of that heap of new music was everything by Paul, Linda, and Wings.  Between 1970 and 1979, they released ten albums (two under the McCartney name, seven studio albums under Wings, and a Wings live album; we are not including the Wings Greatest compilation).  Eight of the ten reached #1 or #2 in the US and Canada (five of them did in the UK), charting and selling millions all over the world. In terms of quantity—the number of albums and the number of units moved—Paul outdid his former bandmates many times over. In our view, he outdid them too in terms of quality.  All those albums and singles yield hours of melodic pop marvels.  But critics were less generous.  Many of them were unenthusiastic, if not downright rude and derisive, about most of these albums; in fact, with the exception of Band on the Run, all these records were generally given a rough ride by reviewers.  Why?

Much ink has been spilled on that question and on similar ones, but we are going to stick to one, simple theory that helps take us to the task at hand (rating the albums): Paul refused to release a perfect album, and that got under the skin of critics. The first trio of albums were so obviously and blatantly LPs that Paul wanted to make, for himself and Linda—without giving a monkey’s about anyone else or what they might think or want. According to this theory, nothing on these first three albums pandered to bandmates, managers, producers, record company suits, fan clubs, record store buyers, or critics. Some people in that last category took it personally. The fourth album did, at last, seem to be reaching for critical and commercial approval, but it wasn’t good enough for the critics. Then, when the fifth album did prove to be perfect (at the very least, close to it), that only enraged them more. As if Macca could have made a Band on the Run every year, and he was deliberately, bloodymindedly choosing not to!

Well, the critics were right—in a way.  The albums weren’t perfect. As Rob Sheffield notes a couple of times in Dreaming the Beatles, some of the songs, even whole albums, had an unfinished feel to them. And I must admit that I found that a little confusing at the time. I was a kid during this decade and missed the early albums in real time. I was 6 and living in Madrid when McCartney came out, so I was already a Beatles fan but was oblivious to their breakup and the solo sequels.  But in the five years between Band on the Run and Back to the Egg I was in school in England—and increasingly obsessed with pop music.  I loved the steady stream of Wings hit singles, and acquired the albums as I could, at first a year or two behind their releases, and then—with the last two of the decade—in real time.  By then I had accepted the imperfections of these albums as part of their charm. Their flaws were minor, endearing, and above all forgivable, considering that the other ex-Beatles had, by 1979, produced so little—and so much of it total shite—by comparison. After all, if Wild Life was Paul being selfish and inconsiderate to fans, what about (as of 1979) Ringo’s dismal seven albums, or George’s failure to make anything close to All Things Must Pass, or the fact that John gave up mid-decade completely?

1970-1979: From Cherries to the Egg

MATTHEW: The first three post-Fab Paul albums always seemed like a trilogy to me. Although released under three different names (McCartney; Paul and Linda McCartney; Wings), they all came out within a 20-month period in 1970-71, and they seem to stem from that short creative period (even if some songs had late-60s origins). They also bear that period’s unfiltered hallmark—for better or worse. Without John, Ringo, or the Georges (Harrison and Martin) to reject, rework, develop, or approve his draft compositions, Paul clearly felt deliriously free to simply jam out the bits and pieces constantly emerging from his fertile mind, pop them onto acetate, and let Bob be his uncle.

When it works, it feels thrillingly like sitting in Paul and Linda’s kitchen, drinking their wine, while they make up songs. The invention of Indie Rock? That more likely emerged from the use by multiple artists of cheaper, smaller recording technology. But I see why some critics (and fans) have given Macca that credit.

As for the trilogy: not as bad as many critics claimed in the ‘70s, but also frustratingly flawed. Each one has a handful of songs that are not only among Paul’s best, but hold up well in the catalogue of pop’s greatest, full stop. But then Macca can’t resist tossing them in with tracks that should have gone straight into the B-side bin—or the bucket of half-baked ideas to be revisited later.

