Review: Paul McCartney & Wings' 'One Hand Clapping'

After releasing Band on the Run and finally getting a gold star from venomous critics, including the most venomous critic of all (Lennon), Paul McCartney was hot to keep riding that wave of good will. So he rushed into the studio with Wings to follow up with a live-in-the-studio session of covers and songs he'd already recorded and released with his current band, as a solo artist, and with his old band featuring that most venomous critic of all (Lennon).

Review: Wings' 'Band on the Run' 50th Anniversary Set

If there's a word that sums up Paul McCartney's work-approach with The Beatles, that word could be "perfectionism." That was certainly one of the things that drove his band-mates up a tree when he insisted on take after take of things like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", although the cutesiness of those songs surely rubbed John, George, and Ringo the wrong way too. So it was a shock when McCartney began his solo career by bucking that perfectionism, if not the cutesiness. McCartney was a homemade, one-man-band record full of non-songs and only intermittent flashes of his perfect song craft, "Maybe I'm Amazed" being the most obvious example. If RAM suggested that the perfect old Paul was back, then Macca continued to confound with an album of jams with a new band called Wings, which he then followed with a Whitman's sampler of nutrient-free confectionary experiments he titled Red Rose Speedway.

Review: Paul McCartney and Wings''Red Rose Speedway' RSD Half-Speed Mastered Vinyl

Paul McCartney was the most exacting Beatle, the guy who wrote such classically structured perfections as "Yesterday" and "Martha My Dear" and such imaginative yet insightful lyrics as "Eleanor Rigby" and "You Never Give Me Your Money", and the guy who steered the band's most classically artful production, Sgt. Pepper's. So it was certainly more than a shock when he began his solo career with the utterly offhand McCartney and decided to cut his first album with his new band, Wings, without getting together many actual songs first. 

Review: Wings' 'Wild Life', Half-Speed Mastered Vinyl Reissue

Paul McCartney couldn't catch a break after The Beatles broke up. While he attempted to reset his perfectionist aesthetic with McCartney, a rough collection of finished and inchoate songs on which he played all the instruments, critics ran him down for being sloppy, lazy, cute, and glib. Okay, they had a point, but when they continued to pile on when he allowed his inner perfectionist to reemerge, and he made the delightful RAM, so full of lively performances and well-crafted pop nuggets, it became clear that they had it in for Paul McCartney. So either as a means to fade into a combo to prove he wasn't the control freak his former bandmates painted him as or because he genuinely missed the camaraderie and collaboration of band-work, McCartney decided to put his name off to the side and form a new group. 

Review: 'Paul McCartney: The Stories Behind the Songs'

Mike Evans's new book probably should have been called Paul McCartney: The Stories Behind Some Songs. With the title Paul McCartney: The Stories Behind the Songs, I assumed the book would go through the entirety of McCartney's substantial post-Beatles body of work, explaining the inspiration behind well-documented hits like "Silly Love Songs" and obscurities like "Monkberry Moon Delight". Instead Evans mainly focuses on the hits, first providing a very swift and general overview of a given album before zooming in on one or two of the more popular songs contained therein (as well as some stand-alone singles, such as "Another Day" or "Wonderful Christmastime"). 

I guess digging deep into songs McCartney usually admits were inspired by nothing more than a decent-sounding yet nonsensical rhyme might not have been too edifying. Evans might not have been the guy to do it either since he is so awed by McCartney's talent. A fair yet critical sort is the ideal chronicler of a catalog that is way better than many critics would have you believe but pretty rich in toss-offs too. Look, I enjoy "Magneto and Titanium Man" as much as anyone, but I'd hardly describe its slight comic-book lyric as "rock solid storytelling" as Evans does. On the odd occasion the author seems to criticize a song, he rarely owns that criticism, prefacing it with phrases like "Some critics believe..." Granted, this book is not called Paul McCartney: Picking Apart the Songs either, but since Evans does offer some personal judgments, his fairly one-track view of McCartney's Wings and solo work is worth noting. 

Review: 'The Paul McCartney Catalog: A Complete Annotated Discography of Solo Works, 1967-2019'

Paul McCartney was the most creatively driven Beatle, and he kept up an unstoppable pace of writing and recording after the band broke up that is still ongoing. Not only did McCartney release a slew of albums and singles in his signature pop mold as a solo artist and member of Wings, but he also experimented with orchestral and electronic music and participated in a number of collaborations with artists such as Elvis Costello, Carl Perkins, and Brian Wilson.

Review: Vinyl Reissues of 4 "Live" Paul McCartney Albums

(This post was updated on  August 2, 2019, to include details about Wings Over America)

Five years after The Beatles broke up—and nine after their final gig— Paul McCartney finally came to terms with his legacy and began performing songs from his Fab days again. The move thrilled audiences who finally got a chance to hear how never-performed favorites such as “Lady Madonna” and “The Long and Winding Road” might sound live. The Wings Over the World tour and its accompanying album (Wings Over America) and film (Rock Show) also made it clear that McCartney had the material, the chops, and the innate showmanship to be one of Rock’s greatest live acts. Sure all of his proto-hair metal “Oh yeahs!!!” were cheesier than the Velveeta factory, but all is forgiven when he starts pounding hell out of “Soily” or “Jet”. 

Universal Music is now reminding us of what a great ticket McCartney has been throughout the years with vinyl versions of four of his live discs. Naturally, Wings Over America leads this campaign, and it’s easily the best record here, collecting three LPs worth of great musicianship and showmanship with an emphasis on tracks from Wings’ two best albums: Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. McCartney’s willingness to share the spotlight with Jimmy McCulloch and Denny Laine, whose rendition of his old Moody Blues hit “Go Now” is as good as anything by the show’s main star, is charming and supports the argument that Wings really was an all-around good band and not just Paulie’s puppets.

As a show of support for the age of glasnost (“openness and transparency”) Gorbachev ushered in, Paul McCartney ensured that his latest album would be released in the Soviet Union. It was a live-in-the-studio recording of rock and roll classics he had already planned to put out in the UK with an album cover inspired by those that adorned rock albums bootlegged for the underground Russian market. He and a pickup band that included Mick Green of original British rockers Johnny Kidd and the Pirates fire through classics made famous by Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, Wilbert Harrison, Sam Cooke, and Paul’s idol Little Richard intended as a sort of rock and roll primer, as was Mick Carr’s liner notes explaining the origins of each song. McCartney titled it Choba B CCCP, Russian for Back in the USSR.

 

As a historical document, the album is pretty interesting. The introduction of what could be the greatest artistic product of capitalist society to the communists is a charming project, and at age 46, Paul proved he could still rip it up pretty well…though one hopes the folks who bought this disc were inspired to root out the original versions of its songs. Choba B CCCP is best when not inviting unfavorable comparisons with original versions, as when Paul transforms Duke Ellington’s jazz-pop standard “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” into a chunky New Orleans-style rocker.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 267

The Date: June 23

The Movie: Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow (1980)

What Is It?: Concert film of Wings’ 1976 tour catches the band at a point when they were sharp as nails, putting on a mammoth, crowd-pleasing show. Most important of all, Paul had finally decided to work some Beatles material into the performance, which included lots of songs the fabs never got a chance to play. Despite several dollops of classic Wings corniness (“Awlriiiiight!”), this is a solid rock show.

Why Today?: This day in 1976 is the final day footage for this film was shot. Awlriiiiight!

Review: 'Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow'

When The Beatles retired from the stage in mid-1966, venues were getting bigger but bands had yet to adapt to the changing nature of rock shows. They were all still twanging through inadequate amps and chirping over inadequate sound systems. What a difference a decade made. No more Beatles. No more weak equipment. No more fumbling with how to meet the challenge of entertaining a stadium of 60,000 people.