Your favorite Macca albums?

[Ivan May]

Since he is a bass player (and guitarist, and keyboardist, and drummer, and who knows what else...), I decided to ask what are your favorite albums by Sir Paul McCartney.

 

Of course Ram is his best solo album to date, but to say it is the best is a bit unfair. Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey is a great song, and Too Many People is as close to R&B as Macca's solo career came. I own it on vinyl.

 

I also own Band On The Run, Venus and Mars and London Town, and they are all good. I also own a few Macca singles.

 

Band On The Run was a great album, allegedly recorded in Nigeria and at Abbey Road. It also started the friendship between Paul and Denny Laine, who would eventually have a grudge to hold against the 2. Band On The Run, Jet, Mrs. Vandebilt--come on, how many of you don't start to smile when these songs play? If your parents (or grandparents) had this in their record collections, that meant they had some very, very highbrow tastes.

Venus and Mars (Not gonna lie, I own 2 copies of this record, as does my friend Ginny) is also great, with some good Rickenbacker werk from Macca and the songwriting of Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch (whose anti-drug song Medicine Jar would sadly foreshadow McCulloch's overdose in 1979 at age 26). Listen To What The Man Said and Rock Show deserved Top 40 hits, and Spirits of Ancient Egypt is psychedelic and very Wishbone Ash-esque. If you need to own one Paul solo album, it has to certainly be this one.

The Wings Over America concert tour film is also very good. I got the opportunity to watch it on Tubi last summer, and it has aged well. Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch also got to play some Fender Jazz Bass on the album. If interested in learning about the history of Jimmy McCulloch you should check out his book Little Wing, which details his McCartney tenure and untimely death.

 

London Town was also high charting, reaching #2 on the Billboard charts, and giving us tracks such as the title song, I've Had Enough, and my personal favorite, With A Little Luck, which topped the charts over here in America. Why Mull Of Kintyre didn't chart in America, however, does not compute, despite being a UK chart topper and one of the biggest selling UK singles.

 

 

One other interesting thing about the London Town album: it was recorded on a rented boat in the Virgin Islands. What other albums do you know of that were recorded in the middle of the Caribbean? 

The short art song, Backwards Traveller/Cuff Link, is not too dissimilar to the electronic album George Harrison made in the Sixties, whilst closing track Morse Moose and the Grey Goose sounds like Supertramp trying to record a celtic rock song.

 

Back To The Egg, Pipes of Peace and Tug Of War are also pretty good, but had the rather unfortunate timing of being made after Macca's drug bust in Japan, although utilizing synths like the CS-80 and OBX didn't help. I also think the death of John Lennon affected Paul creatively on those albums. Though, the fact that Louis Johnson, Jeff Porcaro and David Gilmour all play on a lot of Macca's Eighties output is a pro.

And if McCartney II taught us anything, it's that Macca was the best one-man band who ever existed.

 

I also liked Veronica, the tune that Elvis Costello cowrote and sang with Paul. Paul was once quoted as saying that working with Elvis Costello was like working with John Lennon all over again.

 

Macca is still influential, and if you like to hear Paul work wonderfully with other singer-songwriters, you should check out his interview he did with Taylor Swift:

 

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/paul-mccartney-taylor-swift-musicians-on-musicians-1089058/

 

On an unrelated note, it's amazing how much James Paul McCartney (Paul's son) looks just like him.

 

I would like to mention that my 3 favorite Paul albums are:

1. Venus and Mars

2. Ram

3. London Town, with Band On The Run being an honorable mention.

 

And I also hope you respect my views on McCartney.

[Mark Schmieder]

As I am currently in a tribute band that is about half Beatles and solo output, with an especially strong focus on Macca's songs, I am revisiting a lot of these songs for the first time in a while, being that I work crazy hours and am more of a producer than a consumer of entertainment. So it's interesting to see someone produce a list that is close to my own, even if I am inclined to question the timeline basis of some of the other comments in the post (I won't bother though).

 

One of the songs we practiced at my house last Saturday was Mrs. Vanderbilt, which I had somehow forgotten about! Such a fun song, with so many parts! We're also doing "Big Barn Bed" (from Red Rose Speedway but with an initial hint on Ram), and some other lesser-known songs. Every last one of them is a work of genius, with bass lines that always have something new to learn. Any time I want to woodshed my musicality on the bass, I head first for McCartney material.

 

I was lucky enough to grab a copy of Ram in Mono on vinyl during its re-release a few years back. I didn't think it was possible to improve on that album, but somehow the mono mixes manage to do that, or at least to present a different facet.

 

I have long preferred Venus and Mars to Band on the Run, in spite of some individual songs that are tops on the latter. I think it has to do with its energy and organic feel due to being a true band vs. lots of overdubs. Also, Jimmy McCulloch was my favorite Wings lead guitarist, just as he was Paul's favorite. Too bad about the opiates and ego.

 

For many years, London Town was in my top three, but not anymore, just because I feel it has some real clunkers on it that haven't improved with age -- especially its hit single, "With a Little Luck", which I might like at ⅓ its recorded length. Not enough of interest to drag it out, and I'll take "Mull of Kintyre" (which we perform) any day. Strange that it was a worldwide mega-hit except in the USA. I think some pressings of London Town included the Mull of Kintyre single?

 

I would put "Back to the Egg" in its place. A work of genius for sure, and I love every song plus the variety and how Macca took on the New Wave movement but made it his own. This was another album that came out at the same time as a top single that wasn't on the album, which I also love: Goodnight Tonight c/w Daytime Nighttime Suffering (which I prefer to the A-side). I also love this Wings lineup, and Laurence Juber later became a "local" (before the pandemic threw me to the east coast) in the SF Bay Area.

[Mark Schmieder]

Forgetting albums for a moment, I think my favorite non-album single track may well be "Junior's Farm", which just grows on me more and more the older get, likely because my musical vocabulary is a lot larger now and thus I have a much deeper appreciation for the Nashville scene (and Carl Perkins), than I did back in 1974.

[Dave Bryce]

For me, there's always been something extra special about Venus & Mars.  I also prefer it to BOTR.  Not just the recording - better songwriting and arranging, IMO.  

 

dB

[Mark Schmieder]

McCartney III Imagined arrived today; I didn't even know about it until accidentally spotting a review on UK Guardian or some other site I visit now and then. Amazing album, but I don't know where the original is, as I have yet to unpack CD's at my new house, so I can't "compare", nor do I care to. Whether these are "far removed" from the original album or not, it's an inspiring album that sounds thoroughly modern without being patronizing in any way, and the co-stars are all brilliant choices.

[Mark Schmieder]

I have an apparently rare sheet music book from the late 70's that was self-published by MPL Communications. We started using it at practice sessions today. It is Wings Complete and includes songs not by McCartney as well as B-sides like The Mess. Not sure when or where I found this book but it was in the early to mid 80's.

[Paul K]

I do "Another Day" in my solo act.  I like playing it, it's a great song.  But I hear crickets.  It's a tune I'll play when there's a slim crowd and so not a lot of background noise; it needs the sonic space for nuance or else it doesn't sell.