Paul McCartney FLAMING PIE 20 years later

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by johnny moondog 909, Feb 13, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. bartels76

    bartels76 Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    CT
    So weird that they did nothing for its 20th Anniversary.
     
  2. Bemagnus

    Bemagnus Music is fun

    Flaming Pie contains some of my favorite Paul songs and most of the album has aged well
    Souvernir-A gorgeous RnB ballad with a great arrangement, nice melody and throaty vocals
    Little Willow-As heartfelt as Paul can be. This song are as good as it gets from Paul. Simple melody and an inventive Brian Wilsonesque arrangement
    Flaming Pie-An extremely catvhy rocker
    TheWorld Tonight -Such a pop-gem
    Beatiful night-The coda is woth the admission itself
    Calico Skies -Another acoustic gem that deserves to be called a classic.
    These are a few of my favorites on this brilliant album
     
  3. drbryant

    drbryant Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    I was in Los Angeles when this was released, and it was the last Beatles- related release where I bought everything. I bought the CD, the US vinyl and all the various CD singles and promos . I remember I bought a designate promo CD of the album at Record Surplus in LA and a few UK singles from the album at a store called Pepperland in Orange County. I lost interest in collecting after that, but those are great memories.

    It’s funny how I can remember stuff like that but sometimes forget the names of my nieces.
     
    Mechanical Man likes this.
  4. rswitzer

    rswitzer Forum Resident

    Location:
    Golden, CO USA
    I wonder if Paul wanted to use "Now & Then" on Flaming Pie?
     
  5. Champagne Boot

    Champagne Boot Ain't nothin' gonna break my stride

    Location:
    Michigan
    Still working on tracking down all that stuff--need like one or two more of the UK singles to have it all. All those variants...
     
  6. vegard martinsen

    vegard martinsen Forum Resident

    Location:
    Oslo Norway
    One of my many favourite McCartney albums. It was nominated for the Grammy for best album, but lost to Dylan's Time out of Mind.
     
  7. Bullis

    Bullis Forum Resident

    Location:
    Niagara County
    My favorites off of that cd
     
  8. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    The "Take It Away" podcast just released its 23rd episode, the first part of two on Flaming Pie.

    "This one is so big we turned it into two episodes. Chris and Ryan are joined by special guests Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor from the massive hit podcast Sodajerker on this two part mega-episode on 1997's Flaming Pie. Because of The Beatles Anthology, Paul McCartney refreshed his record making approach on this album. We touch on "Free as a Bird," "Real Love," "Now and Then," and dive head first into Flaming Pie and all of its extras. Go ahead. Have a vision. This is the one on Flaming Pie.
    June 4, 2018 at 1:00 AM
    231.7 MB (Audio)"
     
    theMess and 905 like this.
  9. Greg Smith

    Greg Smith Forum Resident

    Good album, slightly marred by Used to be Bad and Really Love You (though love the Twin Freaks version)
    Souvenir, Somedays, Calico Skies, Little Willow, Beautiful Night are great songs Beatle quality songs....Only Chaos since comes close to that quality.
     
    johnny moondog 909 likes this.
  10. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I interpret The Songs We Were Singing very differently than others on this thread. To my ears, he is looking back on his youth. Drinking, smoking and figuring out the world (partially in the form of navel gazing). But always coming back to the music.

    Like many others here, edit out Used To Be Bad & Really Love You and you have one of the five best McCartney albums.
     
    Lonecat and johnny moondog 909 like this.
  11. johnny moondog 909

    johnny moondog 909 Beatles-Lennon & Classic rock fan Thread Starter

    I'd take out Heaven On Sunday before Used To Be Bad. Other than that, I tend to agree.
     
  12. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    Aw! Heaven On A Sunday is one my favorite songs on the album. :(
     
    theMess and johnny moondog 909 like this.
  13. BluesOvertookMe

    BluesOvertookMe Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX, USA
    Stop messing with Used to be Bad; it's one of my favorites! :realmad:
     
    Neil Anderson likes this.
  14. johnny moondog 909

    johnny moondog 909 Beatles-Lennon & Classic rock fan Thread Starter

    Yeah that's cool. Melody, words, rhythm a complete & focused, well recorded song. Just not my cuppa tea.

    It's kind of a Beatley sounding album, with Paul, Ringo, Geo Martin, Emerick, Jeff Lynne, & then there's Heaven on Sunday. Like a mellow soul thang, ugh. Good song title.
     
  15. BZync

    BZync Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    McCartney is a craftsman, no doubt. Always has been. But from Tug of War through Off The Ground I feel like he was a bit too meticulous. Now that the Flowers In The Dirt deluxe has been released it becomes even more clear. The Elvis demos have amazing life and energy, but the finished versions lose a great deal of that life and certainly lose all of the urgency. I feel like he got his creative second wind with Flaming Pie. It doesn't sound over worked or over thought. It's loose and lively. The exception, to my ears, is Beautiful Night. Although I really like the song, I feel that it is the one track where his craftsmanship is on full display. It feels more considered and mapped out than any of the others. It's the one song that doesn't "fit". It would have been a highlight of Off The Ground, though. To my ears, it's kind of Com'on People Part Two. The rest of the songs are just as well crafted, but there is a looseness and spontaneity that is lacking in Beautiful Night.

