My Top Ten solo McCartney guitar solos

I don’t know about you, but I love a good guitar solo. There’s something about the way it breaks up a song, adding a splash of beauty or a burst of fire, sometimes emphasising or expanding the theme of the track and sometimes taking you on a detour from it, giving you a breather before plunging you back in. When played well and used judiciously, it can be an integral part of a song, so much so that you can’t imagine it without the solo. The Beatles were masters of the guitar break, even when their musical palette began to extend beyond their original two guitars/bass/drums format. Usually performed by George, but occasionally by Paul or John, their solos were often perfectly pitched components of their material, usually avoiding the flashy pyrotechnics of contemporary guitar heroes such as Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton or Jimi Hendrix. The Fabs’ guitar parts were there to service the song, not the other way around, and there are scores of great examples throughout their catalogue, from ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ to ‘Free as a Bird’. And powerful solos remained a feature of their solo work, with Macca’s output producing more than its fair share of sublime six-string moments.

Playing his favourite Les Paul guitar onstage, 1989

In compiling a list of my favourites, I’ve opted to draw on the best solos featured on his post-Beatles records, regardless of who played them. And Paul has worked with a number of great guitarists, both regular collaborators in Wings and his other backing bands, and via occasional hook-ups with famous pals like Dave Gilmour, Pete Townsend and Steve Miller. All of these have contributed some excellent work but, of course, McCartney’s a none-too shabby player himself and has just as often handled lead guitar duties. For all his prowess as a bassist, it’s something he really loves – as he said when discussing the bluesy track ‘C Link’ on 2018’s Egypt Station: “I’m still thrilled with having the privilege of being able to go up to an amp, turn it on, get my guitar, plug it in and play it very loud. It’s a thrill, and it’s never stopped being a thrill.” His playing is very distinctive and quite different to George Harrison, who was known for painstakingly crafting his guitar parts and practicing them until they were as good as could be. Paul is more someone who goes for ‘feel’, improvising, relying on his musical impulses and aiming for spontaneity. And when it comes off, as we shall see with some of the examples below, he’s more than capable of capturing lightning in a bottle. It’s ironic, considering one or two bandmates down the years have accused him of overbearing prescriptiveness about what he wanted them to play; I imagine they were probably also a little peeved that he was ultimately often better at their job than they were.

Still a guitar freak in 2020

When considering the effectiveness of a guitar solo, it’s impossible to ignore the context of the arrangement it sits within – another thing Macca excels at. Most solos in his music, but especially the best ones, are nestled within a perfectly complementary musical setting. The song tees up the lead guitar to have the maximum impact; it’s not just another part of the track, it’s often the core of it, the moment where the number explodes into life or is elevated to another level, helping to build emotion and sometimes squeeze out even more pathos as the song draws to a close (although it doesn’t make my list, check out Gilmour’s performance on 1989’s ‘We Got Married’ as a terrific example of all this). Context is everything, as I will discuss. There are many great solos from throughout his career which didn’t quite make the cut – honourable mentions (all played by the man himself) include the dippy, dreamy part in ‘Man We Was Lonely’ (1970), the stinging, all-too brief sequence which closes out 1973’s ‘No Words’, the stylish acoustic performance in ‘Dress Me Up As A Robber’ (1982) and the playful, irresistible break in ‘Press’ (1986). But – air guitars at the ready – here are the ones, in order, I consider to be the best.

10. ‘Biker Like An Icon’ (Paul is Live, 1993)

Robbie McIntosh, who worked with Paul from 1988-93, is my favourite of the lead guitarists from McCartney backing bands down the years, and he was probably at his best in the live arena (he even had solo spotlight moments in the two world tours he was part of). Nowhere is this more evident than on this rocking Off The Ground number, which really came to life on stage. Robbie’s growling slide part drives the entire song, but when he cuts loose for the solo, the effect is just exhilarating. It’s an edgy, snarling performance which cranks up the drama of the lyric, and ends with a delightful Harrison-esque flourish which sets up Macca to scream his heart out on the final choruses. Fabulous.

9. ‘The Note You Never Wrote’ (Wings at the Speed of Sound, 1976)

This is a curious track all round, a eerie, elusive story-song written by Paul but sung by Denny Laine over a desolate, low-key arrangment. Low-key that is, until to you get to its brilliant centrepiece, a dazzling solo by Wings Mk.2 guitarist Jimmy McCulloch. In fact, the whole number seems to be geared around that moment, especially the middle section which slowly, wordlessly builds up to it. But, boy, is it worth the wait – a yearning, emotional tour de force, with some of those unexpected, heart-rending notes Jimmy could often pull out of his back pocket (another example is coming up). You see Paul playing lead guitar on a clifftop in his 1987 video for ‘Once Upon A Long Ago’, but – with this tune’s coastal-flavoured lyric – that’s also the perfect visual setting for the haunting, windswept solo here.

8. ‘Good Times Coming/Feel The Sun’ (Press to Play, 1986)

Regular David Bowie collaborator Carlos Alomar plays lead on this, and it’s so good. Awash with 1980s production values, this track mixes loose, reggae-style verses and an infectious, galloping chorus before falling into a hazy, dreamlike middle section. You wonder where it is going, and then the solo erupts out of nowhere, like a sharp stab of reality intruding on proceedings – a theme echoed by the warning in the final verse which follows (“That was a golden summer/Before the war…”), brilliantly undercutting the bouncy optimism of the earlier lyrics. It’s expert songcraft, and Alomar’s deftly-played, swooping-and-climbing solo is key to its success.

7. ‘Letting Go’ (Venus and Mars, 1975)

Another shining moment for Jimmy McCulloch, perhaps his best on a Wings record. Compared with offerings from other axe heroes of the day, it’s a tight, economical performance, and yet he manages to express so much in it. He perfectly captures the romantic-yet-raunchy swagger of the song, and the final pulsating notes when the horn section powers in behind him are jaw-droppingly good. On the live version of the track (available on 1976’s Wings Over America) he also gets to reprise and extend his solo over an extended finale which, along with Paul’s astonishing vocal, ranks among the highlights of Macca’s live career.

6. ‘The Man’ (Pipes of Peace, 1983)

I’ve previously described Paul’s solo in this as joyous, and it really is. We get a taste of it in the intro section, but the fun really begins when it returns midway through the song. Heralded, as at the start, by a stirring burst of strings arranged by George Martin, it’s a perfect fit for the upbeat, life-affirming nature of the tune. Macca’s playing is so fluid and super-melodic, and I love the Isley Brothers-style tone he gets out of his guitar. It’s a giddy, sparkling bit of music in its own right, guaranteed to lift you up on the darkest of days.

5. ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ (McCartney, 1970)

This had to be in here. It may not be a particularly complex guitar break, the best recorded or the most technically proficient, but it oozes heart and passion. Arriving quite early in the song (like he can’t wait to express himself), it seems to encapsulate the sense of wonder and freedom he had discovered with Linda and the kids away from the madness of The Beatles. As with his vocal on this track, there’s something really deep and primal about his playing, but it also provides a breather before the second pass at the gut-wrenching “Maybe I’m a man…” passage. And, as if to seal the deal, he repeats and then expands the solo during the song’s glorious coda. Magical. All of his regular live guitarists have done this magnificent part justice in concert, but none have ever truly matched it.

4. ‘Too Many People’ (Ram, 1971)

Released at the height of the public spats between the now ex-Beatles, this saw Macca take aim at – among other things – John and Yoko’s “preaching practices”. But the anger and resentment he clearly felt at this time isn’t confined to the lyric and his impassioned vocal; it really boils over into his guitar playing. The strident solo at the centre of the song is good, but he unleashes all his fury and frustration into the lengthy closing section (starting just after the three-minute mark) with some extraordinary extemporisation, his instrument becoming almost like a weapon. Matched by the scratchy, spiky tone he gets from his guitar, it’s a brilliant instance of how music can articulate feelings without a word being sung.

3. ‘My Love’ (Red Rose Speedway, 1973)

An example of where Paul didn’t know best. At a recording session with a live orchestra on standby, this famously saw Wings’ first lead guitarist Henry McCullough request to change the solo he had been playing (presumably at Macca’s instruction) for months on stage and in rehearsal. He thought he could come up with something better and, if you listen to that original live version from 1972, there is no question that he did. It’s simple but beautifully constructed, stretching out the song’s core melody in tender, graceful fashion, in perfect harmony with the lush strings cradling it. It’s a solo worth humming in its own right, it’s so good. McCullough’s bluesy style probably wasn’t generally a great fit with Paul (he left Wings not long after this was released), but his presence in the band was justified by this performance alone.

