"Motor Of Love," "Temporary Secretary," and "You Gave Me The Answer" are some of my very favorite McCartney songs! haha I've never heard "Freedom."
A quick response to 9/11. It debuted at the Concert for New York. McCartney decided that the response was strong enough to pull "From A Lover To A Friend" as lead CD single and replace it with "Freedom" — with proceeds going to the fund. The single failed to chart. He also added it to Driving Rain, but by that time the printed material had been run — so the decision was made to make it a "hidden" track. Capitol added a slipcase with an image from the tour on the front to copies in 2002 so that buyers could know "Freedom" was on it. "Freedom," incidentally, was pulled from the Back In Europe 2003 set list and replaced with "Birthday" because the U.S. response to the attack was no longer viewed favourably… and the song "Freedom" was associated with that.
Nope, all of them have it. In fact, the slipcover edition is somewhat rare, so getting a copy of Driving Rain with "Freedom" listed somewhere is pretty cool.
That's the only one I have. Bought and unlistened to since 2002. Still-sealed on my shelf. Just never got around to it.
I have to think Freedom is his worst song. The sentiment is misguided and differs from the attitude in basically the rest of his catalog. That should have been a sign. It didn’t even bait that many sales and yet McCartney is selling out peace and love with “well, maybe war is not so bad after all.” It was poorly thought out and probably took 15 minutes to write.
"Lonely old people" is upbeat? (I know, it ends with the hot boogaloo of the Crossroads theme, I just count it as a closer to the same song)
Exactly the point I was making. From my listening, he fairly often ends with some kind of musical coda. Crossroads is the closer, as is I've Only Got Two Hands, as is Nod Your Head. As was of course Her Majesty. Almost as if to say, modestly, take me seriously, but not too seriously.
This release makes me feel for Denny and Linda. They both had in my opinion their best lead vocal songs of their entire Wings careers unreleased in any formal Wings presentation for over 45 years.
We already have our own song, and we're quite happy enough with that one, thank you! Though Neil Hannon manages to squeeze in a mistake there. Tsk tsk.
This was a mercy killing. I love Paul but "From a Lover..." was possibly the worst lead single choice ever for him. "From a lover..." is great but it's no attention grabbing first single.
Denny Laine seems to have some conflicting thoughts about Wings and his role. Denny Siewell in the WL and RSS books also speaks of a band feel to the group as opposed to Denny's Austin Chronicle comment. Denny Laine, Austin Chronicle April 26, 2018: ". . . Wings was never a band. I’m sorry, it wasn’t. It was a Paul McCartney project. You have to know that. We were known as Paul McCartney & Wings, but we weren’t actually a band. We weren’t like the Moody Blues, all equal members. It was Paul’s band. That’s the end of it. Although I stuck around for all those years, it wasn’t a group. In the public eye it was, but in business, we weren’t. It was the Paul McCartney project." Denny Laine in the RRS book, interview date unknown: "Paul didn't tell me what to play . . . in those days, we were just in a studio as a band." I know there isn't much context from his quotes in the WL and RRS books but they do seem at odds with his newspaper statement. I guess things morphed quickly after Wild Life? It would be interesting to know when Denny gave his remarks for the Archive sets. I'm assuming it was all done in one sitting.
I don’t see any conflict either. I listened to a long DL interview recently and he said much the same. He was free to contribute without too much Paul direction, except when Paul had a vision. And the guitar players were free to work out their parts. As for the band comments, he’s referring to the true band concept....that it’s a democracy and all have an equal vote, etc. he’s quite right that Wings was not that. It was Paul’s record contract.
Not that it matters, because pop radio wouldn’t have played anything from the album, but I would have released Magic as the first single from Driving Rain, followed by Your Loving Flame.
Agreed you can feel like a band that has fun recording and performing together, but still not be a democracy when creating new material.
One word: context. This was Paul's first true solo album after Linda's death — Run Devil Run had been conceived when she was alive, and was a celebration of other people's music. "From A Lover To A Friend" is all about her, and the critics would have eaten it up. It's also technically much stronger a piece, and might have been praised for that. But I agree with the previous poster that nothing was going to get much radio play anyway — the last new McCartney song to get regular play was likely "Hope Of Deliverance."
