About halfway through his band's career, Paul McCartney became the most prolific Beatle and the one most fascinated with what the studio could do. As the Beatle with the most multi-instrumental skill, he was also primed to do it alone, and in 1970, he was so ready to get out his first solo album that he and the other guys actually had to work out scheduling conflicts between McCartney and The Beatles' final disc, Let It Be. An uncharacteristically embittered McCartney wouldn't budge, and his record hit the shelves first with all the hype coming to the first proper post-breakup Beatles solo album.
Many fans were perplexed and most critics were downright indignant when they heard what had caused all the fuss. McCartney was a totally home-made collection of song sketches and jams with the title character as the album's producer, engineer, and sole musician. This probably wasn't what anyone was expecting from the perfectionist behind such thoroughly polished gems as "Yesterday", "Hey Jude", Sgt. Pepper's, and Abbey Road. However, it was an accurate indication of how McCartney would travel his mercurial solo career: following his instincts and his restless desire to create rather than continuing to chase the perfection everyone had always expected from The Beatles. And though there's a lot of junk on McCartney (aside from the tuneful "Hot As Sun", his instrumentals are wastes of space), there are also some lovely tunes in "Junk", "Teddy Boy", and "Maybe I'm Amazed", the one track that sounds like it spent just the right amount of time in the oven.
Had McCartney released McCartney in the same souvenir spirit that Pete Townshend would release his Scoop demo collections, people probably would have been kinder and more understanding (even though Pete's Scoops are better, partially because he never relied on collaborators as much as Paul did), but the post-release hubbub also sheds further light on something kind of wonderful about Paul McCartney: he never let the negativity of others hold him down. So ten years after his first proper band broke up and he put out his first one-man-band record, he made another one to commemorate the end of his second band.
Critics weren't exactly crying buckets when Wings broke up, so they were generally more welcoming to McCartney II than they had been to McCartney I. Deservedly so since this is a worthier use of his considerable talents. One of the major mistakes he'd made with his first record is he tried to replicate the sound of a typical early-seventies working band through overdubs. The era in which he made McCartney II allowed him to sidestep that issue as he largely eschews traditional band arrangements for very-eighties synthesizers. This time the sketchiness of the songs becomes part of the record's charms because of the way he recorded them. We wouldn't want to hear the zany "Temporary Secretary" or the haunting "Waterfalls" played with the usual rock instruments and realized with George Martin's pristine finesse-- that would be fatuous. But played by McCartney alone with all the atmosphere of his bedroom, it becomes a pleasing peak into the most eccentric corners of his imagination.
The weirdest material works best on McCartney II, but he is always sure to add some odd touches even on the most conventional tracks. "On the Way" could have been a blues boring enough for Clapton, but the extreme echo on his vocals and his exaggeratedly lazy drumming give it a spacey, druggy vibe that makes it interesting. That being said, the thumping live, hit version of "Coming Up" does kick the thin home-made one on McCartney II right up the jacksie.Forty years elapsed before Paul McCartney revisited the one-man-band format for which he clearly had a lot of affection. By 2020, aesthetics and technology had changed just as drastically as they had between the down-home McCartney and the alien-synthesized McCartney II. Instead of just making McCartney III at his home desktop using GarageBand or something, he made it with proper recording equipment with proper engineer Steve Orchard. Despite the occasional awkward drum fill, McCartney III is by far the most professional disc in his eponymous trilogy, not just in terms of production but also because it has better thought-out material than the previous two albums. "Pretty Boys" is good enough that it wouldn't sound out of place on a Robert Pollard record, nor would "Women and Wives" which reminds me a little of Pollard's "People Are Leaving". "Lavatory Lil" is a blues as fresh as any by The White Stripes. McCartney III is the first McCartney album that sounds like he made it by himself simply because he really didn't need anyone else's help.
Taking in all three McCartney albums in succession is a weird trip, because it creates the illusion of an artist gradually coming into his own after fifty years of sporadic work when it's actually a project begun after the artist's most enduring work was already behind him. You too can try this little alternate-history McCartney experiment if you invest in the new McCartney I II III box set, which collects all three LPs on 180g vinyl in a slipcase with three bonus photos of Paul in each era. I only had McCartney on hand for audio comparison purposes, and I was surprised how much this new cut sounds like my old Apple LP (just to be clear, that's a good thing). That disc had a small wave to it that didn't affect the audio, but both McCartney II and McCartney III are completely flat and sound similarly good.