2. ‘No More Lonely Nights’ (Give My Regards To Broad Street, 1984)

While I’ve never been a big fan of Pink Floyd, I’ve always liked Dave Gilmour’s guitar playing, and he brings something special to this classic McCartney ballad. You may have seen the fireworks which light up the London night sky in the video for the song; to me, Gilmour’s solo delivers a similar effect in the tune’s middle section, his soaring, elegant playing lifting the whole enterprise up towards the heavens. But, like ‘Too Many People’, his masterful performance on the extended ‘outro’ is perhaps even better. It helps take things in a different direction altogether, adding muscle and grit, and bringing out the melancholy quality lurking at the heart of the song.

1. ‘House of Wax’ (Memory Almost Full, 2007)

It’s remarkable that Paul produced what I think is his greatest solo guitar performance so late in his career; and, not only that, he gave us two for the price of one. This brooding masterpiece sets its stall out from the opening, disquieting piano chords, and slowly builds with a menacing, string-laden arrangement, obscure lyric and tortured vocal. By the time you get to the first guitar break, the intensity is almost unbearable, and his raw, jagged playing is like lighting bolts tearing through a storm at sea. But when he returns later for a second run at it, he sounds almost unhinged, and the effect is near apocalyptic. It blew my mind when I first heard it, and still does today. For me, ‘House of Wax’ remains Macca’s best song of the 21^st century (to date), and his astonishing guitar part on it is among the main reasons why. Don’t take my word for it, just listen.

80 magical musical Macca moments (part two)

So last time out I listed 40 examples of McCartney genius across his career and, to mark his 80^th birthday, here are another 40 more. I must admit, once you start looking at this kind of stuff it is a little bit like going down a rabbit hole. You start to think: “But what about that bit? Or that little section there?” And unpicking some constituent parts of songs I guess kind of misses the point, because it’s how he weaves them all together to form a magnificent whole which is perhaps his greatest talent of all. He sees – or rather, hears – the big picture, in a way so few people can. Nonetheless, here are some more vignettes and little details which, for me, help to illustrate why he’s the best.

Again, they’re in no particular order, and don’t necessarily reflect his very finest songs. They’re just moments which always make me go “Wow!” So happy birthday, Macca. Let’s hope there are a few more of these still to come.

41. The way he growls “Eat like a hunger” on ‘Oo You’ (McCartney, 1970). Definitely got something on his mind about Linda there…

42. The synthesiser lines which come out of nowhere and illuminate the closing passage of ‘Mamunia’ (Band on the Run, 1973).

Recording ‘Band on the Run’, 1973

43. His stinging guitar solo (not to mention his astonishing bass playing) in ‘Taxman’ (Revolver, 1966), adding even more bite to the song.

44. The beckoning “Well well, oh yeah” intro which draws you into ‘Tiny Bubble’ (Driving Rain, 2001), the aural equivalent of easing into a warm bath. And the song delivers on its promise.

45. The line “Like gravy, down to the last drop/I keep mopping her up” in ‘She’s My Baby’ (Wings at the Speed of Sound, 1976).

46. The barrage of disorienting synthesisers which kick in when he sings “But me, I’m losing my mind” on ‘Looking at Her’ (New, 2013).

47. The heart-melting way he croons “Goooood-byeyeyeye…bye bye” at the end of his demo of ‘Goodbye’ (Abbey Road deluxe, 1969) for Mary Hopkin.

48. That snarling, monster guitar riff which punctuates ‘Souvenir’ (Flaming Pie, 1997).

49. His searing, breathtaking vocal which brings ‘Back Seat of My Car’ (Ram, 1971) to a stirring conclusion, as primal as anything John was doing at the time. I swear that voice could move mountains.

50. The way he undercuts the bouncy optimism of ‘Good Times Coming/Feel The Sun’ (Press to Play, 1986) with a cautionary final verse: “That was a golden summer, before the war/They laughed a lot that summer, happy at the good times coming…”

51. The fragile, delicate arrangement of ‘Hand in Hand’ (Egypt Station, 2018), topped off by his close-miked, naked vocal.

Blowing his own trumpet – recording ‘Flowers in the Dirt’, 1988

52. His keyboard intros to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (Beatles single, 1967), ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ (Sgt. Pepper, 1967) and ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ (The Beatles, 1968). While he didn’t write any of the songs, it’s impossible to think of any of them without those scene-setting contributions.

53. The full-throated finale to ‘Junior’s Farm’ (Wings single, 1974), veering away from the nonsense lyrics of the main tune to a pining, misty-eyed plea for a return to happier times.

54. His effortlessly graceful melody for ‘My Valentine’ (Kisses on the Bottom, 2012). The second verse, when the strings creep in, is just sumptuous.

55. The scorching lead guitar battle which erupts in the live version of ‘Sgt. Pepper’ (Tripping The Live Fantastic, 1990). When I first saw him live, this blew my mind.

56. The raunchy way he holds the note at the end of the line “Never knew that love could fill you up” in ‘What’s That You’re Doing?’ (Tug of War, 1982).

57. The tear-jerking clarinet which underscores the “Looking like a rag doll/Singing like a skylark” middle section of ‘Mama’s Little Girl’ (b-side, 1973). How does he think of stuff like this?

58. The swirling cascade of acoustic guitars which sweep in on the line “Up and down your carousel” in ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ (London Town, 1978).

59. His bassline in ‘Something’ (Abbey Road, 1969). A work of art in itself, yet it enhances the rest of the song without overshadowing it.

60. The spectacular vocal leap midway through ‘Through Our Love’ (Pipes of Peace, 1983), which ushers in the orchestra and propels the track into the stratosphere.

Quiet: genius at work. Making ‘Sgt. Pepper’, 1967

61. The big band tease he throws in at the end of ‘You Want Her Too’ (Flowers in the Dirt, 1989), almost as if to show you how good he is. See also the brief but delicious guitar solo which closes out ‘No Words’ (Band on the Run, 1973).

62. His charming “We should do this more often” during the instrumental break in ‘You Gave me The Answer’ (Venus and Mars, 1975).

63. The plaintive, moody arrangement he layers over a bed of beguiling harmony vocals in ‘Kicked Around No More’ (b-side, 1993).

64. His two ferocious guitar solos in ‘House of Wax’ (Memory Almost Full, 2007), like lightning bolts ripping through a storm at sea.

65. His wild, sexually-charged vocal tour-de-force in ‘Clarabella’ (Live at the BBC, 1963). His scream when George takes the guitar solo is one for the ages.

 66. The way he shifts gears not once, but twice, to give ‘Tomorrow’ (Wild Life, 1971) a rousing crescendo, squeezing every drop of emotion from the tune.

67. The brooding, sepulchral atmosphere he conjures up in ‘Riding to Vanity Fair’ (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, 2005).

68. His wonderfully relaxed and playful vocal stylings on ‘Crackin’ Up’ (Choba B CCCP, 1987), on top of his irresistible chugging guitar.

Tinkling the ebonies and ivories at home, 1970

69. His piano intro to ‘Martha My Dear’ (The Beatles, 1968), an utterly enchanting piece of music in its own right.

70. The way, in contrast to the original recording, he pushes the melody upwards at the end of the live version of ‘Here Today’ (Back in the World, 2003), finishing in a falsetto which magnifies the bittersweet nature of the song.

71. The sleight-of-hand skill which transforms one of his greatest ballads into a slick and fun dancefloor extravaganza, with the play-out version of ‘No More Lonely Nights’ (Give My Regards to Broad Street, 1984).

72. An obvious one, perhaps, but the “You gotta give the other fella helllllll!” moment in ‘Live and Let Die’ (Wings single, 1973) never fails to set the pulse racing.

73. His vocal at the very end of ‘Loveliest Thing’ (b-side, 1989), where his “oh..ohoh..ohoh..” is wreathed in sadness.

74. His use of a brass band to give a warm, fireside glow to ‘Winter Rose/Love Awake’ (Back to the Egg, 1979). So very English.

75. His high scream which brings ‘Twist and Shout’ (Please Please Me, 1963) to fever pitch at the end of the three-part harmony build-up before the final verse.