McCartney (1970)

HOPE: McCartney (1970), 6/10: I know for a long time people thought this album to be the product of clueless hubris, but honestly its homespun sloppiness feels so genuine and heartfelt to me; it’s the sonic embodiment of muddy boots, wet dogs, worn wool sweaters and Linda’s home cooking…which is to say, it’s an unbelievably warm and cozy record. And I should add, it’s aged surprisingly well. But, but that’s not to say it isn’t scarred by filler. While it’s home to blindingly beautiful romantic constellations like “Every Night” and “Junk”, it also contains some outright shiz, namely “Ooh You”, “Momma Miss America” and the exceptionally awful “Kreen-Akrore”. No matter how much of a Macca contrarian someone is, no one should be willing to die on a hill for those three demons. And I know it’s semi-blasphemous to say but here goes; I prefer the raw emotional live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” that came later on 1976’s Wings Over America over the original here with its fat, intrusive organ.

At the end of the day though, the bad tracks are outnumbered by the good. “Man We Was Lonely” is a total sweetheart of a song, a soundalike sibling to The Beatles’ “The Two of Us”. And I quite like the acoustic, candy-coated instrumental “Hot As Sun” though admittedly it has something to do with a weird, sentimental childhood memory. At some point in the late ’70s, one of our local TV stations in NY started using it as the theme music for the Popeye cartoon show that was on at 7 am before we went to school. Yes, “Hot As Sun” was the daily prelude to an hour of spinach-fueled revenge scenes…which is both utterly bizarre and strangely perfect.

MATTHEW: McCartney (1970), 8/10: Cherries (as I’ve always called it) is for me the best of the first three: a half-hour of beautiful, tuneful, whimsical pop (“Every Night” and both versions of “Junk” are Paul-pop bliss), culminating in the insta-classic “Maybe I’m Amazed” (yes, the live version is better, but it doesn’t replace this one).  If only he’d stopped there or waited until a couple of the better songs from the next album were already written (or included “Another Day,” which had been written during the Let It Be sessions the previous year). Instead, he takes us to the 35” mark with a stunningly crappy final track (was he taking the piss? Having a laugh? He must have been, right?).

Two of the themes that run through our whole blog essay are the issue of track selection and sequencing, and the impact on the listener of her/his personal history with an album. Both of those come together for me with Cherries, as my father gave me the pre-recorded cassette of the album when I was a boy; it was a cherished item in my small, fledgling tape collection, and I still have it. But the tracks were re-sequenced by the label (“Amazed” on Side A, the two “Junks” together on B, etc.). When, near the end of the ‘70s, I heard the proper sequence and made a tape from the record, I realized how much of a difference it made; a beloved but admittedly bumpy album became smoother and better.

Ram (1971)

HOPE: Ram (1971), 10/10: I love Ram. Love it. Okay, I will admit there is one song I don’t really care for and yes I’m talking about you “3 Legs” you freakin’ monster, but since it’s short and sandwiched between two stellar songs, “Too Many People” (anxious, angry and devilishly beautiful) and “Ram On” (delicate and swoonworthy), it’s easy to ignore. But I have nothing but endless adoration for the rest of Ram. For one thing, it’s home to one of my absolute favorite McCartney songs ever (Beatles included), the plush, gorgeous and semi-carnal “Back Seat of My Car”. It’s simply off the charts on the swoon-meter (and majorly so on the mono version that’s included as part of the deluxe Archive edition of the album, listen here). “Smile Away” and “Monkberry Moon Delight” are batshit crazy, and I love songs where unhinged, old school rock ‘n roll Paul crashes into melodic and tuneful Paul ( more of that to come later). And throughout Ram, Paul cements his status as the KING OF CODA. “Back Seat”,”Long Haired Lady”, “Too Many People” and “Uncle Albert”, all end with completely new hooks and twists. I mean who on earth has ever, will ever do it as well ??? No one, that’s who.

MATTHEW: Ram (1971), 7/10: For me, Ram is neither front nor end loaded. It scatters its great songs throughout the album, making it easy to overlook the weaker ones. As with Cherries, there’s a full half hour of music on here that sustains countless listens (“Dear Boy,” “Uncle Albert,” “Heart of the Country,” and “Back Seat of My Car” among the highlights—yes, the latter is indeed gorgeous and romantic and freakin’ perfect)! And a riveting example of the melodic codas or outros that Paul does SO well. That means it (just) makes my favorite 10 Macca albums. But unlike Cherries, savoring that half-hour requires skipping tracks. Or doing the digital equivalent of what I did decades ago with a C-60 cassette, on which I put 11 of Cherries’ 13 tracks on one side, and seven of RAM’s 12 on the other. A killer hour.

