Current Paul McCartney news thread (interviews, articles, miscellaneous)

Enjoying Paul McCartney Lyrics playlist on Spotify and looking forward to finally read the complete lyrics of "Check My Machine" when the book comes out.

 

Paul is interviewed in a new documentary about Billy Connolly Billy Connolly: It's Been a Pleasure... - Watch episodes

 

Yes, Sir Paul must write a tribute to all dead rock stars to get his promotion from Sir Paul to Saint Paul. Give me a break. Lol

 

Paul & Linda McCartney's 'Ram' @50: Macca Magic or Puerile Pop? - Best Classic Bands

"Ram, on the other hand, was an attempt to flex his musical muscle through the use of ornate arrangements and a group of hired hands, plucked mostly from the New York studio scene, where the sessions were based. While the album was mostly packed with catchy melodies in true Macca tradition, it was widely derided as being too cloy, too cutesy and wholly inundated with puerile pop and pretension."

 

Today it's 35 years of Press To Play ...
I just honored the day by listening to the album. It was the first McCartney album I heard and bought (on cassette) while it was still new. It has the other mix of Press, I was a bit confused when I got the CD and it sounded different. I preferred the mix I knew. Today I cannot tell, have not heard and compared in a very long time.
Press To Play was a formative album for me, those mixing drawings were and are a joy. I used to sit down, listen and try to identify the elements from the drawings within what I heard. I always joke that PTP therefore taught me to appreciate individual sounds, trying to trace mixing decisions.
And ... I still like the album. Not my favourite, but still loved.

 

... Oh, and Footprints from Press To Play still is one of my favourite McCartney songs.

 

I wonder if Paul realizes how big of a fanbase Press To Play has. I think a lot of people might be afraid to admit it.

It's like that @Frank guy liking RAM. Just come out and say it already, Frank!


No way Paul'd have trouble selling a 12,000 set run of the Press To Play Archive. That seems to be the run quantity on a lot of these sets give or take a couple thousand and we know they all sell out in a reasonable amount of time.

 

Press to Play was the first contemporary Beatles related album I bought, I was just old enough. I still love it.

I think the best move MPL could make is create a 1984- 1988 archive edition.
Under this branding one wouldn't need to explicitly refer to Broadstreet or Press to Play, which because of bad press over the years and in spite of being quite good, have tarnished reputations.

An '84 - '88 boxset would give us genuine hits: Frog Chorus, No More Lonely Nights, Once Upon Long Ago, Spies Like Us;
we could also get Let it Be from Live Aid (with the vocal overdub and with the performances from Prince's Trust.
Best yet, a remastered version of Broadstreet; and remixed (and expanded editions of) Press to Play and CHOBA B CPPP

I think reframing the era between Pipes and Flowers would do a great job at helping make sense of that time, and allowing audiences to discover the music divorced from its reputation.

 

Ya know, I think you have a fine idea there.

Sounds a lot like how they dealt with Wild Life and the lesser album stigma it had . . . until the archive came along.

 

He’s already been anointed St Paul by many here anyway

 

Sadly, Paul himself seems to have a dim view of it because it was a commercial failure. Throw in the high numbers of people who diss it because of the '80s production and others who just lazily dismiss it because, you know, it's received wisdom, and it's probably the archive set that - along with Broad Street and Driving Rain - MPL has least interest in doing. But I'm sure the fanbase is big enough to make a profit on it. After all, I wasn't sure we'd ever get Wild Life (and that had far less in the way of possible bonus content to hook people in).

I'm glad there are a few of us in the PtP fan club. It was the first 'new' McCartney album I ever bought, and it remains a favourite. I'd certainly rank it higher than anything he's done since Flaming Pie (and there's nothing wrong with those albums). What always bemuses me is when people describe it as an experimental album, like McCartney II. Apart from Pretty Little Head, I don't hear it like that at all -- I think it's filled with great melodies and all the usual classic Macca hallmarks, just with that mid-'80s sheen. Remembering back, I think Paul's face just didn't fit at that time (many of his peers - Bowie, Elton, the Stones - also crashed around that period).