    A lot of people are not crazy about Jeff Lynne's production, but I think he is key to Paul's sounding so free and easy.
     
  16. maccafan

    maccafan Senior Member

    One of McCartney's very best!
     
    theMess and Tord like this.
  17. KDubATX

    KDubATX A Darby Man Never Says When

    Location:
    Austin
    I bought it when it was released, but have not played or thought about it in a long long time. No offhand recollections bubble to the surface. Will revisit it eventually though.
     
  18. PaulKTF

    PaulKTF Senior Member

    Location:
    USA
    It's well worth revisiting, IMO. You might be surprised by how much you wind up liking it (I hope). :)
     
  19. JannL

    JannL Forum Resident

    I agree. "Somedays" is one of my favorite Paul McCartney songs.
     
    theMess and Tord like this.
  20. DolphinsIntheJacuzzi

    DolphinsIntheJacuzzi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Houston, TX
    This is the album that got me back into McCartney, after lapsing through much of the '80's. I eventually worked my way back and discovered the very-good (but not quite great) Flowers In the Dirt.

    But this album is still one of my all-time favorite Macca records. I might even rank it as high as #2 behind BOTR (Chaos & Creation would slot in at #3).

    It kicked off a great late-career renaissance that has continued with only a few hiccups (Driving Rain, Kisses On the Bottom) for the ensuing 20 years. I loved it then, and I love it now. One of my desert island discs.
     
    theMess and Sean Murdock like this.
  21. walrus

    walrus Staring into nothing

    Location:
    Nashville
    Other than a vinyl release, I don't know what kind of demand there would be for such a thing. I'm sure it will get re-released on vinyl at some point in the next year or two.
     
  22. Sean Murdock

    Sean Murdock Forum Intruder

    Location:
    Bergenfield, NJ
    I've loved Flaming Pie since it was first released, and my feelings haven't wavered once in 21 years. Other albums have come and gone, and Flaming Pie bumps around in my personal Top Five of Paul's solo albums -- but it never loses its coveted spot in the Top Five. I turned 29 in May 1997, and my wife and I had lost what would have been our first child to an ectopic pregnancy just weeks earlier, so the themes of love and loss struck more than a chord with me. I was also in full-blown Beatlemania mode after the Anthology, with a side case of Wilbury Fever -- so I was more than primed for Paul's first post-Anthology album. For a long "CD-era" album (i.e., more than 45 minutes long, just because), it is surprisingly durable and listenable; I even like "Really Love You"!

    The highlights for me are still "The World Tonight," "Somedays," "Calico Skies," "Little Willow" and "Beautiful Night"; of the others, I really don't actively dislike any of them. I wasn't crazy about "The Songs We Were Singing" at first, but it's grown on me some. I don't think it's a great opener, but then I don't see a better on on the album, so there it stays. "Young Boy" is fine and catchy, "If You Wanna" is good as an "archetype" kind of song, and "If You Wanna" is probably the song I like the least. Everything else is good to very good, to me. My relationship with Driving Rain is so conflicted because it followed Flaming Pie, and did so poorly (to me, in 2001). Chaos & Creation is the natural successor to Flaming Pie, and I have a playlist called "Flaming Chaos" that blends my favorites from both to make the best solo Beatles "album" of any of them, from any time.
     
  23. chickendinna

    chickendinna Homegrown’s All Right With Me

    Wonderful album. I’ll be thrilled if Egypt Station is half as good as Flaming Pie
     
  24. Doc Wilco

    Doc Wilco Active Member

    Location:
    Rio de Janeiro
    Love it! His drumming may not be precise, but I like his "sloppy" technique, it suits well all the songs!
     
    Sean Murdock likes this.
  25. theMess

    theMess Forum Resident

    Location:
    Kent, UK
    I adore this album; it is the first solo-Paul album that I ever heard, in fact the only solo songs of his that I had heard beforehand were 'Jet', 'Live And Let Die' and 'Maybe I'm Amazed', and I felt that this album comfortably held it's own against them.

    Paul sounds wonderful throughout, it's his last album where he still sounds so much like Beatle Paul to me. Even the songs that are more throwaway have a sense of fun to them, and although some sound like B-Sides, they in no way affect my enjoyment of the album. I do genuinely believe that such a long gap (at that time) between studio albums, and the Beatles Anthology, really did inspire him to write melodic, timelessly produced, Beatlesque material. The album's key songs for me are the classic McCartney power-ballad 'Beautiful Night', the baroque wonderful 'Somedays' and the three acoustic beauties, 'Calico Skies', 'Little Willow' and 'Great Day'. The title song showed that he could still write rollicking psychedelica, and 'Souvenir' and 'Heaven On A Sunday' are both very successful genre exercises that also remind me of the Beatles. He also rocks really well on 'The World Tonight' and shows his pure pop side with 'Young Boy'.
    I can imagine that if this album were sent back in time to 1968/1969, the Beatles would be fans of most of it, and completely recognise Beatle Paul as the writer.

    I really hope that Paul collaborates with Jeff Lynne again one day soon.
     
    streetlegal and Sean Murdock like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine