A case for reevaluating Paul's (and the rest of The Beatles') post-Beatles careers | Page 2 | Fab forum

My two (extremely long and not entirely sure it will be cohesive) cents:
Paul had a great solo career – no doubt. We all agree on that. But I don't think that Paul's solo career came close to spectacular, for one reason – I need consistency! Consistency is something I need from all bands I like, but two types of consistency – consistency between albums, and between songs on one album (in quality). I prefer bands who put out consistent 8/10 albums, with constant 7/10 to 9/10 songs, to bands who put out crap albums but have 2 fantastic hits, or to the band who puts out one 10/10 album and one 4/10 album. And Paul gives me one type of consistency – album consistency. He puts out mostly 7/10 or higher albums. But he puts out the occasional fluff I will not tolerate. You Gave Me the Answer? Bogey Music? Not my cup of tea. When I saw this thread, I put on all my McCartney I had on my IPod on shuffle, and about one every 7 songs I'd have to skip the song. McCartney never had the drop in talent – his best songs in Wings were always as good as his Beatles best. So, I think his solo career is viewed properly – not spectacular, but definitely with moments of greatness. But (and I think Zig mentioned it in another thread – possibly Beat Post Beatles McCartney Songs), but why do we care if Paul's solo career is viewed properly? John's solo career was good – Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey are only good because of his death. We view things differently in different times – Zig above is correct. But the critics will come around. They did with John, they did with George. But the music stands as it stands – that doesn't change as time does, and if you love it, some guy's opinion shouldn't matter. I've stopped attaching weight to critics' opinion – it's meaningless to me, because they analyse music. We listen. We listen to see if we like – they listen to form an opinion to sell copies. And the simple, cute songs are lost on them. But please, don't make this debate personal – it's just opinions, after all. Including all of the above. Just an opinion – nothing more.

Edit: Paulsbass, during the time I wrote my post, has just graciously made sure it wasn't personal. I wrote my last sentence before seeing his two posts, so they are redundant. But they serve as a reminder.

Consistency is the problem i have with Pauls albums. For me on most albums you get say 2/3 of the songs that are really good leaning to excellent, half of the remaining 1/3 are good and the remainder i can give or take without much fuss (i think thats 1/6 left over). Obviously there are exceptions to that, for me these would be Driving Rain, Press To Play & Memory Almost Full which are all garbage, and the previously mentioned Give My Regards To Broad Street which has only No More Lonely Nights, everything else is the absolute nadir of solo-beatle crap (should add i havent heard Chaos and Creation because of listening and detesting DR and MAF) and possibly Pipes of Peace. (Do those maths add up?)

To me it appears that most of Pauls eighties output has been forgotten and is largely down to the mid-section where a lot of damage was done critically and commercially. Flowers in the Dirt helped repair some of the damage and then The Beatles Anthology helped a lot too, one example being it inspired Paul to record Flaming Pie which is one of Pauls strongest albums. It appears that Paul needs someone to bounce ideas off and be inspired by, outside the beatles he had wings where altho he was the dominant presence the other members helped as did being on tour - and its no-coincidence that without either of those his creative spark fell by the wayside.

Overall i just think a lot of critics and people come to Pauls catalogue with an already preconceived idea that his entire output is schmaltzy, sappy, cute but without depth, and generally lightweight. Which is all totally untrue.

As for John his first two studio albums are great and the next 4 never get above average. The songs themselves are generally good but the production for me sucks it all down to mediocre with only a handful of songs being decent the way they were released (Some Time being the exception – far too political and i dont believe John really bought into any of it). Double Fantasy/Milk And Honey (both come from the same sessions – Milk and Honey being unfinished) showed that John was rusty after being out for so long but that with time it would probably improve (tho there is no way that can be 100% sure).

And looking at that i think his music is overrated based on those 7 or 8 studio albums. For me a lot of Johns reputation is based on being viewed as the THE beatle, his amazing aura in interviews, the persona Yoko has created and 2 very strong albums and a large handful of great songs. (And before people rise up over that i love John and his music (tho not everything) just not how it was produced, the outtakes are fantasic and show just how darn good he trully was. And i hate how Yoko manages his catalogue and memory)

George's best works without any real doubt were the bookends to his solo career whilst alive; All Things Must Pass and Cloud Nine, 2 stunning albums up there alongside the best of anything John and Paul did (and i dont buy into the thinking of keeping some of the ATMP songs back, his creativity was flowing and it shows throughout.) Brainwashed is strong. However i dont find the others are that great, there are some fantasic moments in there just not that strong overall. Its sad that thats my viewpoint and yet still feel George is underrated, in my opinion based again on preconceived ideas held before people even turn his music on.

