Is Driving Rain a "generation gap"?

No you're not alone, as much as I love Flaming Pie Calico Skies is my bottom track on it....but yes we are in the minority.

 

Was about to turn 32 when it came out, loved it then, love it now, however it's not without problems :
2 or 3 songs too long.
Cover is so-so.
Wrong song chosen as first single, love FALTAF but it wasn't single material....would have gone with either About You, Tiny Bubble, Lonely Rd or Your Loving Flame first.
Dodgy vocals on a few tracks which to my mind could have been redone at the June sessions when his vocals were in better shape.
Also George died a couple of weeks after release so any promotion towards the album fell away & never took off over here in the UK ( lowest chart position I think ).

Other than that it was a raw album in sound & subject, but his bass playing is fantastic ( as is the sound on vinyl ) & for me contains some top & interesting tracks. Has been in my top 10 Macca albums since release & remains there still, nestled at No. 9 between Band On The Run & Egypt Station.

 

I was 23 when Driving Rain came out and I remember being quite excited about the vibrant and fresh sound of it. I always found Flaming Pie quite boring melodically, and its retro sound somewhat bland. So here was Driving Rain with Paul shredding his voice to bits on Loney Road and She's Given Up Talking sounded like a Madonna record!

However some years later I couldn't stand the album at all. I felt that from this point on his sense for a good melody had abandoned him for good (only briefly to return for Memory Almost Full). All too often he seems to be content to call it a song when the verses have only one note, and the chorus has about two notes...
As for the vibrant sound of 2001, it nowadays strikes me as sounding like a Shania Twain record. Also his voice was now all too apparently losing elasticity and a certain sweetness simply went lost.

That was also the only time I had acquired an album via a leak as a 192 mp3 before release. When I bought it on CD a couple of weeks later, Freedom was added and I simply can't stand this song with this cheap and stale melody.

My "gap" album would be Off The Ground which had remnants of the gorgeous melodies from Flowers In The Dirt. That one also had his last hit in Germany (Hope Of Deliverance) without him playing the Beatle-card as he did after the Beatles anthology.

 

I’m still struggling to understand the premise of this post.

How can a record album itself be a generation gap?

 

I too bought all his albums till FP as got so busy with work and I never adjusted to format changes f CDs. Format changes in music really affected my collecting of all music. I too since retiring have gone back and read listened to all of his released and unreleased music and find his stuff very genre varied and holding up better than I remembered it. I agree that the used bins aren’t what they used to be and that’s for several reasons...It’s not just about McCartney’s music per se as folks like to get on these forums and dump on McCartney per se...but it’s about the music formats in general. I had quit looking at used vinyl and CDs stores so much, but noticed a few years ago mostly games in the stores, the sections album sections, memorabilia sections weren’t as big, etc. I noticed this when I did go to these stores increasingly for a long time and brick mortar stores are mostly gone. I need to get online to complete my McCartney collection and wasn’t joking about sending what you find to me. Re listening to all his music on YouTube makes me appreciate it even more. I too am older...a boomer.

 

I look at his work, and compare it to the 'post-Phill Hartman'-era of "The Simpsons";
Sure, it's lost a little of it's 'edge', and, yes, it's repeating some stories quite often, BUT....
every so often, there IS a gem in all of the 'ruff', and, after a couple of years away from it, some of the ones I found mediocre are actually quite good...yea, yea...not 'glory days' good..but, good, none-the-less....

 

Lol...way you described it...ram was in no way was worshipped like it is now when when released. I always liked ran but I lol at all the sudden crowing for ram now. Likewise, ram is an early seventies hippie type album, while DR is an anonymous more contemporary style urban album.

 

Folks either love or hate many McCartney albums and he himself I’ve noticed...

 

I find folks don’t necessarily agree on his gems are even his glory days..He’s a very interesting artist for the reactions he elicits.

 

Unfortunately a victim of the CD/MP3 age. If DR was made in the 70's/80's it would have been condensed down to two sides and the excess released on an archive edition. Sometimes less is more.

 

I assume you've been to the threads about "II", right?...

 

That's why I put it in quotation marks. Of course, an album can't be a generation gap per se. It's a metaphor for something that shows some different opinions between an older and a younger generation.

So the question is: Are young people more likely to enjoy DR than older fans?

And yep, I'm sorry, I messed up my first post... I'm not a native speaker, therefore, I'm writing some weird stuff here and there...

 

Oh yes...one of my top Macca albums...

 

True that, I must admit

I know that many consider it as his worst album, however, the question is "If younger people are more likely to enjoy DR than older fans."