76. The unrestrained energy and invention which runs through ‘In A Hurry’ (single, 2019), packing in an array of twists and turns which shows his well of creativity is nowhere near running dry.

Promoting ‘Chaos and Creation in the Backyard’, 2005

77. The lyric “All these years I’ve been wandering around/Wondering how come nobody told me/All that I was looking for/Was somebody who looked like you” from ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’ (Let It Be, 1970).

78. The hope and optimism he pours into his delivery of the line “Tomorrow it will be over…” in ‘Summer’s Day Song’ (McCartney II, 1980).

79. The way he stitches all the individual song melodies together for the finale of the ‘Hold Me Tight’/‘Lazy Dynamite’/‘Hands of Love’/‘Power Cut’ medley (Red Rose Speedway, 1973).

80. His aching, nostalgic but somehow uplifting “oooh” which closes out the main part of ‘Free as a Bird’ (Anthology Vol. 1, 1995). His musical instincts were right on the money, as always.

80 magical musical Macca moments (part one)

I’m a little late with this, but I thought I’d clamber aboard the bandwagon which has been rolling loud and proud to celebrate Paul’s 80^th birthday. A few media outlets pitched in with their lists of the best McCartney songs, but I wanted to be a little more nerdy about it and drill down to specific moments, or elements, in his music. Little things which have always entranced me, aspects of his art in microcosm that make my hair stand on end, send a shiver of pleasure through me and leave me shaking my head in wonder. And not just in songs that he has written either – his myriad of inventive contributions to material from the other Beatles invariably elevated it to an even higher plain.

It will often be a vocal performance or guitar part, but will sometimes be an arresting lyric or fiendishly clever arrangement. Once you start going through his career, the list is almost endless. In fact, while some songs are better than others, there are hardly any which don’t feature something of interest, something to enjoy. Soon after I first began to take a serious interest in The Beatles, Paul released ‘Spies Like Us’, which I sang the praises of to my friends at school. One of them said: “You only like that because it’s Paul McCartney”, something which has always stayed with me. Because, in a way, he was right; not in the sense that I praised the song purely because it was made by a Beatle, but rather I liked it because it was infused with the same talent which created so many other tunes that had made me fall in love with music. I like almost all his songs, to some degree, because they’re Paul McCartney. He’s pretty good. And, starting in this post and continuing next time, I’ve picked out 80 reasons why.

Relaxing in 1987

These aren’t necessarily always the best songs he’s written or helped produce (although, inevitably, many of them are from his top rank). They just represent a selection of magical moments which litter his back catalogue, and capture something about his appeal to me. I’ve stuck to examples that I’m pretty certain were purely down to him, rather than the other Fabs, George Martin, Elvis Costello or some other collaborator. In some instances I have cheated a bit, citing different aspects or the same song, or including a few tracks which illustrate a similar point. But hey, it’s my list, so I make (and bend) the rules. So, without further ado and in no particular order, let’s go.

1. The harmony vocals on ‘Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)’ (Rubber Soul, 1965), especially on the “She told me she worked in the morning…” bit. The song really takes flight then. And his bass guitar notes are like depth charges.

2. His joyous guitar solo in ‘The Man’ (Pipes of Peace, 1983). If you’re feeling down when it starts, you won’t be by the time it ends.

3. The dazzling vocal during the second half of ‘Love is Strange’ (Wild Life, 1971), especially from “My sweet ba-by…” on. Sheer passion and prowess.

4. That cheeky little bass fill towards the end of ‘Everybody’s Got Something To Hide (Except for Me and My Monkey)’ (The Beatles, 1968). Irresistible.

5. The unsettling brass arrangement which closes out ‘San Ferry Anne’ (Wings at the Speed of Sound, 1976), reflecting the sad, unresolved fate of its title character.

6. The line ‘It was written that I would love you/From the moment I opened my eyes’ from ‘Calico Skies’ (Flaming Pie, 1997).

7. His thunderous bass part and harmony vocal which add so much weight to ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (Beatles b-side, 1969).

Recording the ‘Let It Be’ album, 1969

8. The way he turns the clock by to 1965 and recreates his Little Richard voice in the final seconds of ‘Angry’ (Press to Play, 1986): “Angry baby, I’m angry baby…”

9. The melancholy but life-affirming “Looking through the backyard of my life/Time to sweep the fallen leaves away” intro to ‘Promise to You Girl’ (Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, 2005).

10. How his voice explodes in the ‘Hear me lover…” section of ‘The Pound is Sinking’ (Tug of War, 1982) before giving way to hollow, heartbroken resignation a few seconds later. Spinetingling stuff.

11. His lush orchestral arrangement for Ringo’s version of ‘Stardust’ (Sentimental Journey, 1970), especially the dreamy strings adorning the line “when stars are bright”.

12. The meaty, aggressive, booming bassline which underpins ‘It’s All Too Much’ (Yellow Submarine, 1969).

13. The outrageous chord changes, infectious humour and sly musical motifs which run through ‘Famous Groupies’ (London Town, 1978). No one else could produce a song like this.

14. That Indian intonation in his vocal harmony part during the fade-out of ‘I Want To Tell You’ (Revolver, 1966). A typical added splash of colour which lifted Beatles songs above everyone else’s.

15. The jaw-dropping coda he casually throws on the end of ‘Rock Show’ (Venus and Mars, 1975). For most songwriters, it would be a towering achievement in itself; for Paul, it’s just an added extra he couldn’t fit into the main song and didn’t want to go to waste.

16. His stately piano line which runs through ‘Heather’ (Driving Rain, 2001) like a clear, refreshing mountain stream. Yes, I know it’s about she-who-must-not-be-named, but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

17. That acrobatic bassline which powers ‘Goodnight Tonight’ (Wings single, 1979). And the silky smooth vocal over the top of it isn’t bad, either.

18. The lines “No one was saved” in ‘Eleanor Rigby’ (Revolver,1966), “Standing alone at the top of the stairs” in ‘She’s Leaving Home’ (Sgt. Pepper, 1967) and ‘There is still a light that shines on me’ in ‘Let It Be’ (Let It Be, 1970). They get to me every time.

Promoting ‘McCartney III’, 2020

19. His sweet falsetto on the final verse of ‘Distractions’ (Flowers in the Dirt, 1989), especially on the line: “Where we could spend our nights counting shooting stars”. Exquisite.

20. The epic, fiery crescendo to ‘Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five (Band on the Run, 1973), a masterclass in building musical drama. His scat singing is awesome.

21. The glorious “Oh yeah!” sections of ‘C’Mon People’ (Off The Ground, 1993), especially the second run-through when the vocals are given a grand orchestral backing.

22. His powerhouse drumming on the climax of ‘Dear Prudence’ (The Beatles, 1968). I tend to think his drumming is competent rather than brilliant, but it’s absolutely brilliant here.

23. The haunting additional acoustic guitar part on the second “It’s there, it’s round…” section of ‘One of These Days’ (McCartney II, 1980). So subtle, yet so perfect.

24. The lyric “Too many people preaching practices/Don’t let them tell you what you want to be/Too many people holding back/This is crazy and baby, it’s not like me” in ‘Too Many People’ (Ram, 1971). It have originally been partly intended as a dig at John and Yoko, but its wider relevance to the world around us grows with each passing year.

25. His insane screaming vocal at the end of ‘Long Tall Sally’ (The Beatles Live at the Star Club, Hamburg, 1962).

26. ‘The World You’re Coming Into’ (Liverpool Oratorio, 1991). How can he write something so moving from the viewpoint of any expectant mother? Ridiculous.

27. His electric guitar playing on ‘Alligator’ (New, 2013), which fizzes with nervous energy and makes the song better on every listen.

28. The way ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ (McCartney, 1970) teases you with a false ending. You’re already on the floor after three minutes of raging emotion, then he delivers another gut punch with that stirring finale.

Fresh faced in 1964

29. The gorgeous pause and chord change when he delivers the “Mary loves the lamb, you know” punchline in ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ (Wings single, 1972).

30. His wild, unfettered vocal on ‘Honey Hush’ (Run Devil Run, 1999), rocking like his life depended on it. Sounding like a teenager, at 57. Intoxicating.

31. The lyric “A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray/And though she feels as if she’s in a play…she is anyway” on ‘Penny Lane’ (Beatles single, 1967).

