C/D Paul McCartney Solo

"Jet"

"Junior's Farm"

"Listen to What the Man Said"

otherwise, it's shit.

I like 'jet' and the start of 'C moon' and I like 'maybe I'm amazed' and 'no more lonely nights' and 'silly love songs'!!!

It's an odd collection because it is missing some good bits ("Maybe I'm Amazed" "Helen Wheels" "Take it Away"). I'll probably just end up getting his lps eventually, like I usually do with artist I admire (sigh).

-- Alex in NYC

There's no difference!! Paul was the, what do you say, "auteur"...

Paul McCartney is one of those artists that I bet there's a potential CD-R or two's worth of stuff I would absolutely adore - really he needs to be a lot more obscure than he is, so some loving curator could trawl through his albums and B-Sides and make some selections. As it is his commercial/historical clout means the available compilations take the path of least resistance a bit too much.

Beatles beat the rest hands-down - that much we know. Beyond that, RJG is probably right. But the best post-Beatles Macca I know is VENUS & MARS - a bit of a 70s masterpiece. TUG OF WAR also has great stuff; his work with Costello has its moments; and so does the FLAMING PIE LP (1997).

I did the CDR thing with McCartneys back catalogue a year or two ago and managed to get 4 really good chronological comps. I would guess that a lot of people would like much of this stuff if they sat down and listened to it. McCartney solo though is almost dismissed and I don't think that the Wingspan comp kicked off the resurection of the post Beatles stuff that I or probably he expected.

What I really can't get over is the fact that Paul himself doesn't realise how rubbish he is nowadays. Wake up!

He really seems to think his solo work is comparable to the Beatles. It's not. Maybe it was always going to be a dissapointment by the Beatles standards, but by _any_ standards it's awful. And still he doesn't get it.

Maybe if we all stood outside his house with placards saying "Paul, your music is now shit!" he'd get it. But I doubt it. He'd probably think "Hey those guys have spelled 'hit' wrong".

Dud.

Favourite videos: Goodnight Tonight, Pipes of Peace.

Also C: "Jet," "Too Many People," "Let Me Roll It," "Spin It On" (Wings go thrash!)

good old dad.

I don't think I've even seen a copy of WINGSPAN in a record store.

I reminded my dad about the 'all the best'-for-christmas thing on friday night when we were in a car. he didn't really remember. he said "and why did she [my mum] buy you that instead?" and I told him again and he understood. then he asked "and why did you want 'faith'??" and the answer was...I was six...I had seen it advertised on television.

Yes, COMING UP is great.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0316860328/qid=1045408789/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_3_1/026-5101041-0610836

It's an intimate scrapbook.

Capitals are the new italics.

If that's not a special offer I'll EAT MY HAT. Note controversial opinion expressed herein: the best solo Paul McCartney work did not appear until FLOWERS IN THE DIRT. Before anyone rushes to order it, please note that it appears to be two-dimensional.

I used to listen to my mum's copy of "All The Best" all the time. On vinyl, too.

amazing.

Love Coming Up and C Moon too.

And then I wake up.

I had "All the best" on CD for many years, never listened to it, but I'll agree that "Venus and Mars" is a neglected classic, as is the first McCartney LP, very primitive but rather homely.

I had dreams about WINGSPAN last night. or it featured in my last night's dreams. I think it was really big and cost one hundred and twenty-five pounds or twenty-five pounds and was sealed in plastic and didn't tell me the tracklisting.

record shopping w/ allyC, yesterday, we saw many mccartney/wings albums. WINGS AT THE SPEED OF SOUND looked OK but was on cassette and three pounds fifty.

Wonderful! Geez.
I ran across Ringo ( and Barbara) one afternoon and shook his hand. I only said "Thank you for the music". His "Oh, you're very welcome!" in that voice ...one of the highlights of my life, I'll tell ya.

Darren Hayman does a commentary for 'McCartney' (1970):
https://www.patreon.com/posts/commentary-on-by-122430445 (free)
I enjoyed

Thanks! Made a nice bathtime listen

It would have been funny in the Cut Worms encounter if, on hearing they were playing I Need You he instead said "Oh right. I never really rated anything George did before Something" like he kind of does in Anthology as I recall

It’s possible he doesn’t remember the song. Eric Clapton was reportedly surprised when Paul had no memory of “All Things Must Pass” when it was suggested to him for the memorial concert (and which he did indeed perform).

I don't blame him.

Maybe he still has vivid memories of the bitter cold the day they filmed the sequence for Help!