I wouln't even go as far as sales. It's tricky, because many young people ignored the record because it was jolly ol' uncle Paul who released it rather than disliking the record itself. Of course, other albums sold better in general, but many of the same young people who ignored DR also ignored anything else from Macca, despite being a good or bad record. Of course, this is not a general but if a young person would be listening to DR, he/she is probably more likely to enjoy the record.

 

Sorry, I really didn’t mean to sound like I was calling out any “mess ups” or anything.

I don’t see Driving Rain as being polarizing between different age groups, at least not in terms of the overall sound or production of the album.

 

It's all good, you didn't. It's just a fact, lol. I really messed up. But when I realized it, it was too late to edit my post. So, the hat of shame belongs to me but anyway, life's goes on
Thanks for your opinion. I've always had the feeling that it was probably too modern sounding for many of his long time fans. But when I played it to my friends, most of them enjoyed it. That led me to this question, but it probably really isn't true.

 

I mean it DOES have a certain sound that makes it stand out in his catalog. I don’t know how to describe it. Arrangement-wise the songs are all pretty straightforward for the most part. But it does have sort of a glossy sheen to it that makes it sound different from say Flaming Pie.

It’s an interesting album in there Paul seems unsure of what kind of album he wanted to make, in terms of overall mood and tone. There’s a real sense of uncertainty and turmoil in songs like Lonely Road and Rinse the Raindrops (and Lover to a Friend).

My favorite track is Magic, which of course is something of a eulogy to Linda and quite emotionally understated and effective (brings tears to my eyes when I hear it — I think one reason it works so well is he wasn’t trying TOO hard to come up with JUST the right words, it’s pretty plain spoken).

And the title track and Your Loving Flame are exuberant celebrations of what was then newfound love. So it seems all over the map. But aside from She’s Given Up Talking, to my ears most of the record seems pretty traditional in terms of an organic rock band sound.

 

Indeed, George’s death sadly at that time deflected the album.

 

As usual, my fellow wave length forum friend, I agree with your post..Magic is indeed a stand out track...IMO as is lonely road and of course driving rain. It is indeed a different album in his catalogue...and I usually like those I find.

 

Though I live near music city, Nashville, Tn, we unfortunately don’t have the used stores we did when I moved here in 80. I know where another one is but have not made it to yet besides the one I visited when better able to get out. Thus, I’ll wind up having to get used stuff online to complete my collection I guess. A few used stores here are the Christian and country genres exclusively as well. I noticed due to the economy, that the great used record stores, antique stores and pawn jewelry I used to enjoy shopping at stores all dried up after 08.

 

I wrote earlier that I really don't think it's that tough to decipher but to be clearer

Lonely Road - getting over Linda
From a Lover To A Friend - 'let me live again' - let him move forward in life
She's Given Up Talking - negative vibe but a story song like "Eleanor Rigby" - a profile song
Driving Rain - optimistic song about finding love after dealing with rain/darkness in life
I Do -optimistic love song
Tiny Bubble- remembering sadness within optimistic love song
Magic- Remembering Linda with a positive light

Your Way - optimstic love song
Spinning On An Axis - optimistic outlook
About You - optimistic love song
Heather - optimistic love song
Back In The Sunshine Again- optimistic love song
Your Loving Flame - optimistic love song
Riding Through Jaipur - optimistic love song set in India
Rinse the Raindrops - optimistic love song and cleansing of the past - rinse the driving rain from earlier.

So you see it's all optimism, love songs, getting through sadness of Linda passing by optimism - except the first 3. "She's Given Up Talking" was about a girl he heard about in the news - it doesn't gel musically or lyrically with the rest of the album. That's my take anyway.

 

I loved Ram from first listen, which for me was in 1989 aged 23.

It wasn't until many years later I found out about the critical trashing it received by some on release.

 

A little too black-and-white for me, but to each their own. I think some of the songs convey a darker, more somber mood via the music even if the words are superficially chipper (“Back in the Sunshine Again” is an example, I don’t hear this as an optimistic song at all).

I think there’s a lot of subtler things going on throughout the album. Another is “Rinse the Raindrops,” never even occurred to me that anyone would hear that song and thing of it as an “optimistic love song” — really?

I think much of the album conveys more internal conflict and turmoil - enough to defy simple “positive/negative” assessment.

 

Coming off of the wonderful "Flaming Pie", "Rushes" and "Run Devil Run", "Driving Rain" was a letdown. Weak songs, long bloated album. IMO YMMV & PD.

"1 2 3 4 5..." ...this album is not very good. IMO YMMV & PD.

I liked "Rinse The Raindrops".

If I have to be part of a certain "generation" to love this album, I must fall short. I'm more of a Slayer "Reign In Blood" generation, I guess.

 

Bravo