Yes, it is another Paul McCartney Thread. There is a Current Paul McCartney News thread, but there seems to not be a home for General Paul McCartney discussion. So, here it is... There definitely seems to be a lot of nooks and crannies to explore between his music [solo and with those two groups], his business acumen, his personal life.. This is not intended to be a "Paul McCartney Appreciation" thread, so criticisms are welcome. However, blatant trolling will be reported. Another Day, Yesterday, Great Day, Beautiful Night, Every Night, No More Lonely Nights... it's all open for discussion. So let's have some great discussions!
A most excellent choice of thread. It should come with a trigger warning however.^^ OK I'll start off. Does anyone know if it's Paul or Rusty doing the 2nd guitar solo for House of Wax? 3:30
According to the producer of MAF, David Kahne, it was Paul who played the solo. He once told that in an interview, at least. “House of Wax”: The climactic “House of Wax,” which McCartney played live on his handful of “secret gig” shows supporting the album, again features the band, with McCartney providing the crying blues guitar solo. “The solos were a big deal for me,” Kahne recalls. “Those sections were blank; we didn’t know what we were going to put there. I heard ‘Taxman’ on the radio, for which he’d done the solo, and I thought how great it would be if he would just rip in those big breaks. So I asked, ‘Instead of making a more complex part, can you just play guitar solos?’ He said, ‘Okay,’ sat in the control room with his Casino plugged into the Vox and just whipped it up, and literally, a half-hour later, they were done. I’ve never heard him play guitar like that. He just pushes the notes sharp perfectly at the right time.” Here's the full interview: Paul McCartney
Great find. Thank you so much. I'd be very interested to hear other people's opinions of how Paul handles that solo. It is an unusual solo to my ears. 'Crying blues' I would not call it. It is very crisp, very elegant. Perfect. 'Pushing the notes sharp perfectly at the right time...' is definitely an apt quote. But when I listen, I find myself wishing for a little less perfection and little more imperfection if I'm honest.
Indeed. Yes, that is one criticism I sometimes feel with Paul's solo output, is it is sometimes a bit too perfect. Sometimes there is beauty in the imperfections. But I think on some level, Paul is aware of that, too. He has noted that The Beatles [in early days] used to go into the studio and bang out four tunes in a day. [Two in the morning and two in the afternoon.] He also mentioned somewhere [where, this old brain can't remember] that there are something like 30 takes of Ballroom Dancing sitting in the vault from trying to get the "right" take, and that seems a bit too much...
My most important MacCa subject now, besides the new album, is the 50th anniversary of RAM. I know this is unlikely to happen, but boy, how I'd love a more complete boxset with every little thing from the sessions. Sigh
Another topic... Letting Go (single mix): why did this remain un-rereleased until the Venus And Mars Archive edition?? Why at some point in the intervening 39 years could this have not seen the light? Not on All The Beast? Not on the 1993 Venus And Mars remaster? Not on Wingspan? Until 2014 I was losing hope that this would ever be released on digital media and would remain a 45 oddity. But it's just too good for that fate! My only complaint about the LG remix is that it's shorter than the LP version. Oh man, how I love that remix!
I love it too. By the way, the quad mix of this song is great too (even though I can only listen to it in stereo).
You're kidding me! I think this might be the greatest solo of his career, up there with 'Taxman'. In fact both his solos in that song are magnificent, they send shivers down my spine. I don't know the technical aspects, they just work for me on every level. Emotional, soaring, jagged, epic.
I agree with you on finding beauty in mistakes, in imperfection. omg 30 takes of Ballroom Dancing. I LOVE Ballroom Dancing but 30 takes does seem a bit much. At least it wasn't Maxwell's Silver Hammer! Nope. Not kidding. I should add that I adore HOW and consider it one of the best pieces of work he ever recorded. I even think it's a veiled questioning of the Beatles breakup and how, why did it happen? He doesn't understand. Not then. Not all these years later. 'Somewhere deep below a thousand layers, lay the answer to it all.' Oh the frustration of not understanding why it happened! He has said a couple of times that he never really understood why it all came about, though mostly he sticks to the standard 'we went as far as we could go'. Even Ringo says he could never put a finger on a single element as the cause. So that's what I get from that song - the questioning - and I do sense that frustration in the solo, which fascinates me no end. Sometimes I marvel at Paul's perfection. But HOW seems to demand a looser, slightly more unhinged solo to my ears. But I still love it of course.
I feel kind of bad for saying this because it appears as if I am after you, but: I find it hugely frustrating that a career spanning ca. 60 years, a life of 78 years, with 3 marriages and lots of other people he met etc. etc. p.p. is time and again reduced to his experiences with John, George and Ringo, as if this all he thinks about when writing songs. The breakup of the Beatles was not the most tragic thing to occur in his life. And by then he also would have made up his mind about the reasons for it anyway. Just my humble opinion, of course.