Recent ILM macca activity has been the prompt to get me to finally check out Off the Ground, after eons of assuming it was probably pretty all right, based solely on "Hope of Deliverance." But if you ask me... It stinks! Really what you might be afraid an early 90s Paul record would be like. The sound is passably warm and organic but the songs feel soooo forced and uninspired.

Does it have any champions here? I searched a bit but it seems like it's barely ever been discussed at all.

I like "Hope of Deliverance" more than I should.

It's a good song! Bops along pleasantly. The first half of the chorus ("I don't know") adds a lot of interest.

"Get Out of My Way" is all right if you can tolerate studio-boogie of this vintage, and Paul's vocal, which has suddenly, painfully hit its limits in terms of convincingly "rocking."

"Winedark Open Sea" also kinda nice, but the self-crib from "Lazy Dynamite" is really distracting.

Shameless lift from Homer, too, I guess.

Some of the best Off the Ground stuff is on The Complete Works (also 1993), which adds a second disc of B-sides and offcuts. "Long Leather Coat" has a dollop of Merseybeat about it and a fun lyric, "Kicked Around No More" is (sorta) Paul does 90s lounge revival and "Style Style" is excellent power pop. All of those at the very least deserved to be on the album.

As for the album proper, "Hope of Deliverance" is a gold-plated classic to me. Top Macca. I really like the two Costello-aided tracks, "The Lovers That Never Were" (their earlier demo is better though) and especially "Mistress and Maid". I also like "Golden Earth Girl" too, though you get the impression McCartney could write piano ballads like that in his sleep. I think I like the album overall about as much as Flaming Pie; the latter is seen as the great return to form but its conservatism bothers me.

oh I didn't mention "Biker Like an Icon". That's fuckin ace, sorry.

I enjoy a few cuts. Agree on Golden Earth Girl and the two McManus collabs. And there were some nice b-sides. But Biker Like an Icon I always thought was lame.

I saw a cat with a machine in his brain/the man who fed him said he didn't feel any pain

"Winedark Open Sea" is pretty nice. IIRC it's the one track from the LP that made it on to Pure McCartney, albeit the box set edition. Prior to that, Greg Kot (who championed the album as underrated) singled it out as a highlight. "Long Leather Coat" mentioned above is a favorite B-side. "Hope of Deliverance" was a nice single. But that's about all I'd go back to, the rest does nothing for me.

And I agree, the earlier demo (rather the 1987 acoustic demo with Elvis Costello) of "The Lovers That Never Were" is much better, and I even consider it one of THE highlights of his '80s work. Geoff Emerick mixed (or produced?) something like a polished, finished version for the Flowers in the Dirt box set. I think it was a hidden track and it's not radically different, it's just cleaned up with a few additional touches to make it presentable as a finished album track rather than a raw demo. That's the definitive version for me, but the 1987 recording that's more easily obtainable is close enough.

The tunes are boring. I’d put up with the Jools Holland show-ready production but the songs are not there, unusually.

Yeah, on another listen I do think it's as simple as his usual gift for melodies and hooks failing him. I understand the comparison to Flaming Pie, but imo the quality of the material there (on average) is way way higher.

I suppose I'd call the album tuneful but it's just so damn generic. Like the title tune is catchy, it's got hooks, but they're so, so bland, like something you'd expect for a network sitcom or a nationwide commercial jingle. Again, there's a pair of cuts and a B-side that I kind of enjoy, but the two album cuts are really B-side level work as well, not something that should be a highlight of an album, much less the lead single.

I think there's an increased seriousness to his writing that maybe starts with Flaming Pie? With songs like "Little Willow?" That gets more pronounced when you get to Chaos and Creation.

I think Linda getting sick then passing away from breast cancer (same reason why Paul's mother died when he was only 14) really impacted his work. It's not quite so clear cut with Flaming Pie but IIRC he's suggested it was on his mind when he was putting together the album and promoting it. "Little Willow" wasn't inspired by Linda's illness - it was written in 1995 in response to Maureen Cox (Ringo's first wife) dying from cancer - but this would've been the same year Linda was diagnosed with cancer, and the video they later made for it explicitly deals with a dramatized cancer diagnosis. "Calico Skies" was originally recorded in 1992 and I think that's the same take they used for the album, but all the love songs chosen for the album do feel poignant and even have a bit of unease to them. (For the promotional video, there's quite a bit of footage where he's singing it for Linda, who simply sits there quietly.)

