Paul McCartney live in Dublin Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Paul McCartney plays his first New Zealand show in 24 years this Saturday at Auckland's Mt Smart Stadium.
Given that I haven’t really loved anything the ex-Beatle has done since 1989’s Elvis Costello collaboration Flowers In The Dirt, I was surprised by just how excited I found myself at this news, and how immediately I decided I had to attend.
Growing up, the only Beatles record we had in the house was the ‘leather look’ compilation LP Beatles Love Songs. I assumed at the time that the Beatles were a bit like Bread, whose The Sound Of Bread was another household fave, along with Don McLean, Roberta Flack and other middle-of-the-road reliables.
Naturally, it was a bit of a shock to me when I first heard ‘Helter Skelter’ and ‘Why Don’t We Do It In The Road?’
Photo: wikimedia commons/Wikiportrait - Eddie Janssens - - 1350317931.jpg
And then, somehow, I got wind of the fact that Paul McCartney was just not cool.
John Lennon was cool. John Lennon was dead, for starters. He was viewed, through the prism of time, as counter-cultural, possessor of a revolutionary spirit, which he expressed by staying in bed and making fatuous proclamations like ‘Give Peace A Chance’ and ‘All You Need Is Love’.
He was the druggy, psychedelic, experimental Beatle. The difference from Macca was exemplified by his ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’, the B-side to McCartney’s jaunty, twee ‘Penny Lane’.
George was the mystic, the ‘Quiet Beatle’, given to the Zen proclamations of ‘All Things Must Pass’ and a fondness for ragas and sitars - and a Traveling Wilbury to boot, alongside fellow icons Bob Dylan and Roy Orbison (and the slightly less iconic Jeff Lynne and Tom Petty).
And Ringo – well, Ringo was the voice of Thomas the Tank Engine, so he kinda gets a free pass.
But still, with the deification of John, so came the demonization of Paul. You had to choose. You had to take sides. You either had to choose the edgy, leering, sneering John, or the twee, mumsy, doe-eyed Paul.
I loved Lennon’s tough, intense, primal screaming solo debut Plastic Ono Band, and at least the first half of the subsequent Imagine.
One time band mate Sir Paul McCartney was the one to induct Ringo Starr into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Photo: AFP
By contrast, Macca’s first two post-Beatles releases, the home-spun and self-performed McCartney, and subsequent Ram (credited to Paul & Linda McCartney) seemed rather underwhelming.
I was under the spell of the idea of John the rebel, and with that came the tacit rejection of Paul, the wholesome family entertainer.
And then - slowly, surely, in the fullness of time - came an understanding of what McCartney had achieved.
He'd managed to refocus his life and career from being a quarter of the greatest cultural phenomenon of the 60s, to give himself a platform to continue to make great and interesting music throughout the 70s, but also to build a relatively normal family life.
Lennon, by contrast, had taken himself off on a ‘lost weekend’ which lasted several years, boozing and schmoozing with Harry Nilsson, Keith Moon, May Pang and others before settling into the domestic bliss chronicled on his final album, Double Fantasy.
McCartney’s huge and generous musicality had found a way to include even his musically limited photographer wife Linda on such low-key, off-beat releases as Ram and Wings’ Wild Life.
Listen to the way he creates a platform for her thin, reedy voice on Ram’s ‘Long Haired Lady’, or their distinctive harmonies on that album’s ‘Too Many People’, or the gorgeous standalone single ‘Another Day’.
By my reckoning, Macca has made at least half a dozen post-Beatles records that bear comparison to the work of his former, rather perfect band;
6. McCartney
The low-key, intriguing and thoroughly delightful solo debut from 1970. Try ‘Momma Miss America’s octave popping, groovy bass, the winsome folk-pop of ‘Every Night’, ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’s killer vocal and declaration of love, the delicate melancholy of ‘Junk’, or the odd, percussive closer ‘Kreen – Akrore’.
5. Ram
In hindsight, Macca’s second post-Fabs release is actually a bit of a classic. From the song-suite ‘UncleAlbert/Admiral Halsey’, to dreamy, uked-up ‘Ram On’, to the rollicking ‘Monkberry Moon Delight’ (late covered to great effect by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins) and the soaring melody of closer ‘The Back Seat Of My Car’, it is never less than delightful. To provoke arguments I like to suggest it is a stronger record than the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.