 

I love Press to Play, too. No knock against it that it's lesser than RAM - everything is.

I'd be first in line to buy a Press to Play archive. If they stick the warmed over Beatles / Tug of War cover album and the frog thing in there as a requirement for getting the good album and then charge me more for my trouble, not so much.

Ha ha who am I kidding - I haven't bought a physical release of anything since the V&M/SoS archive days. Physical media is dead. I'll stream the heck out of the Press to Play tracks and give the finger to the BS tracklist on my screen.

 

Like you, despite my heavy use of this forum, I never buy any of these things. Ever. I do keep up though. More than happy to stream, and really within a week of release date, because I am a thorough searcher, I've heard it all.

 

I am so in for a Press To Play archive. Almost more so then a London Town/Back to the Egg set. Don’t get me wrong, I really want archives of those as well, but those two seem inevitable. Whereas the existence of a P2P set would give me more faith this series will continue beyond LT/BTTE. Plus a P2P set should have some killer extras audio and video wise.

 

And yet... one could've made the same arguments about Wild Life and McCartney II, but look how they turned out [and how they effected perceptions of their respective albums]....

I wouldn't call myself a fan of PTP, but I do recognize it does have some good tunes on it, buried under all that "sound". It's definitely a step up from Broad Street!

 

It makes me smile to see how many here share my own experience of buying Press to Play as my first "real time" McCartney album

 

Very nice to see this, I caught one of these, including Hugh's autograph.

“Mm, wonderful stuff this, Agnes.”
“Aye, it’s wonderful stuff.”

 

Well, thanks to your recommendation, I've just gone and listened to this and wow! I did give Press to Play a go when I first started getting into Paul's discography, but obviously not enough of a go since I missed this little gem. I will certainly try the whole album again.

 

Great idea!

 

... and I'd still like to make the inclusion of mixing drafts mandatory. The only time I have seen somthing alike are the John Lennon SDLs.
I cannot stress enough how important their inclusion into the artwork of PTP have been for me. I have been searching for my CD today just for those. After PTP it was Tears For Fear's Seeds Of Love that made a huge impression on me, with quite a lot of intense listening sessions. There I applied what I had learned with PTP, and it was and still is a lot of fun. At the time I had no idea what Gated Guitar or Gated Vocal Panning meant, what Moog was, Bass Sequencer, BV, B/D, Rim Shot, Toms (who was Tom, and why was he mentioned nowhere ...?) ... It all was very much trying to make some kind of sense by listening and trying to guess what could it be. 35 years ago, me 15 years old, nowhere to go and ask questions as nobody knew anyway. But it was great how over the years I could fill in more and more gaps. Oh, B/D is Bass Drum, BV Backgound Vocals ... Gated xy ...
The lyrics had a similar effect. I could hardly make sense of anything. It was my third year learning English at school, therefore there was not much to fall back on. "The old hand throws a crumb." For some reason that sentence has burned itself in as especially striking. I suppose I was glad I understood it, and ... it is a really evocative line, beautiful. But Move Over Busker, I could not make any sense of neither the title, nor the song itself. Well, to be fair, I can't until today, but I think that it may be beside the point of these lyrics, trying to find a deeper meaning ... just some more or less interesting words and images.
Oh, and what do a blazer and grey flannel trowsers have got to do with anything?
I was really working hard with this album. At the time I only had a small dictionary, it was all ... time consuming and yielding only few really usable results.
But I knew I loved the album. Told everyone who did not want to know to give it a listen. To me it was an absolutely exciting experience.
Today I can understand that people have difficulties with the production. I cannot understand why some people do not like songs like Talk More Talk, Good Times Coming, Pretty Little Head. Yes, the latter is a bit strange, but I love it just because it is so. The single version? Nah. Nice to have, but ...

I do like the album, and I do have some fond memories.

PS:
take 444 page 333
Music is ideas.

 

How do you know you got one with Hugh's autograph? They went on sale just this morning?

 

The first 500 are signed by him, the item description said so. It said also, it would change when those 500 are sold. It no longer has that description. On the contrary, now the corresponding article says those 500 are sold.

 

And that verdict remains correct.