I havent heard enough of Ringo to go into his works.

Having viewed Give My Regards To Broad Street (can still taste it in my mouth – yech) it got me wondering if Paul has really helped himself in how people have viewed his output in the beatles.

Yesterday, Blackbird & Michelle (the last 2 as part of a medley with Bluebird and Heart of the Country) were performed during the '73 tv special 'James Paul McCartney'.

During the '75 and '76 world tours he played The Long & Winding Road, Yesterday, I've Just Seen A Face, Lady Madonna & Blackbird.

For the '79 tour there was The Fool On The Hill, Got To Get You Into My Life, Let It Be & Yesterday.

The aforementioned Give My Regards To Broad Street had Good Day Sunshine, Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, The Long And Winding Road, For No One & Here, There & Everywhere.

None are really hard rockers with only Got To Get You Into My Life and Lady Madonna being slightly more up tempo than the ballads. There was plently of scope in all of these to include I'm Down, I've Got A Feeling, I Saw Her Standing There or one of the other more lively songs. (Long Tall Sally was included in some of those but isnt a song composed by Paul.)

(Not sure if i have forgotten any others.)

This thread came up in the "unread posts" section. I composed my reply before realising the last post was two weeks ago. Apologies.

paulsbass said

The Walrus said

I'm not as well versed in Paul's solo career as John's, but I do own a copy of Wingspan. Frankly I think there's very little of merit on there, songs like My Love, C Moon, Junior's Farm, Another Day and The Back Seat Of My Car should not be appearing on greatest hits collections. There's a lot of forgettable tracks, then some good ones like Admiral Halsey, Bluebird, Too Many People and Man We Was Lonely. I also like Band On The Run, Live And Let Die and Jet. The only really exceptional track is Maybe I'm Amazed.

Paul has had a late-career rediscovery of his touch, just like John, George, Dylan and Bowie. However, I don't think his early solo stuff and his Wings career represented a dramatic decline from the late Beatle days. His contributions in 67 were generally fairly weak (fortunately that was balanced out by John peaking higher than any other songwriter peaked before or since that year), though there were exceptions. In '68 he wrote Hey Jude, Mother Nature's Son, I Will and Blackbird, as well as Helter Skelter and Back In The USSR, but the latter two received a lot of help from the other Beatles. He contributed a good number of excellent songs to the Get Back sessions, but he also contributed a load of rubbish. On Abbey Road, the medley is his main contribution and probably the best thing he ever did. Anyway, I think Paul's contributions to Sgt. Pepper, MMT, The White Album and Get Back/Let It Be are roughly on the same level as his early solo stuff, a few gems but a lot of poor songs.

John IMO had an excellent solo career.

 

See, this is the stuff that gets thrown at Macca on a regular basis…

I won't comment on it any further, it just makes me angry.

To each his own (still funny how someone would think of "My love" or "Back seat of my car" as forgettable while calling "Man we was lonely" a good song…).

Nothing wrong with different opinions and serious discussions, but how can you take someone seriously who claims that 67 Paul was generally "weak" – while he was the driving force of the best band in the world and made about 80% of one of the most important, acclaimed, creative, successful albums of all time…

See, Macca is one of my favourite songwriters. Behind John, Dylan, Bowie and Mercury by a noticeable distance, but ahead of the chasing pack containing the likes of George, Noel Gallagher, Brian May, Jagger/Richards, Ray Davies, Win Butler and Jack White. His contributions to Rubber Soul and Revolver were fantastic, probably as good as John's, and he kept popping up with further gems throughout the next four years at least. I'd quite happily go to a desert island with a double or triple album of songs written by Paul and no other music.

I am not throwing stuff at him, I genuinely believe he never again produced a whole album of quality music with the Beatles or immediately afterwards on the level of Rubber Soul and Revolver. A big part of that is that John stopped writing so many songs (largely because of his drug use) so he had to write songs of lesser quality to fill up the two Beatles albums for that year. In '67 and '69 he could easily have contributed half (or even a whole album in 69) of great music but in both years he had to write about an album and a half.

