Then how do you explain Gladys Knight & the Pips? They were hotter than a two-dollar pistol in 1973, on two different labels. They were making great music in this era, but they were the epitome of safe and traditional. Funkadelic, they weren't...
I saw a rerun of it, from later in the decade. The only thing I really remember about it is a scene where Paul McCartney is singing and playing acoustic guitar while Linda snaps a roll of pictures. Wonder if those pictures are on Google now.
Live and Let Die is a massive track, but it's pretty amazing just how negative the critical reaction to it was. McCartney doing the theme for a JAMES BOND movie was considered one of the biggest sellout moves imaginable to the 70s rock cognoscenti. It's funny how things have changed over the years. (and it went both ways; James Bond famously insulted the Beatles in one of his early movies, I think Goldfinger). Here is the clip of the band doing the song from the James Paul McCartney TV special that I mentioned in the My Love post. This might have been one of the first times it was played for the public, although I'm not 100% sure of the timeline.
I remember that and some decent concert footage, but also corny segments with Paul leading pub sing-alongs and random Londoners stopped on the street and asked to sing Beatles songs. Plus the semi-transvestite song and dance number mentioned earlier. I've penciled in a spare hour tonight to rewatch the thing.
Sorry, I meant 'fairly panned' as in, 'they were really panned', not that they deserved to be panned. Poor choice of words on my part. My own personal opinion is that Ram is overrated (these days, but was over-hated back then), and McCartney is inoffensive, but other than the songs you mentioned, nothing special (and coming after Abbey Road? Big step down). But both are miles better than Low Life or Red Rose Speedway. Again, IMO!
McCartney has exactly two good songs on it, the two that sound finished (Every Night and Maybe I'm Amazed). The others sound like demos or unfinished ideas for songs. Interesting, but shockingly amateur for an artist of his caliber. I think RAM is a masterpiece, have always loved it. It's got loads of charm, which is Maccas specialty. I'd rank it as his second-best album ever. Wild Life is so dull and lifeless, I'm shocked that he allowed it to be released. In fact, I never even knew it existed until about 1978. As someone mentioned already, I believe a lot of it is ad-libbed. It sounds like a rehearsal session. Red Rose Speedway starts off really strong with Big Barn Bed (IIRC, a RAM-era song that didn't make the cut) and the hit single My Love. After that - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Such disappoint after the Beatles break-up. Four albums and only one of them was really worth something. I wonder what triggered Paul to finally kick it into high gear with the excellent material he was about to release on an unsuspecting audience? I won't jump ahead (much) but the next couple one-off singles and albums are light-years better than what came before (save RAM).
That song, on one level, seemed to my ears to be a quasi-"answer" song - in this case, to The Winstons' 1969 hit "Color Him Father." First-pressings of this had this early label design: There were also some contract pressings of this. One set was inexplicably printed on Philadelphia International labels, and were among the last 45's pressed by Capitol's Scranton, PA plant before it shut down in late June 1973 (and they, later in the year, palmed it off to a Pittsburgh firm, North American Music Industries [NAMI] that kept it going until spring 1979): (An oddity in more ways than one. Think also the 360 interlocking serrations interspersed with CBS Pitman label fonts.)
True, but that soul #1 now being examined on the R&B thread made Ms. Knight and The Pips sound like Funkadelic in comparison.
That live performance with the orchestra is wonderful, especially the lush ending... sounds just like a Bee Gees song with that harp!
This one lyrically has as much potential sap as My Love, but people just think George is cooler than Paul, so they won't call him on it. It is a really great record, drawn from an underrated album. The guitars are beautiful. The Great Beatle revival continues! See you in 15 years, George!
I love this song. Even though the lyrics are pretty inane, the production and feel are just so wonderful. The line with "....take hold of my hand" is such a brilliant musical riff, he should have put it in there twice.