32. The pacy but achingly wistful middle section of ‘Ever Present Past’ (Memory Almost Full, 2007): “It flew by, it flew by…in a flash.”

33. His swagger and supreme confidence as he leads the band through the closing part of a sublime ‘Letting Go’ (Wings Over America, 1976).

34. His breathless, tumbling delivery of ‘I’ve Just Seen A Face’ (Help!, 1965), perfectly capturing the rush of falling in love.

35. The world-weary “My heart is breaking for you little lamb” section which ends the main body of ‘Little Lamb Dragonfly’ (Red Rose Speedway, 1973), leading into the sweeping, soaring fade-out.

36. His nonchalant but delightful whistling in ‘My Very Good Friend The Milkman’ (Kisses on the Bottom, 2012).

Onstage during the 1976 Wings world tour

37. The song-within-a-song middle segment of ‘No Values’ (Give My Regards to Broad Street, 1984), a twisting, emotional detour which surely harks back to his relationship with John: “In the darkest of nights/We were two of a kind…”

38. The astonishing mixture of yearning, tenderness and bottomless resolve in his vocal for ‘Golden Slumbers’ (Abbey Road, 1969).

39. The way he pulls together all the different strands of vocals and instrumentation rippling through ‘Deep Deep Feeling’, the magnum opus of McCartney III (2020), to create a moody, intense soundscape. Still breaking new ground after 60 years.

40. His chutzpah at signing a record-breaking deal with Columbia Records in the US and on his first album with them including a track featuring just an old man reading random literary selections over (an admittedly lovely) piano and strings backing in ‘The Broadcast’ (Back to the Egg, 1979).

My Top Ten solo Beatles duets

I have to be honest, I tend to be a bit wary of duets. There’s something overtly ‘showbiz’ about them, and they tend to come over as a mutual backslapping exercise between stars who want to join forces and double their sales. Sure, John, Paul and George regularly sang together in The Beatles, but they were harmonising rather than trading lines or verses while gazing lovingly into each other’s eyes (à la Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers on ‘Islands in the Stream’, for example). Duets so often have the timbre of an in-joke (Elvis and Frank Sinatra), a jovial competition (Bowie and Jagger), a desperate attempt at hipness (Elton John and Eminem) or a contrived tribute (Elton John and George Michael), or are smothered in schmaltz (Lionel Ritchie and Diana Ross, among countless others). There are exceptions to the rule – David Bowie and Freddie Mercury worked well together on Queen’s ‘Under Pressure’, for example, and Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush joined forces very effectively on ‘Don’t Give Up’, while Phil Collins enjoyed a couple of monster collaborations in the ‘80s with Philip Bailey and Marilyn Martin (the latter, ‘Separate Lives’, may have been a tad schmaltzy but it was superior schmaltz). But too often the end results make me shudder.

Thankfully, the solo Fabs haven’t indulged in many such shenanigans since splitting in 1970, even though the lustre of sharing a mike with a Beatle must’ve prompted many requests. Apart from singing with Yoko, John recorded barely any duets in his lifetime; George likewise. I suspect both would’ve shared my misgivings about such affairs. Ringo – naturally enough, considering how often he has been supported by superstar pals on his records – has turned out a few, and generally acquitted himself well (with the exception of the awful syrupy slop of ‘I Wouldn’t Have You Any Other Way’ with Jeannie Kendall on Beaucoups of Blues and the downright bizarre link-up with Joss Stone, ‘Who’s Your Daddy?’, on Y Not). Inevitably Macca – the most prolific Beatle, the most keen to work with new faces and the one whose eye was most firmly fixed on the commercial prize – has partnered-up the most, and has had the most success in doing so. Indeed, in the early 1980s he became known for it, scoring three mega-hits which still rank in Billboard magazine’s top 40 most successful duets of all time in the US – with two of them, remarkably, in the top five.

Mugging for the camera while working on their outrageously successful collaborations of the early 1980s

Whether he’d just had enough of such pairings or maybe realised his credibility had been damaged in some circles by these singles, Paul moved on and has taken part in only a handful of vocal couplings in the past 30 years or so (thankfully his collaboration with Kanye West didn’t involve any ill-advised McCartney rapping). So there really aren’t that many Beatle duets to choose from, though there are enough which avoid the usual pitfalls of the genre and range from good to excellent. I’ve ranked the following efforts based on the quality of the song, and the effectiveness of putting the two voices together. For the purposes of this list, I’m not including John-and-Yoko or Paul-and-Linda showcases, Paul’s acoustic guitar demos with Elvis Costello, nor George’s shared lead vocals with the Traveling Wilburys. General harmony or backing vocals are excluded too – it has to be a record where a Fab has shared equal billing with another. I reckon the following are undoubtedly the best duets of their solo careers, though I would also give an honourable mention to ‘Write One For Me’, the nice country-pop tune Ringo recorded with Willie Nelson for 2003’s Ringo Rama.

10. ‘What’s That You’re Doing?’ – Paul with Stevie Wonder, 1982.

Inevitably overshadowed by that other McCartney/Wonder tune on Tug of War, this is a completely different kettle of fish. Written by the pair on the fly in the studio, it finds Macca diving headfirst into Stevie’s funk territory and having an absolute blast. It’s fairly simple fare but has an irresistible groove and, while I used to think it jarred a little with the lush arrangements elsewhere on the album, there are actually lots of clever production touches which keep it interesting. Most of all, I adore Paul’s singing on this – responding to Stevie’s soulful growl, he really ups his game and delves deeply into his bag of vocal tricks to squeeze every bit of lustful longing out of the lyrics. The whole thing is a sassy, pulsating potboiler I’ve grown to like more and more over the years and, while it is a shade too long, I sometimes wonder how their collaboration would be viewed today if an edited version of this had been the album’s first single instead of you-know-what.

9. ‘Drift Away’ – Ringo with Tom Petty and Alanis Morrisette, 1998.

This cover of the Dobie Gray classic from Vertical Man is a bit of a cheat, as Ringo shares out the verses with not one but two guest vocalists. I’ve never been a fan of Petty’s voice, but his trademark drawl works well enough here; however, Morrisette’s entrance after the middle section really helps lift the track. Hearing her youthful, feminine tones come in after the guys have sung their bits is akin to a glass of refreshing mineral water after sinking a couple of bourbon shots. It also helps that it’s one of Ringo’s more adventurous vocal performances, and the three combine really well (along with a bunch of other singers) on that sledgehammer chorus. The drumming, as always, is really on the money, anchoring the tune, and the whole thing builds to a fell-good crescendo. Great stuff.

8. ‘Whatever Gets You Through The Night’ – John with Elton John, 1974

Considering Elton John has put his name to a host of dubious duets over the years, I find it strange that this song from John’s Walls and Bridges album wasn’t credited as one, when it so clearly is. Elton’s voice is as prominent as Lennon’s, from start to finish, and helps give the song a fun, almost frivolous tone which John probably needed after a series of rather earnest, worthy single releases. It probably didn’t hurt that Elton was at his critical and commercial peak when it came out, and it’s subsequent run to #1 in the US eventually prompted the pair to perform it live together (see, I told you it was a duet) at New York’s Madison Square Garden, in what would prove to be John’s last concert showing. Ironically it’s not one of the stand-out numbers on its parent album, and its somewhat muddy production hasn’t aged well, but it still retains a galloping, zesty charm. And it’s nice to hear John feeling relaxed instead of tortured.

7. ‘Shanghai Surprise’ – George with Vicki Brown, 1986

George sounds so comfortable on this it’s surprising he never went in for more duets. Written and recorded as the title song for the ill-fated Madonna/Sean Penn movie released by George’s HandMade Films company, he teamed up with Vicki Brown, wife of his long-time pal Joe Brown and mother of soul singer Sam (who memorably performed at the Concert for George tribute in 2002). The pair trade off some witty lyrics referencing rickshaws, chopsticks, coolies and opium, all carried along by a memorable tune, some Eastern-sounded motifs and a thumping ‘80s production sheen. It showed that, after a few years’ mini-retirement break, George was back in the game and primed for his glorious comeback with Cloud Nine the following year. Alas, the toxic reputation of the film meant this track didn’t get an official release until the augmented reissue of Cloud Nine in 2004. I don’t know whether George ever considered pairing with Madonna for the song (unlikely), but if he had it’s hard to imagine this wouldn’t have been monster hit in 1986, stinker film or no. Vicki does a great job, though.

