Paul McCartney's '70s Wilderness

Poor Paulie McCartney. The guy hasn't been able to buy a hit single in what seems like ages. Not that it matters to him or his fans, but I remember the days when you'd hear a new Macca tune on the radio and it'd be a hit. I suppose the last time I really recall that happening for him was when he released Flowers in the Dirt and managed to score pretty well with "My Brave Face," "This One," "Put It There," and "Figure of Eight."  Then he kind of slid into a mediocre phase that his harshest critics had always accused him of peddling.

But enough of that.  Let's go back to the early '70s after The Beatles called it quits and Paul demanded that his first solo album be released before Let It Be.  It retrospect it makes sense in a backhanded way towards McCartney.  Let It Be was hardly a high note of the Fabs, but it was certainly more interesting than most of McCartney.  So John and Paul battled it out through tunes back and forth, culminating in Macca putting a picture of two beetles screwing on the back of his second LP Ram and dropping lyrical references to the misery in "Dear Boy" and "Too Many People."  Lennon attacked back with "How Do You Sleep?" on his own Imagine.

Fuck the Beatles, we got to rock!

Yes so the ex-Beatles were having a field day with their pissing contest.  Meanwhile, Paul decided to form a new band, christened it Wings and took the group a-touring in a little van across the English countryside, making surprise appearances at various colleges and the like.  Exciting stuff, to be sure, but music-wise McCartney crapped out the weird and loose Wild Life as Wings' debut.  Even stranger, the album managed to get all the way to #10 on the charts.  Back then, Paul could release absolute junk and it would sell because the fans were so rabid for the product.

How dare you bust Paulie for pot!  Now let's go make an album.

I really hated Wild Life for a period in my life.  As I've gotten older, though, I enjoy it quite a bit.  "Mumbo" might not be anything than a loosey goosey soundcheck, but it rocks harder than anything Paul does these days.  The pot-infused cover of "Love is Strange" is pleasant, and "Some People Never Know" is a lost classic.  Linda got to debut her vocals on the slight "I Am Your Singer," but even at this point Wings managed to create its own sound.  As the band got better, you always knew when you were listening to a Wings track on the radio.  So that's already in place.  Paul even managed to find the time to sing a kind song to Lennon entitled "Dear Friend."

Adding Paul's name first made the music sell like hotcakes!

After the album was released and met a scathing reception, Paul expressed disappointment that he had recorded it so fast (apparently he did so because he had read where Dylan had done his latest LP in a really short amount of time), but he also thought maybe the public at large didn't realize it was his band.  So for the next release, the wonderful Red Rose Speedway, the band became "Paul McCartney and Wings."  Hopefully after all these years, Paul has realized that it was the overall quality of Wild Life that let the folks down, and not that they didn't know who recorded it.

Red Rose Speedway has always been overlooked in the Macca canon.  It spawned the gooey and forgettable hit "My Love," but it also contains some of Paul's best stuff pre-Band on the Run superstardom.  The opening "Big Barn Bed" perfects the Wings vocal harmony formula and rocks well.  "One More Kiss" is a cross between English country and the old style stuff that Paul was so fond of and recreated himself in tracks like "Honey Pie."  "Little Lamb Dragonfly" is a lovely, slightly surreal piece of work.  And my absolute favorite is the gorgeous "When the Night."  At times Red Rose Speedway may seem slight, but it also features McCartney doing a sort of last grasp on the old experimental Beatles formula that was still fresh at the time.  Hell, Henry McCullough's guitar playing is worth it alone, even on "My Love" where his solo is the best thing about the whole song.

The album was a good primer for what was to follow.  It put Paul back in a larger spotlight, and even led him to do such things as the "James Paul McCartney" TV special which featured some tunes from the LP amongst other numbers.  Probably the most unfortunate thing to come from all this, though, was Paul and Linda's joint decision to start sporting mullets, a choice that they wouldn't change until around the time of London Town.  I suppose one could accuse Bowie of setting the trend, but I would rather think it was the sweet, sweet dank that the McCartneys were ingesting at a sizable rate at the time.

Ah mullet, much later.