4. Wild Life
Universally derided at the time, Wings’ debut has a home-spun appeal that sounds oddly contemporary now. The infectious nonsense of ‘Bip Bop’ and ‘Dear Friend’ his reply to Lennon’s stinging ‘How Do You Sleep?’ are highlights of a ‘little’ album that features the most musically adept Beatle trying to figure out how to play nicely with others.
3. Band On The Run
It has an excellent cover (featuring, amongst the band members, actors Christopher Lee and James Coburn, alongside British light heavyweight boxing champ John Conteh and MP Sir Clement Freud), and a remarkable title track.
McCartney’s 1974 biggest selling post-Beatles record also features the utterly stonking ‘Jet’, the gorgeous ‘Bluebird’ and ‘Let Me Roll It’, which still features in the live set. And that’s without even mentioning another brilliant closer, ‘Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five’.
2. McCartney II
A sequel of sorts, from 1981 to his similarly self-titled solo debut, it's also entirely self-performed and produced.
Joyfully, wilfully eclectic, featuring the clipped funk of ‘Coming Up’, the bubbling pseudo-techno of ‘Temporary Secretary’, the glacial melancholy of ‘Waterfalls’, and the genuinely odd ‘Frozen Jap’ and ‘My Dark Room’. Another record, not well received at the time, which now sounds better than ever.
1. Flowers In The Dirt
The last time I really engaged with a ‘new’ Paul McCartney record is now a long time ago – 1989. I came to it due to its collaborative songwriting with Elvis Costello and was rewarded by the fine co-compositions ‘My Brave Face’, ‘You Want Her Too’, ‘Don’t Be Careless Love’ and 'That Day Is Done'.
Costello was perhaps the most empathetic songwriting partner McCartney could have found - the tart yin to Macca’s sweet yang.
The point where the harmony descends on the phrase ‘take me to that PLACE...’ in ‘My Brave Face’ is as perfect an evocation of the early days of Lennon-McCartney as you could hope to find.
Most musician/songwriters have obvious strengths and weaknesses, but McCartney confounds this by being a phenomenal singer in both his sweet, softer register (try ‘And I Love Her’ or ‘She’s Leaving Home’) and in balls-to-the-wall, Little Richard mode (‘Oh Darling’, or ‘Long Tall Sally’).
He's also an astonishingly adept musician: his snaking melodic bass runs through George Harrison’s ‘Something’, his Dave Davies-like guitar blast on ‘Taxman’, even his soft shoe drum shuffle on ‘The Ballad Of John And Yoko’ show he was always a tasteful and inspired accompanist on the songs of others.
His gift for beautiful, memorable tunes has been compared, not unreasonably, to Mozart. The bright, soaring melodies of the likes of ‘Paperback Writer’ or ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ offset Lennon’s narrower melodic range.
And if he could occasionally be prone to leaning a little heavily on a kind of music hall goofiness, or worse, cod-reggae (‘Ob-La-Di Ob-La-Da’, ‘When I’m Sixty Four’, the ghastly ‘Your Mother Should Know’), you can forgive him a great deal for the detail, economy and precision in a lyric like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or even ‘Yesterday’. Or for big-hearted romps like ‘Martha, My Dear’, ‘Hey Jude’, or Help’s underrated, country-ish ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’.
R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck once suggested that there are maybe five different types of songs in the lexicon of popular music and that his band was a pretty good one because they are able to do three of them convincingly, and well.
The Beatles, and then McCartney solo, are almost alone in their ability to effortlessly do all five. Perhaps only Bob Dylan compares in terms of the sheer number of great songs he's penned, especially in relation to his place in late 20th century popular culture.
For this reason, I'll shell out to get to see one of the greatest musical entities and influences of my lifetime play.
An evening of mild discomfort and inconvenience at a sports stadium for a once-in-my-lifetime opportunity to see a genuine musical great seems a very small price to pay for the joy his music has brought to so many, including me.
Thumbs aloft, Macca – I’ll (hopefully!) be seeing you on the 16th...
- Who: Paul McCartney
- When: Saturday, 16th December
- Where: Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland
