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1.1 Who is Paul McCartney?
Credited in 1979 by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world's most successful songwriter, and widely regarded as one of the finest exponents of the bass-guitar (See 7.1), Paul McCartney was one of the two principal songwriters, along with John Lennon, for the Beatles, the pop phenomenon that reshaped the musical landscape of the 1960's. Though all songs written by McCartney or Lennon were credited to Lennon and McCartney together, much of their writing was done separately. McCartney was responsible for roughly half of the "Lennon-McCartney" catalogue. His undeniable melodic and harmonic gifts complemented the talents of his songwriting partner Lennon in a way which capitalized on the strengths of both, and produced some of the most enduring and seminal popular music of the 20th Century.
His many memorable compositions for the Beatles include Hey Jude, Let it Be, Get Back, Yesterday, Penny Lane, I'm Down, Fool on the Hill, Things We Said Today, When I'm 64, I Saw Her Standing There, For No One, Oh Darling, Eleanor Rigby, Back in the U.S.S.R, and the extraordinary medley which ends the Beatles' final album, Abbey Road.
After the Beatles disbanded, McCartney continued to produce an impressive number of songs of high quality and popularity, both as the songwriter for his band Wings, which grew to be very successful in its own right, and as a solo artist. Hampered by the fact that he now had to produce twice as many songs as he had for the Beatles, the consistency of his writing suffered. Some of his albums, notably Band on the Run and Tug of War, received high critical praise. Some of his albums, notably Speed of Sound and Pipes of Peace, were justly accused of containing filler. His single releases, by and large, have been received well by both audiences and critics. He has enjoyed consistently large audiences for his world tours, including a record-breaking 184,368 for one concert in Rio in De Janeiro in 1989.
As with his work for the Beatles, many of of his solo efforts were widely admired and have become household currency. Maybe I'm Amazed, Uncle Albert-Admiral Halsey, Live and Let Die, Band on the Run, Jet, Listen to What the Man Said, Mull of Kintyre, Coming Up, Ebony and Ivory, Pipes of Peace, No More Lonely Nights,My Brave Face, and Hope of Deliverance, are particularly well-known examples.
Those familiar with his catalogue will acknowledge the popularity of these, but point to a wealth of superior, but lesser-known compositions of startling inventiveness, buried on non-single album tracks and B-sides.
Songs such as Every Night, Dear Boy, Oh Woman Oh Why, Little Lamb Dragonfly, 1985, Venus and Mars, Famous Groupies, Baby's Request, One of these Days, Here Today, The Pound is Sinking, However Absurd, This One, Mistress and Maid , and Souvenir might be among the many pointed to by afficionados as exemplifying the range of Paul's talent.
More recently, McCartney has been making tentative forays into classical music, producing an Oratorio for the Liverpool Philharmonic's 150th anniversary, which topped the British and American classical album charts, and a piano composition called 'A Leaf,' premiered for royalty in St. James' palace, which combines classical and jazz motifs.
Having stretched his compositional muscles somewhat in this direction, he completed a lengthy orchestral work called Standing Stone (see the question on Standing Stone) to commemorate EMI's 100th anniversary, and which stood at number one on the classical charts for some time. This was followed in September 1999 by Working Classical, a record of string quartets based based on his songs, plus three longer original pieces recorded with the LSO.
He has vowed never to retire, and continues to record and produces a rock album roughly every one and a half to years.
1.2 I'd like to hear more. What would be the best way to get started?
'Band on the Run' (1973) and 'Tug of War' (1982) are acknowledged to be Paul's solo masterpieces, and are widely considered classics, found in the record collections of many non-afficionados. He has released two 'Best of' albums, 'Wings Greatest' and 'All the Best', which, though well-liked, are largely collections of singles, and as such, perhaps not as representative as they ought to be and can not be strongly recommended as a starting point.
1.3 How do I write to Paul?As with many artists, his number one songs, while certainly enjoyable, do not represent the best of his material. One would do much better to seek out the classic triple live album, 'Wings Over America' (1977). 'Flowers in the Dirt' (1989) and 'Flaming Pie' (1997) are uniformly considered to be his best late-period albums, while 'Ram' (1971) would probably be considered by a majority to be the finest example of early, pre-Wings McCartney. You will not go too far wrong with any album other than 'Wild Life', 'Speed of Sound', or 'Pipes of Peace', which, though each has its adherants, a majority will agree are for completists.
Though containing mostly covers of rock and jazz standards, the much-bootlegged (before it was officially released in the West) 'CHOBA B CCCP' (known to fans as "The Russian Album"), and the difficult-to-find MTV 'Unplugged' set are vocally and instrumentally nothing short of astonishing, and are well worth tracking down. The same can be said, perhaps even more so, of McCartney's critically acclaimed 1999 release, Run Devil Run.
You may also wish to consult:
- Jesse Keskiaho's The Best of McCartney page -- based on a long-running poll that he did dealing strictly with Paul's solo material. Potted summaries of the dozen albums rated as Paul's best, including ratings from Q, The All-Music Guide, Rolling Stone, and the original survey. Includes brief quotations from reviews at the time. http://web.archive.org/web/20041016192945/http://www.sci.fi/~keskiaho/macbest/index.htm
- The section on McCartney in Wilson and Alroy's incredibly extensive Record Reviews site, with detailed, thoughtful, and generally sympathetic assessments of most of Paul's solo material http://web.archive.org/web/20041016192945/http://www.warr.org/mccartney.html.
Wilson and Alroy also have pages on The Beatles, and the solo Beatles.
- A page on the MTV Unplugged recordings, 'The Best of Unplugged', which rates the McCartney Unplugged album very favourably among the Unplugged records. http://www.wallofsound.com/features/stories/28_2.html
If you want to write mail to Paul, you can try writing:
Paul McCartneyHe does not have an email address. The obligatory request: Please do not write asking for a more effective way of getting in touch with him -- I don't have one! I get so many requests like this I have had to unfortunately stop answering them.
P.O. Box 110
Westcliffe, Essex, ENGLAND
SS0 8NWHowever, there is a way to talk with people around the world *about* McCartney's work and that's in the next section!
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