Wild Life (1971)

HOPE: Wildlife (1971), 2/10: All that talk about this being one of the worst Macca albums of his career ? It’s true. I cannot comprehend why this was given the deluxe Archive treatment over London Town or Back to the Egg, two far superior records ( Archive Collection complaint # 1). Out of the ten songs on offer, I only listen to two with any regularity; stunning, bitter rainy day ballad “Dear Friend”, and gorgeously poptastic “Some People Never Know”. Both are superb Macca songs by any standard. The only possible way I could imagine enjoying the other 8 tracks would be if Paul and I were sitting on a porch on a breezy afternoon and he was strumming his acoustic guitar and singing them to me and me alone. That’s the only scenario in which “Bip Bop”, “Mumbo” or “I Am Your Singer” might sound “good” or at least marginally appealing ( doors open Paul, in case you want to try changing my mind).

MATTHEW: Wild Life (1971), 4/10: this has a pretty great Side 2, culminating in a pair of fine Macca songs, “Tomorrow” and “Dear Friend.” But then it is followed by another absurd piss-take closer—this time, mercifully short, but unfortunately a reprise of the painful track that opens the relatively weak Side 1 (ok, weak is being nice; its atrocious; I can never get through “Mumbo” without lunging for the skip button). I’d rate Side 1 a 1/10 and Side 2 a 7/10; so my final ranking splits the difference. That’s probably being too generous as, in the end, there are only two true keepers on here; and considering the plethora of perfect pop songs that Paul penned in the 70s, that’s pretty sad. 

The next two Wings albums, in my mind, are a pair—most obviously because they both came out the same year (1973), but also because they came to me on the opposing sides of a C-90 cassette about a year later (when I was 10, courtesy of Carol, an honorary teenage cousin—I called her parents uncle and auntie).  Band on the Run overshadowed Red Rose Speedway commercially and critically—and on my tape deck.  Carol had added “Live and Let Die” to the end of the BOTR side of the tape (for years I assumed it was actually the album’s final song).  007 is a hard act to follow; “Red Barn Door” ( aka “Big Barn Bed”) just didn’t cut it. So, nine times out of ten I didn’t flip the tape, but pressed rewind or put on something else.

Red Rose Speedway (1973)

HOPE: Red Rose Speedway (1973), 7/10: I have a real affection for this album and while it’s not entirely successful ( “Loup” is pure evil), it’s infinitely superior to Wild Life. And it’s home to another one of my all-time fave Macca songs, “Little Lamb Dragonfly” ( I will take as many epic hook-filled ballads from Paul as he can serve up). I confess I’m a complete sucker for Macca tracks where he employs his trademark improv quirk; all those “do-do-do’s” on The Beatles “Mother Nature’s Son”, “ooh-ooh-oohs” on “Back Seat” and “la-la-la’s” on “Little Lamb” and on and on. I even like the ham-fisted medley (“Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands of Love/Power Cut”) that closes this album which is clearly bits of other potential songs awkwardly sewn together. Plus there’s another wonderful “tuneful screamy” here,”Get On the Right Thing” that I can’t get enough of. The album is slick and slight but its hidden gems justifiably kick up the score for me. And though I know it was the thing back in the day in the UK to release stand alone singles that didn’t land on actual albums, I think the double A-side from ‘72 featuring  “Hi Hi Hi” and the candy-coated “C Moon” would’ve fit quite nicely on RRS, the latter in particular.

MATTHEW: Red Rose Speedway (1973), 6/10, lacks history for me, and although it has grown on me through many recent listens, I still find it rather flat. It has ups and downs, like its three predecessors, and there’s nothing awful on it. For some, it is probably as good as Ram. For me, it’s a notch or two above Wild Life but falls short of Ram. I understand why EMI opposed making this a double album; with the exception of one or two tracks (I rather like “Country Dreamer,” for example), the rejected numbers were even less memorable. It’s as if instead of developing unfinished songs further, Paul just kept writing more of them. The “Kiss/Dragonfly/Pigeon” trio in the middle of the album have particularly grown on me, but they need something more compelling around them. For example, with many of these Macca ‘70s albums, one wishes in retrospect that some of the between-album singles had been substituted for the weaker tracks. RRS, for example, had one big hit (“My Love”), but (as Hope says) imagine how much better it would have been had it included the earlier single “Hi Hi Hi” and its B-side “C Moon,” and the later single “Live and Let Die”!

