Is Denny Laine really on Wings Wild Life album ?

Nice and interesting points. SPNW could had The vocal part recorded AFTER Imagine came out, Who knows...

 

Yeah I love all of Denny's vocal songs from Wings. And Holly Days is pretty cool too! I think I'd rank "Again and Again and Again" higher though as it's one of my favorties from that album (the video is cool too).

"Too Much In Love" and "Ask the People" remind me a little of Buddy Holly (well "Too Much in Love" for sure).

It's always been strange to me that his Japanese Tears album has been released and re-released again and again under different titles. But there's lots of other great tunes on that one too ("Clock on the Wall" especially although the "Say You Don't Mind" remake isn't as great as the original 60s version).

 

I never viewed "Wild Life" as an attempt to "smash the Beatles myth" at all - it was more Paul trying to do what he thought people wanted him to do. "McCartney" got criticized for being too "simple/ramshackle", so he did "Ram", a much more polished/"produced" record. He got criticized for making it TOO slick/polished, so he responded with "Wild Life", another "back to basics" effort.

John might've wanted to distance himself from the "Beatles myth", but I never got the sense that motivated Macca...

 

Oh, you could be right- after all the whole "Wild Life as Paul's attempt to smash the Beatles myth" is just a theory, but when you add in the fact that Paul didn't exactly fill his early Wings setlists with Beatles songs, that could be seen as an indication that he was trying to distance himself one way or another...my, my, how things have changed, eh?

 

One simple reason of not playing Beatles material in those early Wings tours was to avoid the wrath of the critics and press, who would have tore into Paul for doing those "sacred" songs. By not doing them, he lowered expectations. And that was why he toured only colleges/universities on that first "surprise" UK tour in early 1972, and then only played Europe---but not the UK---in the summer of 1972. He wasn't going to throw himself to lions on purpose. After all, the press and critics tore into him without doing Beatles songs; imagine how much more criticism he would have gotten had he done them.

 

Then again, it would have been interesting to see an encore of Bip Bop, Mary Had A Little Lamb, and Hey Jude...

 

I agree. McCartney has been asked about so many things over the years and his response is always something along the lines of "No, I don't really analyse stuff, I just do what I fancy at the time." I think it's too easy with hindsight to assume that there must have been some kind of plan or wider motive. I just don't think McCartney thinks that deeply. Helter Skelter was an attempt to record a really loud, dirty song because he'd heard that The Who had done something similar and liked the idea; he recorded Wild Life in five minutes because he'd heard Bob Dylan had done something similar and liked the idea...

 

"Now all the boys: bip bop, bip bop bop, bip bop bip bop bang.... Now just the girls, c'mon girls, bip bop, bip bop bop, bip bop bip bop bang"

 

Bob always recorded that fast. Trivia fact: he recorded his entire official output 1962-76 (16 albums plus) in the time it took the Beatles to record 'Sgt Pepper' (about 90 days).

 

I've never seen it, but didn't Paul do "Yesterday" and "Blackbird" on the James Paul McCartney special? That would have been the first time he dipped ino his back catalogue post-Beatles, no?

You could be on to something there...the motive is that there is no motive, although IMO McCartney is actually quite a bit deeper/complicated as a person than people would think.

Ah...the whole "I wrote 'Helter Skelter' to out rock The Who" story is another one of those bits of Beatles Lore I'm a bit skeptical about. I can't remember if it was on this forum or not, but the discussion was along the lines of "What Who song was McCartney trying to outdo with "Helter Skelter"?". As I recall, most people assumed it to be "I Can See For Miles", but I believe it was established that "I Can See For Miles"/Sell Out came out after "Helter Skelter" was originally recorded in July '68...and -the infamous 27 minute take three that is still MIA among the Great Unwashed aside- the slow, bluesy take 2 excerpt on Anthology 3 doesn't exactly out do The 'Oo, does it? IMO the only way Paul's "Helter Skelter" story holds water is if in between recording the original versions in July then he heard "I Can See For Miles", thereby inspiring the cacophonous remade album version of "Helter Skelter" The Beatles recorded in September '68.

