THE MUSIC NEVER REALLY DIED PART ONE - Paul McCartney's Wings take flight

Something of a departure here because I'm going to blog about music - I've always been a huge Beatle fan, an obsessive even. I buy anything that bears the Beatles legends and I've got all the solo stuff, even the bad ones, by all four of the guys. Hey, the way I figure - it's not fair to leave Ringo out.

My youngest daughter, Georgina Harriet was born the month and year George Harrison passed and she's named after him. My boxer dog is called Lennon John Paul George Ringo Dobbs and I often wear my Yellow Submarine pyjamas. I've seen Macca in concert twice, once in an excellent Wembley show in 1989 and then again in the not so good, over expensive 2002 tour which was basically a Beatle tribute show with a real Beatle.

I've lived and breathed Beatles for a great many years and I wan't even born when they started out. In fact by the time I drew my first, 1965, over half of the Beatles time as a band was over. I first got into the band in the early 80's after I bought my father an old Beatles LP, A Hard Day's Night. I listened to that album, something connected with me in a way music never has before and since, and I kept the album and went out and got the rest. Since then it's been a frantic search to get everything in any way Beatle related. My bootleg CD's alone are in double figures.

In short I'm a fanatic.

So I've decided to do several Beatle - centric posts over the next few weeks looking at the solo years. So firstly I'll start with the Mighty Macca, a man who is a paradox - someone who can write something as wonderfully simplistic and beautiful as Yesterday and then dash off shallow almost infantile ditties like Ebony and Ivory, a man who can create the ultimate pop rock of Hey Jude and Helter Skelter and then inflict the disco influenced Dress me up as a Robber and What you Doing on the world.

I believe that a lot of MACCA solo stuff is criminally under-valued (Even by the great man himself it seems. His 1997 autobiography dealt with his Beatles music and ignored his Wings/Solo stuff) and well worth seeking out and that, many years from now music historians will be unable to understand why McCartney has been so out of fashion for so many years.

The first Macca solo album was McCartney which upon original release, coming on the tails of the final Beatle LP Let it Be, was not very well received. It was a wildly experimental album with Macca becoming a one man band and playing all the instruments himself with a little help from Linda on Harmonies. These days though the music press are kinder to the album and the NME recently called it the first garage album.

I've always loved this Album (Lennon called it trash in his famous Rolling Stone interview) and am gladdened that it's finally seen for what it is - a truly great, barking mad little album. Stand out tracks are Maybe I'm Amazed, Junk, That would be something and Teddy Boy which all reveal a late Beatle sounding McCartney doodling in music.

This was followed in 1971 by Ram which was a masterpiece and stands up today as an amazingly good British rock album. The album is credited to Paul and Linda McCartney and later with Dennie Lane's they would be the nucleus of Wings. It's difficult to pick any stand out tracks as the whole thing works beautifully together.

The album contained the song Too Many People with lines like, "too many people, going underground" which so incensed Lennon. The inside cover montage also showed a picture of two beetles copulating as if Macca was saying, someone screwed someone in the Beatles and it wasn't him.

Ram is without doubt, though a classic album and is among the best Beatles solo work.

In August of that year McCartney formed Wings and released the album Wild Life. Recorded in a week, because McCartney had heard Dylan had just done that, the album was McCartney's weakest up to that point. One notable song, Dear Friend again angered Lennon who once more felt the song was about him but Macca insisted later that it was actually Linda's Ex that was the subject. The 1993 CD issue added several bonus tracks including Give Ireland Back to the Irish and Mary Had a Little Lamb. But even with the added value the album will only really appeal to real fans.


This was followed up Red Rose Speedway which was a massive improvement and also spawned the hit single, My Love as well as some of Macca's best rocking since Ram and a clutch of lovely ballads that sound like White album ere Beatles.


The album was originally intended to be a double but after the poor commercial success of Wild Life it was considered prudent to make a single album instead.

Red Rose is one of those albums that's better than it's reputation suggests and it grows on you after a while. I love the songs Little Lamb Dragonfly and almost jazzy Single Pigeon and the medley works really well too. My Love of course was a wonderful, if over produced, song that Macca still plays in concert today.

Red Rose Speedway is a brilliant album that rewards familiarity and even now, hundreds if listens in, I'm still finding stuff to dig about it.

The follow up, the fifth album since the Beatles, was a true crowd pleasing, stadium filling, award winning masterpiece that went by the name of Band on the Run.

The album, recorded under the most trying of times, is a brilliant, rocking, super smooth set of songs that propelled Wings into the stratosphere and made even the most ardent Macca knocker sit up and take notice. Lennon, always McCartney's harshest critic, even called the album brilliant.



The title track is a mini rock opera and leads into the glam rock of Jet before easing off the peddle to give us the wonderful Bluebird. Has ever an album started so strongly? The rest of the tracks were all uniformly brilliant with Let Me Roll It, a particular hard blues number that positively cooks.

The album sold tons, won a Grammy and put Paul McCartney back on the map as a performer. To a lot of critics he was finally showing the talents he'd possessed as one of the Beatles. If there was one problem with the album is that it overshadowed the hidden wonders of the previous LP's. Even to this day it towers over his other work but there is so much more to Paul McCartney's than Band on the Run.

By now Wings were the biggest band in the world (Can you think of anyone else who has been in the world's biggest band - twice?) and they ploughed into a successful world wide tour in which they swept the world beneath their feet. But still,even at Wings peak, McCartney was always being questioned about a Beatles reunion.

The next album was the amazing Venus and Mars which is another of those albums that should be better remembered than it is. It's not as polished as Band on the Run but it's a classic all the same and rocks brilliantly and the electronic rock of Feel Like Letting Go is a very close relation to Band on the Runs' Let me Roll it.

The critics were mixed in their opinions and most stated that fact that the album contained the Crossroads (a tedious British soap opera) theme proved that McCartney, as Lennon claimed, was middle of the road. But they were missing the point - the Crossroads theme is tagged onto the end of a sad but lovely song about Lonely old People. Macca had put the theme there as punctuation to the point in the song before it but the critics, perhaps wanting to bash McCartney for having the audacity to find massive success after The Beatles, ignored this point.

"a good friend of mine, studies the stars. Showed me a sign, Venus and Mars are all right tonight.'

Venus and Mars is something more than all right.

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Wings at the Speed of Sound followed.

This was a case of McCartney in can't be arse mode and this is another weak album. A couple of songs rock - Beware my Love for instance but too much of the album is bland and giving out songs to other members of the band, when the only real singer is McCartney himself, offered not very good value for the fan. And Linda's Cook of the House sounds like the theme song to a cookery show.

On the plus points it did contain Let Em In and Silly Love Songs.

Of all McCartney's Wings albums this is my least favoured.

The Next proper album was a return to form.

After a massive selling triple live album McCartney gave us another masterpiece of an album which is again not as revered as it should be. London Town is a great jazz/rock album that never fails to delight and contains the brilliantly optimistic With a Little Luck.


The first three songs all merge into one another and each compliments perfectly the one that went before. The album also contains the commanding smooth rock of With a Little Luck and the anger of I've had enough. Add to all that the nuttiness of Morse Moose and the Grey Goose and a good time will be had be all. The reissue CD also contains the rocking Girlschool and the massively successful Mull of Kyntyre. I once hated the latter song but I kind of dig it now.


In the second part of this post I will look at Wings being brought back to ground and McCartney's second solo stage. An interesting period of flops, wild experiments and some brilliance.