Band On The Run (1973)

MATTHEW: Band on the Run, (1973), 10/10, on the other hand, deserves its accolades. It is one of those albums that simply works. The Paul & Wings ingredients are the same, but the formula is tweaked, and the result is finally the record that one imagines the previous four might have been. Play the late Beatles albums to someone who (somehow) has never even heard of them, then play BOTR and say it was the Fab Four’s 1973 record, they’d surely believe you (they might ask why only one Beatle sang, but musically they’d accept it).  As a result, it thus never ages. Like Abbey Road, it is immortal.  RRS sounds like the early 70s. BOTR sounds like a great rock/pop record. I admit I’m pretty much over “Jet,” which has become tiresome after a thousand listens; and the original UK album version without “Helen Wheels” is better. Nor is it my absolute most-loved Wings album (that’s still to come). But there’s surely no doubt that it’s the best album Paul made in the 70s (and one of his best two or three ever).

HOPE: Band On The Run (1973), 9/10: BOTR is like Sgt. Pepper to me. As in the first Beatle album I owned as a kid was Pepper and in turn BOTR was the first Macca solo album to find its way into my meager collection. I played it endlessly, front to back and it invariably became the gauge by which all other Macca records I got would be compared to. But as Pepper has gradually descended down the Beatle album-ranking lists over the years making way for the likes of Revolver, White Album (and lately Abbey Road), somewhere along the way the charms and virtues of other Macca albums, including Ram, came to knock BOTR off the top spot as far as frequency of listening and overall love for me. In fact, there are at least five other Macca albums from the ’70s I listen to with more frequency than BOTR. But my feelings are driven solely by over-familiarity, it is still a ridiculously wonderful pop album and is deserving of every accolade it gets! 

 I think the real stars of BOTR are not the piano pounders, but the gentler animals, specifically “No Words” and “Bluebird”; both are melodically stunning and I absolutely adore them to this day. Still, I have to offer a true confession that you ain’t gonna like Matthew… which is that the song I play the most is, okay, it’s freakin’ “Jet”. Ah Mater, I’ll never get tired of yer.
I do think though, that the overwhelming praise for BOTR did a bit of a disservice to what came both before and after it release-wise. For years critics held to the claim that every post-Beatle Macca release was significantly inferior to it. Patently untrue but they clung to that opinion for eons, cutting Paul no slack until the release of Tug of War in 1982. It still kind of irritates me, it felt like there was a concerted effort to drag him down, but I digress! BOTR deserves a near perfect score and if I were to offer one artifact to a space alien unfamiliar with solo Paul to investigate, it would unquestionably be this.

Venus And Mars (1975)

MATTHEW: The next three Wings albums are very much a trio that go together, all released between May ’75 and December ’76, with the third being a live album that promoted the previous two. For some reason, I don’t remember listening much to Venus and Mars and At The Speed of Sound at the time; but I still have my cassette tape of Wings Over America, which I played a lot. Looking back, that kind of makes sense, as WOA arguably renders its two predecessors redundant.

HOPE: Venus and Mars (1975), 6/10: Nerd fact, when iPods were launched in the early ’00s, you could get the back of the device engraved with whatever personal wording you wanted. I chose the lyric “Venus and Mars are alright tonight” because what the hell else was I going to do; like christening a boat, I had to bestow my new precious, incredible life-altering device with an equally meaningful “name”. V&M is not my favorite Macca album but I do find a lot of it to be exceedingly embraceable. But bad news first. “Rock Show” is a bit silly, not the tune but it’s genuinely cringeworthy lyrical content, “behind the stacks you glimpse an axe” being a particularly egregious line. I think Paul was aware that he wasn’t perceived to be as hard and tough soundwise as The Who or Led Zeppelin at that time but still reeeeally fancied the idea of the proverbial “kids” thinking Wings ROCKED ( of course by the time they did officially, convincingly ROCK on 1979’s Back to the Egg the kids could not have cared less).