Pepper and 67. Getting Better and Fixing a Hole are nice enough songs but not outstanding, She's Leaving Home is very good musically but the lyrics aren't as good, When I'm Sixty-Four and Lovely Rita aren't very good at all. The Pepper songs are very creative and improve the album but standing alone aren't shining examples of creativity that could never be matched elsewhere. Similarly, Paul's contribution to ADitL. John's Pepper work (ADitL and Lucy aside) also isn't great. I understand the album was revolutionary etc. but that doesn't make it any better now. From MMT, I think The Fool On The Hill is a great song, and Your Mother Should Know is better than it is often made out to be, but the rest of Paul's stuff for that album is on the same plane as Lovely Rita. As for the singles, Hello Goodbye has some charm, and Penny Lane is brilliant. Compared to '66 or even '65, Paul's average song comes out a lot worse in '67 IMO and is at a level that a fair number of songwriters have reached rather than 5 or 6. Iif he'd only needed to write 6 or 7 then that would be different.

'68, every criticism levelled at Paul can be levelled at John. They both wrote a fair amount of rubbish. Paul wrote more songs, which naturally means he wrote more bad songs.

Let It Be is underrated and Paul's contributions are strong, but not on the godly level of 65 and 66. Abbey Road, I don't rate Oh! Darling or Maxwell's Silver Hammer much but the medley is godly. Put Let It Be in for Maxwell and Paul's contribution there is as good as any album ever.

As for those two songs, I think they're pretty good examples of stereotypical Paul songs, utterly drenched in sap and overproduced which ultimately removes the emotion it is meant to add. The Back Seat Of My Car's outro could have saved it but it isn't tight enough. Man We Was Lonely is much more intimate and emotional (it's just that emotion is weariness).

I'll admit that I don't know much about Paul's solo career. However, as I said, I have listened to Wingspan a fair bit. Either his song choices were dreadful or he spent a decade making largely unremarkable music. I cannot afford to go out and buy all his albums from that period and listen to them. However, I do like your YouTube links (except Give Ireland Back To The Irish which manages to make John's songs on the matter sound like Blood On The Tracks) so I might well buy Flowers In The Dirt and Off The Ground. I have also enjoyed several of Paul's more recent albums, especially Chaos And Creation. However, my post dealt largely with Paul's immediate solo career because that seemed to be what Michael was talking about. I did mention Paul's later career revival though.

I apologise if my lack of knowledge about Paul's career with and immediately before and after Wings offended you or made you angry, though I do think judging it on his greatest hits collection is fair game if that collection is of the quality of Wingspan.

paulsbass said

The Walrus said

Pepper and 67. Getting Better and Fixing a Hole are nice enough songs but not outstanding, She's Leaving Home is very good musically but the lyrics aren't as good, When I'm Sixty-Four and Lovely Rita aren't very good at all. The Pepper songs are very creative and improve the album but standing alone aren't shining examples of creativity that could never be matched elsewhere. Similarly, Paul's contribution to ADitL. John's Pepper work (ADitL and Lucy aside) also isn't great. I understand the album was revolutionary etc. but that doesn't make it any better now. From MMT, I think The Fool On The Hill is a great song, and Your Mother Should Know is better than it is often made out to be, but the rest of Paul's stuff for that album is on the same plane as Lovely Rita. As for the singles, Hello Goodbye has some charm, and Penny Lane is brilliant. Compared to '66 or even '65, Paul's average song comes out a lot worse in '67 IMO and is at a level that a fair number of songwriters have reached rather than 5 or 6. Iif he'd only needed to write 6 or 7 then that would be different.

I won't go into detail, let's just agree we don't agree on that period and the quality of Paul's work (although it DOES astound me that you don't like the orchestra crescendo and the brilliant piano work on ADITL plus his nice middle part, and let's not forget the transition with the Aaahs! .

Fair enough, you like the "kids and grannies" songs. Not remotely my cup of tea, but you're entitled to waste your time listening to them if you like (joking).

I don't mind Paul's middle contribution to ADitL, but I think it enhances John's parts on either side more than anything. I put the orchestral touches down to Martin in my head, and the piano to John (which to be quiet honest might be massively unfair, I just like imagining John playing piano there).