When she does pass away, the next time he performs at all is a full year later, and it's in the studio for Run Devil Run which he said was a conscious attempt to move past his grief. It's still by far my favorite album from Paul - the fact that it's nearly all covers doesn't matter, it's just wonderful hearing him find a way out through the things that gave him so much comfort in the past. I'm not a fan of the next album that came two years later - especially with "Freedom" shoved in there at the last minute - but that's where he put together his present band, and they're all over Memory Almost Full, where he's at peace confronting his past and mortality. (The album sessions actually straddle those for Chaos and Creation.)

"Cosmically Conscious" reminds me of Oranges & Lemons

Kinda cool!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4Jnl4jERqE

That is cool! I guess Paul never asked Ginger Baker about this because he's credited on the record!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY7G0SgEw1Y

He opened his Santa Barbara Bowl show with Help (!) and Coming Up.

https://variety.com/2025/music/concert-reviews/paul-mccartney-tour-santa-barbara-bowl-setlist-help-review-1236533062/

Seeing him in Vegas next weekend with my daughter. Pretty stoked about this setlist!

Paul has a couple quotes in The NY Times article about Carol Kaye of the Wrecking Crew, who is being inducted into rn roll hall of fame

McCartney took notice: “After hearing ‘Pet Sounds,’ I played around with that kind of thing on Sgt. Pepper,” he said, “where I was playing my Rickenbacker bass and with a pick. It was people like Carol and James Jamerson who turned me on to this melodic approach and I went to town — that really changed my style.”

Memory Almost Full is such a beautiful album! I always think about it with affection, but when I actually listen, just how good it really is still surprises me.

It reminds me of Abbey Road, emotionally speaking -- that mixture of joy and awful sadness...

It's really good. I saw some people (Steven Hyden I think but there are others) who knocked the album as being overrated, but I heartily disagree. I'm not the biggest fan of McCartney's solo work, but Memory Almost Full is one of his best, for me his strongest collection of originals since Band on the Run.

It's a good'un, and if anything I feel has been underrated, in the shadow of Chaos and Creation which I like slightly less anyway.

For sure! It's probably the Beatles record I've listened to the most apart from Revolver, in the past 20 years.

I like that it's just messy and fun and full of hooks, not some Rubin/Lanois/Godrich-assisted attempt at a stately comeback. And it's kind of a weird racket too. It feels like the album Elvis Costello spent the past 25 years failing to make.

MAF is def one of my favorite albums of his. Got a lot of backlash for the mastering which is really hot but the songwriting and performances are some of the best of his career. That and Chaos are really a great one-two punch.

where are these alleged hooks ...

mr bellamy? nod your head?

dance tonight is insanely catchy (and my least favorite thing on the record)

"Ever Present Past" is one of his best songs: whimsical and optimistic without being gormless.

As much as I adore McCartney and still perk up a bit when he does something/anything, the slew of records he released around this time all began to blur together after CaCitBY.

Longest he's gone without releasing an album now since Please Please Me.

New/Egypt Stations/McCartney 3 are all a bit of a blur to me (in so far as I sometimes can't remember which album had which songs on it) but they're all fairly good, considering this is the time when his voice started to go

Egypt Station and McCartney III are both in my McCartney top ten! They sprang to mind when Chuck called MAF "messy and fun and full of hooks".

I like Chaos and Creation too, but the day I read that Nigel Godrich turned away half the Memory Almost Full material on grounds of not being good enough was the day I lost interest in Godrich. I guess he won a little back with Is This the Life We Really Want, but... nah, not really, Waters would have made an ass-kicking record with *anyone*.

I think New and Egypt Station are both good, although ES has that terrible "Fuh You" song. Had hopes for McCartney III, but...

Would love to hear his It's a Wonderful Life songs, but looks like that's not happening anytime soon.

Fuh You and the horrible Kanye / Rhianna collaboration, just weird aberrations in a string of otherwise pretty good stuff

Chaos and Memory are the peaks in his post-2000 era (which I guess is distinguished by an excellent and stable band that's accompanied him on every tour). The sessions for Memory actually straddle those for Chaos which I never found surprising because the songs do sound apiece with each other even if they were produced differently. (And even with a different producer, if you mix the songs together, they still cohere very well with each other.)

I like that Godrich played (hard) editor with McCartney. The result was one of my favorite albums of the '00s. Remember MAF being a big disappointment sonically and song-wise on first listen. I need to revisit.

I've never thoguht to give Macca's stuff a proper listen beyond Tug Of War, but I've got C&C on now and it's really really nice

tell me to press!