When I was kid I loved kitschy retro “You Gave Me the Answer” which I find completely insufferable now (I would actually play act Paul and I dancing to it which is as humiliating as it sounds ). I do adore “Love in Song”, think it’s a total sleeper, so handsome and full of rain. And the sad soul of “Treat Her Gently-Lonely Old People” qualifies it as a keeper as well. At the end of the day though  “Listen To What The Man Said” is the indisputable star of V&M, just an unimpeachable melody and production (and it still has the ability to make me sigh out loud). If I’d have been rating this album as a kid I would’ve awarded it a 10/10 solely because of the stickers and poster it came with. That stuff was as important to me as the actual record. I immediately slapped the stickers on my school notebooks and while they served as a nice compliment to my masterfully drawn ELO logos, I feel an insane, undeniable twinge of regret that I no longer have them.

MATTHEW: Venus and Mars (1975), 6/10: I see why “Rock Show” flopped as a single; it doesn’t rock well, it lacks the charm that imbues so many Macca songs, and it wears thin very fast. I suspect it put me off the album back in the day. But even now, Venus and Mars strikes me as a very mixed bag. I like “Love in Song” and “Letting Go,” but there is simply nothing great here until the end.  The closing cluster is REALLY great (“Call Me Back Again,” “Listen to What the Man Said,” and “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People”; I’m going to pretend the “Crossroads” TV theme was not tacked absurdly on the very end). But those fine 15 minutes remind me of how disappointing the rest of the album is. And to return to my point earlier about between-album singles: “Junior’s Farm” would have made a great substitute for “Rock Show”!

Wings At The Speed Of Sound (1976)

MATTHEW: At the Speed of Sound (1976), 7/10: For decades, in my mind this was as good or bad as Venus and Mars, but I recently realized how much better Speed of Sound is. For starters, Sides A and B kick off with great singles—“Let ‘Em In” and “Silly Love Songs.” The whole of Side A stands up well. It closes with a nice pair of mellow Macca ditties. And as for Paul’s controversial inclusion of songs written and sung by other Wings band members: when it works, it works really well (“The Note You Never Wrote” is excellent, perhaps the best Denny Laine song on any Wings album); but when it bombs, it bombs big (“Cook of the House,” cute enough as a B-side, as it was to “Silly Love Songs,” where it should have remained).

HOPE: At the Speed of Sound (1976), 7/10: I’m pretty sure this is the first Macca album I bought in real time. And to be frank I wasn’t sure what to make of it with its overly democratic song distribution. Which meant it didn’t rank highly for me in the beginning because all I wanted was Paul. But like you Matthew, as years went by I came to love it especially the cryptic and cloudy “The Note You Never Wrote”. There is something very overcast and gloomy about the whole record that appeals to me, I feel the presence of a very particular sonic vibe on tracks like “San Ferry Anne”,”Time to Hide” and “Wino Junko”, as well as the two stellar singles “Let ‘Em In” and “Silly Love Songs”. And I think “Beware My Love” is a total powerhouse, one of his best ever rockers, I mean the construction of it is just so clever. And Paul’s vocals on those “I must be wrong’s” are absolutely killer! All hail screamy Paul.

Wings Over America (1976)

HOPE: Wings Over America (1976), 5/10:  While WOA is generally fun I have problems with how the setlist is arranged as well as some of the actual choices. There are at least a dozen tracks from post-Beatle Paul that are more worthy of inclusion than the dreaded “You Gave Me the Answer”,“Richard Cory” or “Spirits of Ancient Egypt”. Having said that, the version of “Listen To What the Man Said” on offer here is absolutely smokin’ and I especially love when Paul introduces the Thaddeus Richard sax solo with a “take it away Thaddeus”. And what is there to say about “Maybe I’m Amazed” at this point, I mean what an absolutely spectacular vocal good lord. 

MATTHEW: Wings Over America (1976), 7/10: comparing live albums to studio ones is always an apples/oranges challenge (and a cliché to point that out!), especially a triple live album to single studio ones. But this one is so closely tied to specific studio albums that the task is made easier. Although it came out of the summer 1976 tour that promoted Speed of Sound, WOA overwhelmingly favors Venus and Mars above all others. If we count the V&M title tracks as one, and we discount the 1-minute “Crossroads” outro, WOA includes almost all of V&M, nine out of it’s 11 songs. In contrast, there are only 4 songs from Speed of Sound (and 5 each from Band on the Run and from the Beatles catalogue). But here’s the thing: the live versions of the V&M tracks are better than the original ones; even the dodgy “Rock Show” is elevated by being in a medley with “Jet.”  The use of songs written and sung by band members other than Paul somehow works better live than in the studio. And there are just the right number of Beatles songs. Ok, the result is not amazing (don’t hate me if I prefer the other big hit live album from 1976, Frampton Comes Alive!), but it is pretty damn good.  My old cassette got played hard (admittedly it was an Indonesian bootleg with the tracks muddled up and tracks like “Answer” and “Egypt” missing), and I’ve gotten my money’s worth from the 2013 Archive Collection CDs too.