6. ‘Heal The Pain’ – Paul with George Michael, 2006

Written as a kind of tribute to Paul, many critics noted this latin-flavoured acoustic ballad’s resemblance to McCartney songs like ‘I Will’ when it came out in 1990 as part of Michael’s acclaimed Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 album. Some 15 years later, the pair got together to record a new version – albeit with an almost identical backing track – which emerged in 2006 on Michael’s Twenty Five hits collection. I used to think the original was rather slight, but over the years have come to appreciate it as a really lovely, articulate composition (though if he had co-written it, I think Macca would’ve tightened up one or two passages). It is a shame they didn’t work together on the original, partly because Paul’s voice was nearer to its prime, and partly as it represents another near-certain smash hit which got away. The two vocal lines are a bit random and muddled, and there’s some showboating in their singing I could’ve done without, but their voices do blend nicely. It’s a number I’m sure Paul would’ve been proud to have written, and I’m glad we’ve gotten to hear him sing it.

5. ‘Don’t Hang Up’ – Ringo with Chrissie Hynde, 2005

Matching Ringo up with the voice of The Pretenders might seem like a strange idea, but it works incredibly well on this track from Choose Love. As with much of Ringo’s work during this period, it has a strong 1960s/70s feel, and it’s just a lot of fun. He and Chrissie share rapid-fire verses, pitching his ’n’ her perspectives in a tale about an up-and-down musician and his long-suffering partner. Propelled by pounding drums and muscular guitars, augmented here and there by organ and horns, the pair bounce off one another brilliantly and also combine on some terrific harmonies – particularly in the killer middle section. The whole thing whistles past in under three-and-a-half minutes, before an obligatory telephone effect brings it to a perfect conclusion.

4. ‘Ebony and Ivory’ – Paul with Stevie Wonder, 1982

Yes, I’m going there. This song has become not so much a stick to beat Paul’s solo career with as an electrified baseball bat tipped with iron spikes, and I really don’t see why. Maybe I’ve got cloth ears, but that unforgettable, stately McCartney melody, tasty bassline, infectious middle section and smooth backing harmonies really work for me. The pairing of the two contrasting vocals helps sell it, too; Paul’s solo version, originally released as a B-side, just isn’t as compelling. I can kind of see why some find the sentiment and the song a bit cloying, but for me the lyric is simple rather than simplistic. And is a simple plea for racial harmony any more naive than imagining a world with no possessions or trying to persuade us that all we need is love? It’s not the greatest track Paul has ever written, but there’s a reason it’s one of the most popular duets of our time – even if it’s deeply uncool to admit it.

3. ‘You Want Her Too’ – Paul with Elvis Costello, 1989

Paul hooked up with Costello to write a batch of great songs in the late 1980s, but this was the only one they ended up duetting on (at least on the finished record). Many saw the collaboration as Macca consciously reconnecting with Lennon-like sparring partner, someone who would bring a little bite, grit and cynicism to the traditionally sweet McCartney palete (or so received wisdom would have it). The songs which resulted from their partnership were generally much more nuanced than that, their interactions and individual contributions more subtle and wide-ranging. But on this number, included on Flowers in the Dirt, it seems like they decided to take the sweet/sour cliche and really run with it, framing Paul as the doe-eyed “hopeless romantic” and Elvis as his sniping rival for the same girl (or maybe he’s the taunting devil on his shoulder, forcing him to face up to his less-than noble desires). The two strike sparks off each other lyrically (it’s filled with great lines) and vocally, with Costello’s rasping voice the perfect foil for a tremendous McCartney performance. The musical backing is also fabulous, from a quirky guitar/keyboard intro to a dreamy, expertly produced middle-eight to a teasing big band-style fade-out. It’s the kind of song which gives duets a good name.

2. ‘Say Say Say’ – Paul with Michael Jackson, 1983

The first of Paul’s much heralded team-ups with Jacko, ‘The Girl is Mine’, was actually the last to be recorded, penned by Jackson for his Thriller album and released in late 1982. While tuneful enough and a big hit, it’s way too cheesy for my tastes, which is why it’s not featured on this list. And I’ve been surprised to hear some fans feel the same about ‘Say Say Say’, a co-write included on Paul’s Pipes of Peace the following year, because – in my book – it’s a pop song of the highest order. It plays to the strengths of both men, melding Jackson’s rhythmic prowess with Macca’s peerless melodic sensibilities, and George Martin’s scorching brass arrangement kicks it up another level. Jacko’s poor enunciation on a couple of lines is annoying (thank heavens for lyric sheets), but it doesn’t really matter. The end result is so slick and so catchy, with that chorus hitting you in waves during the extended fade-out, it’s easy to see why this lodged at the top of the US charts for five straight weeks (even outselling many Beatles singles).

1. ‘The Man’ – Paul with Michael Jackson, 1983

The last of the McCartney/Jackson collaborations to be released (also on Pipes of Peace), and the best. This is firmly a Paul-led number – a song (I think) about small dreams coming true and living life to its full potential, it finds his sunny optimism at its zenith. There’s a sumptuous, uplifting melody; a gorgeous arrangement, laced with elegant strings from George Martin, and a deliriously joyful guitar solo (played by Macca, one of his very best). But another key factor is how well the voices blend together. Shorn of his usual grunts, shrieks and other vocal tics, the natural sweetness of Jackson’s singing is allowed to come through and enhance the recording. The whole concoction works like a ray of sunshine bursting through the clouds. Originally earmarked as a single but never issued as one (perhaps Paul was indeed wary of going to the well once too often), it’s nonetheless a brilliant track and, for me, the most satisfying duet any of the solo Fabs ever pulled off.

Not such a bad boy – Paul in the 1980s (part two)

So last time I outlined some of the reasons why I think Paul gets such a bad rap for his ‘80s output, the factors which may colour people’s judgement of how they remember it or how they should hear it for the first time. Biographers don’t help matters – in a standard McCartney book, you might get a few paragraphs on Press to Play, for example (usually dwelling on its commercial failure), compared to whole chapters on his drug busts or divorce from Heather Mills – and neither does Macca himself. With the exception of ‘Here Today’ and ‘Temporary Secretary’ (and a one-off performance of ‘Ebony and Ivory’), he hasn’t played a single note of his 1980s back catalogue in live concerts for the past 18 years. Which is staggering when you think about it. Paul himself must have soaked up the ‘received wisdom’ about his career; in 2015, Manic Street Preachers front man James Dean Bradfield noted how suspicious Macca was when the singer told him how much he loved Pipes of Peace. It’s a real pity, because there are such unacknowledged riches in his releases from that decade (hell, even among the stuff he didn’t release) that are worthy of more attention. Why do I single out that period when most people prefer the 1970s or his albums from the last 25 years? Well, part of it may be down to the fact that the 1980s was my youth, and that was when I first fell in love with his music. But I think there’s a lot more to it than that.

Macca in 1984

Although I wouldn’t cite 1980’s McCartney II as Exhibit A in my case for proclaiming the ‘80s as the greatest period of Paul’s solo career – it’s too whimsical, sketchy and erratic for that – it is an important foundation stone for what was to follow. Recorded almost single-handedly at his home studio in the summer of 1979, while Wings was very much still an active act, it must have reminded him of the joys of working solo, unfettered by the strictures of the band format. We know that his enthusiasm for Wings, which had just undergone its umpteenth line-up change, was beginning to wane by this point, and the fun he had making McCartney II – plus the success it enjoyed when finally released in the spring of 1980 – most likely convinced him it was time to go it alone. There were still a few sporadic Wings recording sessions that year, but they pretty much represented the band’s last gasp. By the time he went started the sessions for what became Tug of War in the autumn, I’m pretty sure he intended it to be a fully-fledged solo album (despite the presence of Wings’ Denny Laine on a couple of tracks). And this marked a major shift in his approach to music making, for a number of reasons.