I didn't care for this back then, considered it slight and his vocal bugged me. Now I like it a lot more. It has a lovely melody and I really appreciate the guitar sounds. It really shouldn't be surprising that the individual Beatle would do well in the 70s. It's just nobody could have foreseen what is to occur for the next two years.
Back to back Beatle #1's. It's almost like the '60s never ended. "My Love" ended up being a lot bigger on oldies radio than Harrison's hit, but I always loved "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)" even as a tyke, and it must have got a lot more play from my uncle, because we had the single and I actually associate this track with my little hometown, which we were about to move away from in weeks, unlike "My Love" which I only associate with Phoenix where we moved (and I suspect got most of that association after it had dropped off the charts). Much more a hippy-sentiment song of the '60s than McCartney's more MOR, '70s-oriented work, Harrison's slide-guitar work on this one is just phenomenal. Self-produced, and I always thought quite a raw, lo-fi sounding affair (that YouTube stream sounds a lot like my uncle's battered old 45). Unfortunately this was the last Harrison song I can even remember hearing until "Crackerbox Palace" in '77. He had a smattering of US Top 40 placements in between ("Dark Horse", "You", "This Song"), but for whatever reason - lack of radio play on the stations we listened to or they just didn't register with me - they're completely unknown to me. Listening to them, I find them a bit clunky and the only one I kinda like is "Dark Horse". Harrison had even less success in the UK, where he barely cracked the Top 40 until '81. Sad really. Out of the gate it looked like he might be the big solo superstar to emerge from The Beatles, and truthfully that slide guitar work of his was the most innovative and iconic thing any of the Beatles did as a solo artist. But obviously it wasn't to be.
I’m surprised by how much My Love is disliked. Holy crap I love that song. Red Rose Speedway also a damn good album, which also has Little Lamb Dragonfly, which is one of Paul’s greatest songs. Give Me Love is so utterly beautiful. It gives me a wonderful feeling whenever I hear it.
I like Harrison's Give Me Love better than most of the other no. 1 songs of the year, the past couple of years and any number of years into the foreseeable future quite frankly.
My favorite Intruders song is "I Wanna Know Your Name" which Walter & Scotty (of The Whispers) covered nicely in the 90s.
I really like Give Me Love. It's got such hippy-dippy lyrics but the music is what makes this shine. I remember borrowing the album (...Material World) from the library and thinking it was kind of mediocre, so I only had the single for many years. I bought a little box set of it a few years ago and it finally clicked with me on what George was writing about. I guess you have to really be grown up and exposed to worldly events to get it - much too deep for a 12 year old at the time. Anyway, GML(GMPOE) is a wonderful track and thought George was on his way to being THE Beatle that would carry on the legacy.
Another song by another ex-Beatle who benefited from the "Beatles Revival" that followed in the wake of the "Red" and "Blue" albums. The relatively sparse production (compared with his prior #1) seemed to have been a reaction to the "Wall Of Sound" philosophy of Phil Spector who co-produced the All Things Must Pass album. But his slide guitar work: People could be forgiven in two years' time from this that another #1 from another act was either him, or he was a guest guitarist. I also seem to remember reading something to the effect that the 45 of this tune was sped up a trifle in relation to how it was presented on the LP it came from - Living In The Material World. And it's surprising that the audio in this is being judged as "lo-fi," given who did the lacquer mastering - The Mastering Lab, long considered by collectors to be the "creme de la creme" of regular (as opposed to today's situation) audio quality. Given John Lennon's dissing of Paul as purveying "granny music," one has to wonder if, based on this, George was as capable of doing same . . . ?
About a decade from this, the LP title would be name checked for a song whose theme was entirely different from that on "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)." (No peeking now . . . )
The spoken section of that, frankly, would no doubt run afoul of the #MeToo movement in our time . . . I thought of that part as "The Stalker's Song." But then, when this was written and first performed, it was a different time, after all . . . the rest of the song is indeed brilliant.
I love "Little Lamb Dragonfly," but it's the only album on Red Rose Speedway that I like much at all.