London Town (1977)

MATTHEW: We both recognize how much our—and anybody’s—appraisal of an album is tied to our personal history with it, to deep-rooted emotional connections and associations that interfere with our vain attempts to be objective.  Well, that factor plays more of a role with my feelings—yes, FEELINGS—about the last two Wings albums than with any other albums in the entire Macca post-Beatles catalogue.  London Town came out right after my 14^th birthday; I was 15 the summer that Back to the Egg was released. I bought them both right away, flogged them without mercy, and absolutely adored them. I still do. They are, hands down, my favorite Wings LPs and my favorite Macca LPs. I listen to them now, trying to understand why they have reputations as reflecting the decline and collapse of Wings, why Paul has slighted them by not releasing Archive Collection editions, and I just can’t. It makes no sense. They are full of energy and creativity and melody and so many masterful pop music moments. Why, Paul, why?  These records are so freakin’ GOOD!

HOPE: London Town (1978), 7/10: I think LT is a stone-cold crazy record. It’s the most disparate bunch of songs Paul had ever assembled on any of his solo albums to that point and despite the title has no discernible theme. The weirdest and most disturbing thing is that the song I think most about on this album, find myself mindlessly singing to myself most often, isn’t even one of the genuinely good tracks, it’s “Cafe on the Left Bank”, an insidious piece of filler I refuse to accept that I like. But then again that’s part of why I’m so completely charmed by LT as a whole. It’s like a bunch of TV commercials gathered together masquerading as a pop album. All that isn’t to suggest that it isn’t home to some stunners. “With a Little Luck” remains eternally gorgeous and I love “Don’t Let It Bring You Down” with its dark melody tied to what’s meant to be an uplifting lyric…but cherry-picking songs does LT a disservice. These songs quite literally need each other, 90 % of them can’t stand up on their own. No, LT sounds best when listened to in sequence, each song leaning against the other like the bunch of sloppy drunks they are. Please Paul, time to top up and let the endearingly problematic LT into the Archive room ( Matthew and I will get the door).

MATTHEW: London Town (1978), 10/10: I am incapable of being objective about this album. It is so deeply familiar, and every single track just right and in the right place. Giving it less than a 10/10 would just be pandering to you, Hope, or (God forbid) to the cretinous critics who trashed it with knee-jerk derision just because it was made by happy Paul not angsty John. Like Speed of Sound, it’s two sides begin with smooth, well-crafted, comfort-food singles (the title track and “With a Little Luck”). But LT is better than Speed of Sound for being all-Paul (9 tracks) or Paul co-writing with Denny Laine (5): tuneful, inventive, varied in style but not overly so, quirky but not whacky. It isn’t even missing a non-album single (“Mull of Kintyre” stay where you are). Intellectually I can accept that Band on the Run is better, but if I could only take one Macca album to the proverbial desert island, it would be this one.

Back to the Egg (1979)

HOPE: Back to the Egg (1979), 10/10: Egg is a loud, beautiful, blazing down the highway, mess of an album and I think it’s the most criminally underrated release of Paul’s post-Beatle career: the catalogue’s true sleeper. With its fat riffs, sludgy chords and throat-shredding vocals, Egg is most certainly Satan’s favorite post-Beatle Macca album. Okay, let’s just call it what it is, PAUL’s METAL ALBUM. Out of all the grungy noise-makers, I feel most worshipful toward the maniacal “Spin It On” and Cheap Trick-ish “So Glad To See You Here“. But I also love the dirty power pop of “Getting Closer”, which I think is one of his most underrated singles. And let’s talk about “Arrow Through Me”, one of the all-time greatest McCartney songs ever ever ever, a sublimely melodic lament and deep catalog dark horse which can never be exalted and appreciated enough. That hook is positively sublime.