Recording ‘Tug of War’, 1981

To begin with, it allowed him to get off the pop star treadmill and take stock of his life and career. Since The Beatles’ split ten years earlier, he’d barely stopped, releasing nine studio albums, a live album and several standalone singles, as well as touring regularly. The only (slight) break in the schedule was when Linda was pregnant with James in 1977, and even then he spent some of that time recording London Town. To paraphrase John’s song about his own 1975-80 sabbatical, he stepped off the merry-go-round, possibly for the first time since 1962. After conquering the world all over again with Wings, he must’ve been wondering what mountains were left for him to climb. He was also rapidly approaching 40. It’s a big milestone in anyone’s life, but for someone who had once thought being a pop star at that age was a totally redundant proposition, even more so. With, by all accounts, Linda keen to give their young family some stability after years of gallivanting around the world’s concert stages and TV studios, his life priorities were shifting.

Two other events that year would also have massively impacted on his thinking and his creativity. First, the drug bust in Japan which saw him incarcerated for nine days, facing the prospect a long prison sentence and losing all he held dear. And, second, John’s murder that December. I suspect that, along with the inevitable fears for his family’s security and brutal realisation of his own mortality, losing his best friend and erstwhile songwriting partner in such a sudden, shocking manner triggered a major reassessment of who he was, as an artist. The prospect of one day reactivating the Lennon/McCartney partnership, something which was surely bubbling away at the back of both their minds, was now gone, forever; the competitive dynamic connecting them like an invisible umbilical chord, which still kept them on their toes, was severed, irrevocably. At the same time, the reputation and legacy of The Beatles grew enormously and cast an even bigger, deeper shadow. A mirror casting back to his younger, supremely gifted self, to whom he would always be compared and could never compete. And with hungry new competitors on the pop scene, spawned by new wave, disco, electronica and new romanticism, storming the gates of his castle, he had a lot to ponder. Was he still relevant? What did it mean to be the eternally-youthful Paul McCartney in his 40s?

A contemplative Paul, during sessions for ‘Flowers in the Dirt’

Consciously or not, all this had a big effect on his writing. Now don’t get me wrong, I love his 1970s work. It features many of his very best songs and some fabulous albums; even his weaker efforts are sprinkled with genius. But, for me, his material from 1980 onwards is generally more consistent, more mature and more complete. It has greater depth, and more care was clearly taken to bring his ideas to full fruition. While he was still writing and recording at a furious rate, he was more selective about what he released. Gaps between albums slowly grew longer – in contrast to the previous decade, he put out just five collections of new material (plus a handful of original tracks on the Broad Street soundtrack), and a mere three non-album singles. And it sounded quite different to what had gone before. Can you imagine the song ‘Tug of War’ on, say, Wings at the Speed of Sound? Alternatively, take the kinds of rockers he was turning out in the late ‘70s, like ‘I’ve Had Enough’ and ‘To You’. Fun and energetic, yes, but slight and repetitive, basically beefed-up riffs and not much more. Compare them with some of their ‘80s equivalents, fully-realised, fleshed-out belters like ‘Ballroom Dancing’, ‘No Values’ and ‘Move Over Busker’, and the difference is stark. Similarly, most of his ballads from the Wings era were fairly low-key, minimalist affairs – tunes like ‘I’m Carrying’ and ‘Warm and Beautiful’ are gorgeous, but sound a little under-developed to me. In the ‘80s, tracks like ‘Through Our Love’ and ‘Only Love Remains’ are full-blown romantic epics, while even smaller-scale numbers like ‘So Bad’ and ‘Loveliest Thing’ are filled with melody, thoughtful lyrics and little flourishes which betray a greater intent and attention to detail.

Talking of lyrics, he definitely ups his game in this area. The passage of time gives many of his songs a more reflective, pensive tone. There are bittersweet reminiscences (‘Ballroom Dancing’, ‘The Pound is Sinking’, ‘Here Today’, ‘Good Times Coming’), meditative musings on grown-up love and family life (The Man’, ‘Tough On A Tightrope’, ‘We Got Married’, ‘Put It There’), and abstract flights of fancy (‘Wanderlust’, Talk More Talk’, ‘However Absurd’). Even his lighter moments, like ‘Keep Under Cover’, ‘Not Such A Bad Boy’ and ‘Press’, have a disarming playfulness which in perfectly in keeping with the music. His penchant for whimsy is largely controlled and channelled in the right directions.

George Martin with Paul, during sessions for ‘Tug of War’

Another key factor in his 1980s renaissance is his yearning for collaboration. While he’d spent most of the previous decade working within a band, Wings was most definitely The Paul McCartney Show. He wrote most of the songs, was sole producer of nearly all their sessions, and exercised total control over how the material was arranged and performed. Yet, at the same time, he was locked into the strictures of band recording. Even before John died, he realised he needed fresh creative stimulation and challenge, and sought out George Martin to produce what became Tug of War. Martin even insisted on hearing the new songs before agreeing to do it, holding Paul to a quality standard no one had demanded of him since the 1960s. And when the sessions got underway, as well as adding a production sheen reminiscent of Abbey Road, you can bet he pushed Macca to make sure the finished recordings were as good as they could possibly be.

And the collaborations didn’t end there. Now free of needing to tailor his output to the needs of a working group, Paul could not only play parts himself until he got the sound he wanted, he could also bring in anyone he chose to add different flavours and textures to the music. This could be top rank session men like jazz bassist Stanley Clarke, drummer Steve Gadd or guitarist Carlos Alomar; big name pals like Ringo, Carl Perkins, Dave Gilmour or Pete Townsend, or even superstar peers like Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. And after completing a trilogy of albums with Martin, he began seeking out other, more modern-sounding producers to keep him honest and interested, working with the likes of Hugh Padgham (Phil Collins, The Police), Phil Ramone (Billy Joel), Trevor Horn (Frankie Goes To Hollywood) and Mitchell Froom (Crowded House) before the decade was out. It’s an approach he continues to this day.

Recording with Elvis Costello, 1988

Perhaps even more significantly, he began writing other people – consistently – for the first time since John Lennon. He’d written the occasional tune with Denny Laine during Wings, true, but in 1985 he penned more than half the numbers for Press to Play with 10cc’s Eric Stewart. Paul spoke of his longing to get back to writing on two acoustic guitars, “eyeball to eyeball”, like he had with John. I think Stewart simply happened to be in the right place at the right time; he had played and sung on the George Martin albums, and was a proven hit-maker in his own right. However, while I thought the end results of their songwriting partnership were terrific, a falling out over production responsibilities and the album’s subsequent poor sales put paid to any further co-writes between the pair. Nonetheless, it obviously gave Paul a taste for it, and this time he consciously sought out a specific composing partner, in the form of Lennon accolyte and post-punk poet Elvis Costello. While it was hard to discern exactly what Stewart had brought to the party on Press to Play, Costello’s input was clear from the get-go: a more lyrical, spiky, literate edge to the traditional McCartney brand. And while that partnership too had a finite lifespan (another dispute over how some of the songs were produced, although the pair stayed friends), it produced an unfailingly marvellous batch of songs for Flowers in the Dirt (and 1993’s Off The Ground), including ‘My Brave Face’, ‘That Day is Done’ and ‘Mistress and Maid’.

The end results of all these influences were, for my money, the best albums (along with Band on the Run) of his solo career. I’ll focus on the individual records another time. But ignore the retrospective naysayers – Tug of War is every bit the masterpiece it was hailed as at the time, one of the best Beatles solo albums ever. And forget the nonsense that Pipes of Peace was just a collection of leftovers from that album. Only three of its 11 tracks were originally intended for Tug, and they may well have been omitted from the final selection because Paul felt they didn’t fit rather than because they weren’t good enough (some numbers recorded for Ram ended up on Red Rose Speedway, remember). And while a couple of woeful inclusions (‘Hey Hey’ and ‘Tug of Peace’) prevent it from reaching the dizzy heights of its predecessor, Pipes remains a dazzling example of Macca’s pop sensibilities in full flight. Give My Regards to Broad Street is a soundtrack collection rather than a full-blown new album but, if you can park your views on the film, there is so much to enjoy on it. Some people seem outraged that he re-recorded some Beatles songs, but why shouldn’t he? He wrote them. They’re not necessarily meant to be better, just different – I, for one, love hearing ‘Here, There and Everywhere’ with a brass arrangement, and ‘For No One’ with strings. And as well as applying a new lick of paint to old classics, he still had one eye on the future. The gorgeous ‘Eleanor’s Dream’ segment prefigured his forays into the classical music field, while the play-out version of ‘No More Lonely Nights’ gave us the first real taste of Macca dance music.

