Paul McCartney’s ninth solo studio album, Off The Ground, was released in the United States on 9 February 1993.
It was recorded in the wake of his extensive 1989-1990 world tour, and saw him record with a band for the first time since Wings’ 1979 album Back To The Egg.
Off The Ground failed to top any country’s album chart, but went top 10 in Australia, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
In the US it peaked at 17 on the Billboard 200 chart.
A two-disc set titled Off The Ground: The Complete Works was issued in Japan and the Netherlands. The second disc contained a further 11 tracks recorded during the album sessions, as well as the full version of ‘Cosmically Conscious’.
Off The Ground – The Complete Works featured the extra tracks ‘Long Leather Coat’, ‘Keep Coming Back To Love’, ‘Sweet Sweet Memories’, ‘Things We Said Today’, ‘Midnight Special’, ‘Style Style’, ‘I Can’t Imagine’, ‘Cosmically Conscious’, ‘Kicked Around No More’, ‘Big Boys Bickering’, ‘Down To The River’, and ‘Soggy Noodle’.
Also on this day...
- 2012: Paul McCartney’s star unveiled on Hollywood Walk of Fame
- 1990: Paul McCartney live: Worcester Centrum, Worcester
- 1972: Wings live: Nottingham University
- 1970: Recording: Whispering Grass, Have I Told You Lately That I Love You by Ringo Starr
- 1967: Recording: Fixing A Hole
- 1964: The Beatles’ first Ed Sullivan Show
- 1963: The Beatles live: Empire Theatre, Sunderland
- 1962: The Beatles live: Technical College Hall, Birkenhead
- 1962: The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (evening)
- 1962: The Beatles live: Cavern Club, Liverpool (lunchtime)
- 1961: The Beatles live: their first Cavern Club show
Want more? Visit the Beatles history section.
I’m one who prefers this album to Flowers, and realize grunge was big then which may have affected sales for this. Though I did like some of the flowers songs, but I really need to look for and get the ground Japanese complete set with the additional songs, most very excellent. I saw this and the earlier flowers tour and his voice was better on this tour. I think there’s some rare demos, pressings and additional singles, b sides and maybe ep releases for from this era and possibly from flowers era also which I’ve downloaded as someone sent them to me. This was the era of his MTV unplugged, the very first such event on that, which I greatly enjoyed though Clapton and Kurt were credited with more noteworthy performances.