The album was the recipient of some savage reviews which has led to Paul distancing himself from it, talking it down, and most significantly from a hardcore fan perspective (as of this writing) depriving it of the deluxe treatment within the acclaimed and exhaustive Archive series (wishing you took us up on that suggestion of a drinking game now right?). In what universe is Wild Life more deserving of the fancy pants treatment than Egg? Egg is loud, lyrically cartoonish, romantic, weird, occasionally somber and staggeringly melodic; what’s not to love ? It’s one big confusedly-beautiful piece of noise. And for the record, I loved the freestanding single that came out just prior to Egg featuring the lush disco-lite “Goodnight Tonight” as well as it’s perky b-side “Daytime Nighttime Suffering”. I know Paul didn’t feel they fit the vibe on Egg and hence didn’t include them on the finished album but honestly I don’t think anything is “missing” from Egg as a result of their exclusion. To be frank, at the time, it didn’t occur to me that they could or should have been on there. I was just happy there were multiple new Paul records to get! And, added bonus, Egg is also the ideal gauge for verifying whether someone shares the same worldview as you and is ultimately worthy of your lifelong friendship.

In the late ‘80s, I had a job at the CBGB Record Canteen, the decidedly sleazy and noisy shop located next door to the club. One day, my boss asked me to help train a new girl they’d hired. She and I were both very young and cynical and so circled around each other music nerd style, tentatively dropping band names and monitoring one another’s reactions. We somehow got on the subject of McCartney ( though to be honest, I’m sure I brought him up), and without prompting, she said that she particularly loved Egg. That was it. Egg was the magic sign that let me know she was cool and we are still friends to this day. It is truly magical.

MATTHEW: Back to the Egg (1979), 9/10: The fact that you & I agree on this, Hope, but Paul and his critics apparently don’t, logically makes us wrong. But here’s the thing: we’re not! Because this is a weird and wonderful Wings concept-album experiment that simply works; despite being far more varied and quirky than London Town, Egg has a momentum and energy that holds it all together and carries it breathlessly through its 42 minutes as if it were half the length. It’s nod to the punk/New Wave movement that was peaking at the time is just right: neither forced nor half-hearted, it infuses the album with a hard rocking edge that no other Macca album before or since matched. As Hope notes here (and in a stirring ode to the album elsewhere on Picking Up Rocks), some of Egg is HEAVY. But the hints of metal don’t mean it skimps on melody. The riffs are hefty but buoyant, driving multiple singalong moments. “Getting Closer” and “Arrow Through Me” are primo Paul pop singles; the bass line and hook in “Arrow” are like a shot of bliss right to the heart.

Having gushed thus, I can’t resist one caveat. Macca albums almost always beg to be resequenced or edited, as there were usually non-album singles far better than his dodgier album tracks. Exceptions are Band on the Run (the UK version is perfect) and London Town (for me, if not for many others, perfect as is). But Egg is not an exception, as it’s sessions also birthed non-album Top 5 (US & UK) hit single “Goodnight Tonight” and it’s also excellent B-side, “Daytime Nightime Suffering.” In 1980 I made a tape with both those on the album instead of the non-songs “Reception” and “The Broadcast.” Ok, I still listened to the original version more. But my edited version is pretty great. (In case you’re curious, “Tonight” follows “Arrow,”  starting Side B, and the Grammy-winning “Rockestra” closes the album.) By the way, I also think Egg suffered from a record label change and competition with back catalogue: in the US, Paul switched from Capitol to Columbia after LT; Capitol’s response was to release Wings Greatest, which was packed with hits, five of them previously unavailable on an album. It thus competed with Egg, released only six months later. (Elton John’s Blue Moves suffered similar competition for the same reason; that’s the last plug for my book, I promise.)

End of Part 1

Coming in Part 2, we examine Paul’s ’80s discography. You might wanna put on a seatbelt. Ready? Read it here

UPDATE!

Did you know this four-part Macca breakdown is a living document? It totally is! Which means whenever Paul releases something new, we write about it here! To keep things neat and chronological, we add the new content to the end of Part Four ( See here).

Paul’s first new album in six years The Boys of Dungeon Lane is being released on May 26, 2026 and yes, we will be writing about it here once it is officially out in the world (And hey, we will also be sharing feelings about the Man on the Run documentary at that same time. Do we have feelings? Hell yes we do). If any of this interests you, please give us a follow or come back and visit us that last week of May! Get on the right thing…