In the studio making ‘Press to Play’, circa 1986

He embraced the future head-on with 1986’s Press to Play, an album draped in all the trappings of hi-tech 1980s production techniques. It may have gone down a like a lead balloon with record buyers of the day, and so acquiring a bad reputation which dogs it even today, but I think it’s McCartney at his best – brimming with some of his most beautiful ballads, crunching rockers, irresistible pop tunes and accessible experimental work-outs. It’s lack of success must’ve been a rare blow to Paul’s self-confidence but, after retreating to the studio to figure out his next move (a fascinating period which saw him trying on various musical hats with different musicians and producers), he bounced back with the wonderful Flowers in the Dirt in 1989, another stellar collection of material which artfully balanced contemporary sounds with his timeless song craft. The resulting 1989-90 world tour marks the last time he felt brave enough to put half an album’s worth of new songs into his setlist, confident they would hold up to the Beatles and Wings evergreens around them. And, in my book, the resulting Tripping The Live Fantastic is a strong contender for his most satisfying live album

So that’s my take on Macca in the ‘80s. And I haven’t even mentioned singles like ‘We All Stand Together’ (sneered at by many, but rightly loved by millions of others), his last UK top ten hit ‘Once Upon A Long Ago’ or the ballad version of ‘No More Lonely Nights’, one of his greatest-ever songs. Or the stirring rock ‘n’ roll oldies album Choba B CCCP, recorded more or less live over two days in 1987, and still – for me – the pick of his three covers collections. Or the fact that even some of his unreleased work from this period, such as ‘Seems Like Old Times’, ‘Yvonne’ and ‘Return to Pepperland’ (plus a batch of Costello co-writes which didn’t seen the light of day until 2017), is also jaw-droppingly good. You may disagree, of course, and that’s fine. It’s just my opinion. But I’d still urge anyone to ignore the ‘received wisdom’ and seek out his 1980s output, or give it a fresh listen. You might be surprised to find that Beatle Paul was still alive and well, and firing on all cylinders.

Not such a bad boy – Paul in the 1980s (part one)

Ever since I first became interested in The Beatles, I’ve had to wade through an awful lot of “received wisdom”. You know the sort of thing – someone says something in book or article, someone else repeats it, and before long a particular viewpoint is treated as established fact. Newcomers accept it as such because, well, everyone says it, and others are reluctant to contradict it (even if their eyes, ears or common sense tell them something different) for fear of looking out-of-step or being seen to have bad taste. I guess it’s true of many things in life – we’re all guilty of using other people’s opinions as shorthand for own – but received wisdom certainly abounds when it comes to the Fab Four. You’ll have heard the kinds of thing people with a more casual interest in the band sometimes tend to trot out – that Ringo was a mediocre drummer who got lucky, for example, or that John was the tough, honest, poetic rocker while Paul was the soppy, shallow, showbiz balladeer. Or that the band couldn’t bear to be in the same room during their final years together. Most real fans know this kind of stuff is nonsense, of course, but even within the more devoted music community parts of The Beatles’ collective and individual careers are often viewed through the prism of “everybody knows that…” Thus many people are assured that Ringo’s solo music is of no value whatsoever (usually the same people who haven’t heard 99% of it). And almost as common is the negativity surrounding Paul’s work in the 1980s.

A nice montage of key McCartney images from the 1980s. Twitter does have its uses

If you sift through books, magazines, blogs, podcasts and forums, the recurring theme goes something like this. Macca’s ‘70s albums are peppered with greatness, especially the first two and Band on the Run, and certainly represent his solo commercial zenith. His latter day period, beginning with 1997’s Flaming Pie and running through to the present day, may not always have hit the same heights in terms of sales, but has yielded some of his best work and the consistent critical acclaim and respect which eluded him earlier in his career. But the ‘80s? Nah. Don’t bother, mate. Because the story here is that, after a quirky, experimental start with McCartney II (1980), he peaked early with 1982’s well-regarded Tug of War (though I increasingly read that even that isn’t as good as everyone thought it was at the time). After that, it was a creative wasteland until Paul’s songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello kick-started a return to form on Flowers in the Dirt (1989). The accepted, oft-echoed view is that 1983’s Pipes of Peace is a schmaltzy, lightweight collection of tunes which weren’t good enough to make Tug of War; Give My Regards to Broad Street (1984) a pointless rehash of Beatles and solo material in service of an equally pointless and widely-derided film, and 1986’s Press to Play a disastrous attempt to modernise his sound for contemporary audiences which was dead on arrival. So artistically moribund and bereft of confidence was this part of his career, apparently, that he then spent the next year or two flailing around in the recording studio, working on an album which never saw the light of day, before getting back on track with the sessions for what became Flowers.

Promoting ‘Ebony and Ivory’ – a big hit, but now a key part of the case made against his ’80s work

Suffice to say, I completely disagree with this broad-brush, simplistic assessment. Now, I do understand that taste in music is completely subjective and all about personal preference. And I do kind of see why some people just don’t like much of Paul’s music from this era – they tend to regard it as too polished or too commercial or too, er, ‘80s. They find the Frog Chorus too cheesy, and the duets with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson too calculated. I do get all that, but it’s just not how I hear it at all. In fact, I’d argue that 1982-90 represents the greatest period of his solo career. For my money, it produced many of his best, most consistently brilliant albums, the finest of his three covers collections, some fantastic standalone singles and possibly his rewarding live album. I’ll set out why I think that next time, but for now I want to explore why that’s such a minority opinion.

Viewpoints do change over time, of course; albums like Ram and (to a lesser extent) McCartney II have undergone major critical rehabilitation since I first became a fan, for example. But general opinion about Paul’s 1980s output seems fairly set in stone, even among some younger fans and critics who didn’t experience it firsthand. They seem to approach it with a set of preconceptions which started to take root at the time the music was first released, and which remained firmly entrenched today. As someone who was around then – indeed, I first ‘discovered’ Paul and The Beatles in the mid-1980s – my feeling is that it all boils down to a handful of key factors.

The sounds of the ‘80s

By 1984, the future had arrived – though it can seem a little quaint now

With the advent of CDs and advancements in recording technology, the 1980s marked a definite shift in the way pop music sounded – broadly speaking, a switch from analogue to digital. Computers came more to the fore, as did drum machines, synthesisers, sequencers and more processed sounds. At the time, as I recall, people just embraced this as what the hi-tech future was supposed to sound like. It was only later in the decade that some began to rail against this and call for a return to more organic, “natural” records, with the emphasis on real instruments rather pre-programmed effects. Over time, this antipathy has mushroomed in some quarters, with some people now unable to bear listening to anything which bears that unmistakable ‘80s sound.

While Paul was actually at the forefront of early forays into techno-pop (albeit in a low-key, do-it-yourself fashion) on McCartney II, his three albums with George Martin from 1982-84 were actually quite traditional affairs, filled with arrangements that wouldn’t have been out of place on Beatles albums. Nonetheless, they do sound cleaner and more polished than his ‘70s work, and have hints of that shiny digital approach that some people so abhor. But it wasn’t until Press to Play that Macca really took the plunge into the musical zeitgeist of the time. Working with Hugh Padgham – the hot-shot engineer/producer behind era-defining records by the likes of Phil Collins, Genesis and The Police – he made an album filled with many of the audio trappings of the time: synths, drum machines, a booming drum sound, heavily reverbed guitars, and so on (he also started turning out umpteen remixes of certain tracks on his singles, another very ‘80s practice). At the time, I don’t think anyone batted an eyelid at this – he was just updating his sound, and most of the usual McCartney elements remained in place (and many of his contemporaries, like the Stones, Bob Dylan, Elton John and David Bowie were following the same tack, though – I would argue – less convincingly). But it does now sound inextricably tied to the time that spawned it, which for some people, it seems, is unforgivable. Many of those same listeners are equally unimpressed with the production on 1989’s Flowers in the Dirt, despite its less computerised approach.