Wow!!!! Thank you so much for this Yeah, some fans seem to be obsessed with finding Beatles references in e-v-e-r-y thing he did (specially in the early 70s) as if his life was nothing but The Beatles. Every song he wrote HAS TO have a Beatle reference in it. Man, it sucks!
Well I do seem to have struck a chord with you. It's all good. No need to feel bad. Well, it doesn't HAVE to have a Beatles reference.lol It's my reading of it. You don't have to get upset by another's person's reading of a song. Why don't you offer your reading of it? I'm not being snarky - genuinely interested to know.
I'm sorry, @MaybeI'mMrsVandebilt it wasn't aimed at you. I don't even know what the conversation was about. I just read Jesse's post and liked it. I said that because it's something that happens a lot within The Beatles fan base.
It's all right I get it. ^^ Main reason I asked is because I like to know other people's opinions on songs (on everything!). Quite often others will pick up things I missed or completely change my mind about it. I am definitely open minded about HOW being about something completely different.
Funny, I was searching the old MAF threads and found the same quote just now. Was about to post it here, and saw I’d been beat! This actually shows why I thought it would be good to have a big “resource thread” of interviews to search through, and make life easier on those who try to answer questions like this! Interestingly, the same exact quote I found from that interview appears to have been from one of our very own here (not sure why Hurwitz has the byline on the story you found). Paul McCartney - The Official "Memory Almost Full" Album Thread (part 3) @Claudio Dirani, did Matt really lift your interview word-for-word and not give you credit? Wouldn’t surprise me!
Admittedly, you have struck a chord, because it happens so often with Beatles fans - you are not the first one to find such references. And I do not dismiss them all! But I do get upset, as you call it, because I feel it is cleary overdone and ignores so many other things. As for the meaning of HOW, I suppose it is rather about the meaning of life in general. But I admit not having attempted a deep analysis until now. And the problem for interpretation of course is that there are so many things we just don't know. We know about the Beatles in great detail, so we can find references. We do not know as many details ( and most are not as interested in ) about the 50 years that came after the split. He keeps his family life private, he does not talk about it in interviews, but I bet he writes about it in his songs. One example to illustrate what I mean: Has he ever mentioned that he was estranged from his son during the Heather Mills years? Nope, not hint. Yet James has talked about having had lost contact for a number of years and also about his battle with drug addiction. I am sure these issues are somewhere to be found in his dad's songs from that period ( Fine Line coming to mind), yet most people will only see lyrics that could be about John Lennon.
Interesting. I found it via Google, pretty quickly, actually. I didn't know that it has been from one of the fellow SHF members here. Nice idea about the "resource thread", there are so many interviews with such revealing statements, it would make absolutely sense to include them into one thread.
I take each song on a case by case basis. I’ll look at the use of language first, then song structure (obviously in conjunction with the music) and then I’ll contextualise it. Sometimes that process throws up a Beatles reference for me, sometimes it doesn’t. I knew about Paul’s estrangement from his son and have often spotted what I thought were references to his more ‘current’ personal situation. So not every song of Paul's is a 'Beatles' song. But you know, I actually disagree with the idea that Paul is done and dusted with his past and that he’s tucked the Beatles experience inside a metaphorical box all neat and tidy. Speculation territory now: life often isn’t that simple for anyone. He appears to be happy with his Beatles past now and he still thinks of John often - as he so often tells us! lol Even dreams of him. The more recent interview around Christmas (was it with Howard Stern?) has him playing a sketch of a song from his iPhone called John’s Boots which is about - you guessed it - John. He has said more than once that John still 'advises' him on whether a song is rubbish or not i.e he'll ask himself 'what would John think of this?' Which, you know, is normal. We don't stop thinking of our loved ones when they die. Not a day goes by when we don't think of them or are reminded of them. I would say that John, George, Linda and all the other people who have impacted Paul's life are at the forefront of his mind rather than at the back. And as Paul has admitted to being an intuitive writer, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if those people find their way into this songs even today.
I never said he was done and dusted with the Beatles. And yes, of course he still thinks and dreams about them, and they occassionally find their ways into his songs. John was important to him, still is, and he genuinely still loves him. But I also believe he gets mentioned as much in interviews for other reasons. He knows it gets headlines whenever he mentions John or the Beatles. He wants to drive it home that they were a team of equal talents. Unlike Linda, he never "replaced" John with someone else who could be hurt by the constant public references. It is safe territory - by talking endlessly about the distant past, he can avoid talking about other stuff. Every journalist happily falls for that.