McCartney sessions with Trevor Horn and Steve Lipson (1987/1988)

In December 1987 and January 1988 Paul McCartney worked with Trevor Torn and Steve Lipson (The Buggles, Frankie Goes To Hollywood). With the help from drummer Chris Whitten, they recorded four songs: ‘Rough Ride’, ‘Figure of Eight’, ‘How Many People’and ‘Ou est le soleil?’. It was mainly synthesizers and drum machines.

There’s a 80-minutes cassette, dated January 21, 1988, that Paul apparently gave to Trevorn Horn. It comprises unreleased material recorded since Autumn 1984, with producer Phil Ramone and dance-songs recorded by Paul solo.

Here’s the tracklist:
Side 1: ‘Return To Pepperland’, ‘Love Come Tumbling Down’, ‘Christian Pop’, ‘Atlantic Ocean’, ‘Lindiana’, ‘I Love This House’, ‘We Got Married’, ‘Rough Ride’, ‘Figure Of Eight’
Side 2: ‘Squid’, ‘Big Day’, ‘Beautiful Night’, ‘Loveliest Thing’, ‘Love Mix’, ‘Peacocks’, ‘This One’

Two years later this cassette was released on the… ahum, unofficial cd Return To Lindiana, and later again as part of Pizza and Fairy Tales.

The sessions ended around this time.

A few days later, in February 1988, Paul started recording sessions with Elvis Costello. They had written a dozen songs together and the purpose was to co-produce them. Costello convinced Paul to get a Beatlesque sound, for the first time in almost two decades. ‘Everyone’s doing it, so why don’t you?’ Those sessions were with a classic band line-up: two guitars, bass, drums and piano.

Now, here’s what I was wondering: were those sessions with Trevor and Steve meant to finish the album with the unreleased songs (Let’s call it Return to Lindiana), rather then the start of the Flowers in the Dirt sessions.

And the Costello sessions were then for the next album, which would be all McCartney-MacManus.
When the co-production didn’t work out (Costello wanted a rather raw sound, Paul wanted it a bit more polished), Paul continued recorded without a exterior producer through April and then called in Mitchell Froom and Neil Dorfsman to finish it off, using songs from all the sessions including those with Horn and Lipson.

What do you think?

 

I'll admit, being both a Beatles-fanboy AND a ZTT fan, I was torn.
I pretty much assumed that it would be a 'carreer killer' for Trevor! Who knew he would move on to even bigger success!!

 

‘Rough Ride’ and ‘Figure Of Eight’ are the finished versions of these songs. Last one was later edited down for FITD album.

These tracks were recorded and produced by Horn/Lipson in the fall of 1987.

So it's strange to prepare for Trevor Horn this cassette, which features already finished tracks produced by him...

 

That's my point exactly: it seems that Paul wanted them to prepare an album out of these tracks and then move on to the Costello album. When that didn't work out, he added the tracks to Flowers in the Dirt.

 

Do we know for a fact that Paul gave the tape to Horn? If he did, that does suggest that he wanted some form of release for those songs.

I wonder if Horn didn't consider most of the material strong enough to release?

Either way, it is a very good thing that he started the sessions with Costello, which gave him a focus that he had been lacking.

 

The tracklist and date are mentioned in Eight Arms To Hold You,
It's strange that only two of the four songs recorded with Horn & Lipson are on it, while the date is definitely at the end of those sessions.

 

Hopefully we will find out plenty about these sessions, and perhaps answers to your points, when Flowers In The Dirt is released as the next entry in the Archive Collection series.

 

That's perhaps the set I'm looking most forward to. There's a few early versions of songs later re-recorded I sure would like to hear. Plus there's all the material from those sessions that got nixed (and later released on those Oobu Joobu cd's).
Here's hoping for a detailled book with that set.