Great story, though

That is completely f--king insane when ya think on it. True, but insane just the same...but then Dylan and The Beatles/McCartney took very different approaches to their art. The few occasions Bob has laboured over an album didn't really work out too well, or the album got hopelessly diluted as a result (Infidels, for example.). I think it was in one of the other Wild Life discussions where we more or less debunked Paul's whole story about "I wanted to make an album fast 'cos I heard Dylan did it".

 

I've always heard it as "bip bop bam," not "bip bop bang."

 

Yes --- and Michelle too.

 

And don't forget: The Rutles recorded their debut album in 20 minutes. And their second took even longer!!

 

You are in error here: I Can See For Miles came out in Sept/Oct 1967. Way before Helter Skelter was even written.

 

Were they actually performed in front of an audience though, or just the cameras? If not, then 'The Long And Winding Road' from the 'concert' segment of that show would have been the first time an audience would have heard solo Paul do a Beatles song (even though it was cut from the film).

Maybe those Beatles songs had something to do with Lew Grade (who was involved in the show and owned the Beatles publishing)?

 

I think Yesterday was live in front of an audience. Blackbird and Michelle were not; they were part of the medley with Paul playing guitar and Linda taking photos of him.

And yes, Paul had made a deal with Sir Lew Grade, so all was dandy enough (publishing-wise) for Paul to perform those Beatles compositions.

 

Yes, I am in error...my bad Oh well, it was all before my time anyway

I really need to see that JPM special one of these days...is it on You Tube or anything?

 

I've just tried to find 'Yesterday' from it (as I don't recall an audience being present, I wanted to check), but it's now blocked. Some of the show is up though.

 

There are many instances in the McCartney catalogue, where he chose to record fast rather than laboured. How many times has he sworn to the formula "not to sweat it off"? Wild Life, Wings At The Speed Of Sound, Снова в СССР, Off The Ground, Run Devil Run, Driving Rain, Electric Arguments...to name just a few were all recorded in about two weeks.

 

A couple of McCartney quotes about Wings/Wild Life from the Beatles Bible site, neither of which I knew:

"A couple of the tracks were from the Beatles days. I'm writing with Linda now and we're writing a little... I've drawn on my influences. I could never stop drawing on my rock 'n' roll influences. I'm drawing from all my influences since my ears started functioning."

I wonder which ones?

"I was thinking of getting another guitarist and I knew Denny and thought he was a good singer. I thought Go Now was fabulous. He was an old school friend of mine. When we evacuated during the war, we went to Birmingham and then he was Brian Hines, which is his original name, and we went around a bit. I met him later when he was in The Moody Blues. We [The Beatles] toured with them and this cemented our friendship."

Is Paul being literal here? Did he really know Denny Laine as a kid?

 

Yes, I also tried to check and that version of "Yesterday" seems to be missing from Youtube. So I really can't verify 100%.

 

I think Paul got totally mixed up, or he was totally misquoted. Denny was born in October 1944. I don't think that there were any more evacuations in the Liverpool area at that time (am I wrong?). Maybe Paul's family went to Birmingham sometime during the war, but did even Paul go, who was born in 1942. I don't recall that being mentioned in Lewisohn's Tune In. And would families be evacuated from one big city to another big city?? Wouldn't Birmingham be targeted too? I don't think Paul knew Denny as a kid. That would almost be an impossible coincidence.

 

Or it was just a bit of Macca PR at the time of forming the band.

 

It is a badly worded sentence in that quote (even if you disregard whether it is factual or not). Is the "we" (in the part: "we went around a bit") meant to be "Paul and his family" or "Paul and Denny"? I don't think a 2-and-a-half-year-old Paul and a 1-month-old Denny were going around a bit in Birmingham in late 1944.

 

If they did, maybe they wrote 'Bip Bop'?