I guess that, again, it comes down to personal preference, but – as someone who came of age in the ‘80s – I love pop music from that era, so have no problem with Paul dipping his toes in those waters. I just don’t understand the argument that if he’s not strumming an acoustic guitar or tinkling piano keys, he’s somehow not being authentic (witness the shockwaves of horror in certain corners of Beatles fandom which greeted the release of the uber-modern ‘Fuh You’ in 2018). He’s never been like that, and never will be. One of Macca’s defining qualities is his eagerness to remain relevant and explore new sounds, and churning out the same kind of records he had made ten or 20 years earlier would have been an anathema to him. Lots of Beatle records, group and solo, sound of their time, it’s all part of the rich tapestry of the canon. And at the end of the day great songs are great songs, whatever production trimmings they are adorned with. If Press to Play had been a big hit, of course, it might be viewed differently. However…

Commercial failure

A pensive Paul, circa 1984, when his US chart fortunes began to take a downturn

Press to Play peaked at a lowly #30 in the US album charts, the worst-ever showing for a collection of new McCartney music. He’d topped the same charts just four years earlier with Tug of War, but sales had been on the slide Stateside thereafter, with Pipes stalling at #15 and Broad Street reaching just #21. Flowers bucked the trend, to a degree, hitting #21 and hanging around the lower reaches of the chart for almost a year, but it still wasn’t the blockbuster success of yore. In the UK sales held up much better (he actually enjoyed four #1 albums during the decade, and even Press reached #8, though it didn’t hang around for long), but in the world’s biggest music market it was the toughest period of his career and plays into the narrative that what he was producing can’t have been much good.

I guess when you’ve been as commercially successful as The Beatles have, you’re always going to be judged by your chart performance (and I think Paul does this himself, hence his negative view of Press to Play), but I’ve always found it a strange argument that quantity of sales somehow equals quality of product. By that benchmark, Garth Brooks must have been better than The Beatles, and Milli Vanilli one of the greatest acts of the late 20^th century. Or, on a more localised level, Wings at the Speed of Sound would be among the best of all Beatles solo albums. My own view, certainly regarding Press, is that Paul’s face just didn’t at that time; in an era of glamour and glitz, Prince and Madonna, and Miami Vice-propelled adult oriented rock (AOR), Macca must’ve seemed very old hat, a throwback to the dreaded 1970s, and he certainly struggled to get the radio airplay that would’ve been a given in earlier times. He wasn’t alone in this – pretty much all of those contemporaries I mentioned earlier who had previously enjoyed untrammeled chart success also struggled to adapt to the MTV-dominated, post-Live Aid landscape. Mind you, Paul perhaps inadvertently set himself up for a fall with some of his career choices…

Mr Thumbs-Aloft

Even ten days in a Japanese jail couldn’t keep those thumbs down in 1980

In the first half of the 1980s, Paul had a run of massive hits on both sides of the Atlantic. Yet songs like ‘Ebony and Ivory’ and ‘We All Stand Together’, certainly in the UK, were hugely divisive. Like ‘Mull of Kintyre’ before them, they were loved and loathed in equal measure, and over time became sticks to beat him with – allegedly sappy tunes which critics claimed confirmed his essentially lightweight, frothy nature. After all, why would any serious rocker worth his salt write a song for children sung by a chorus of frogs? Even his collaborations with Michael Jackson – at that point, the hottest star on the planet – seemed to work against him in some quarters. And then there was the Broad Street cinematic debacle. Plenty of other rock stars came a cropper on the silver screen in that decade (including Paul Simon, David Bowie, Prince and Madonna), but Paul put such promotional heft behind his film that the kick-back from critics was all the louder and harsher. It was high profile failure which further tarnished his image at the time.

Let me tell you, becoming a McCartney fan in the mid-1980s was about the most uncool thing you do, this side of buying Cliff Richard records. Smash Hits – the best-selling weekly pop magazine mainly aimed at younger readers but written in a wry, ironic way to appeal to older music fans too – dubbed Paul ‘Mr Fab Macca Wacky Thumbs Aloft’. It was sort of a term of affection, but also seemed to sum up the way many people saw him at that time: a safe, cosy, family man who lived on a farm with his slightly eccentric wife (who fed their dogs vegetarian biscuits) and smoked dope, a purveyor of pretty but vapid pop tunes, a member of the rock establishment perennially pictured in a chummy, cheery, thumbs-aloft pose. Wings, now very much in the rear-view mirror, were a product of the ‘70s, and so deemed inherently naff; he was no longer touring, so there there was no rock ‘n’ roll edge to his image, and even his regular drug busts were seen more as the indulgences of a millionaire ex-hippy rather than a badge of outlaw credibility. He was a national institution and revered for his past, yes, but was generally seen as being out of touch, with little to offer either younger pop pickers or their older, AOR-loving, CD-clutching counterparts. Thus the ‘80s-makeover on Press to Play was doomed to failure. There was also one other factor which loomed large over public perceptions of him at this time.

The Lennon legacy

The Lennon-McCartney comparisons became more intense and unfair in the 1980s

Inevitably, in the rush to venerate John after his awful demise, an interpretation of The Beatles’ story which had been favoured by some snooty rock critics in the 1970s (and occasionally propagated by Lennon himself) began to acquire a wider acceptance. This was that John was The Beatles, the true creative genius of the band, and that the others were merely sidekicks who helped facilitate his talent. Philip Norman’s Shout! The True Story of The Beatles, the best-selling biography which emerged in 1981, set the tone which numerous other books and articles followed. In retrospect, it maybe isn’t quite as biased as it seemed back then, but it undoubtedly cast John as the main man; Norman himself proclaiming, in an interview to promote it, that Lennon was “75% of The Beatles”, as far as he was concerned. And in elevating John’s status and significance to almost mythic proportions, Norman and many others felt the need to denigrate and diminish Paul’s achievements, both in and out of The Beatles.

As a result, anything Macca released after 1980 emerged in the shadow of the new Lennon iconography. The likes of ‘Say Say Say’ and ‘Spies Like Us’ would be compared to ‘Imagine’ and ‘Instant Karma’. Anything which didn’t offer profound meditations on our very existence simply offered up more evidence that McCartney’s own gifts had shrivelled and died without his former partner to sustain them. Oh, he still had hits, sure, but he could always churn out catchy tunes, people said; all the major works had come from Lennon, right? Over time, this portrayal has largely (if not entirely) faded and a more balanced, nuanced view of the Lennon/McCartney axis predominates. But at the time, there’s no question it caused lots of damage to Paul’s reputation and distorted the way his 1980s work was greeted and perceived.

Of course, you may have just listened to Pipes of Peace and/or Press to Play a few times and simply decided they were crap, and that’s cool too. It’s all about personal taste and opinion, as I said earlier. There are those who think Garth Brooks is better than The Beatles, after all. But when I see the same comments bandied about, time after time, I can’t help but feel that there’s an unjustified stigma about Paul’s 1980s music which colours the way some people look back at it or approach it for the first time. Because I think that, if you like Beatle Paul, there is much to enjoy in this phase of his career. In fact, next time, I’ll explain why I think the 1980s finds Macca at the absolute peak of his powers.

It won’t be soon enough for me – 10 years of the McCartney Archive Collection (part two)

When Tug of War and Pipes of Peace were announced as the next installments of the McCartney Archive Collection in October 2015, I was licking my lips in anticipation. Not only were these two of my favourite Macca albums, the b-sides from their attendant singles had never been released on CD – and, by all accounts, there was a wealth of unreleased material recorded during the sessions with George Martin from 1980-83. This package had the potential to be among the highlights of the series. But when the content for the bonus discs was revealed, it was a crushing disappointment.

The dual release of ‘Tug of War’ and ‘Pipes of Peace’, 2015

The b-sides were there, true, but the rest was largely made up of a batch of 1980 home demos of songs which made it onto the albums, and which had been circulating on bootlegs for more than 20 years. I always feel such things are a bit of a cheat, as they’re ultimately just unfinished or inferior versions of songs we already have. Interesting to listen to once or twice, but then you file them away and forget about them. Or at least I do, because the final recording is almost always the one I prefer. It was also baffling that demos were completely overlooked for earlier Archive releases like Ram and Venus and Mars, yet were now becoming the core of the bonus content – at the expense of unheard songs. But the craziest thing about the selection was that two of the demos he recorded in those 1980 sessions, the unreleased songs ‘Unbelievable Experience’ and ‘Seems Like Old Times’, were omitted from this package. WTF? One ‘new’ demo did make it onto the Tug of War extras, ‘Stop, You Don’t Know Where She Came From’ – but there is apparently a finished version of that, complete with a brass section, so why didn’t they give us that instead?

The Pipes of Peace bonus disc was a little better, in that it offered a couple of genuinely unheard curios, ‘It’s Not On’ and ‘Simple As That’, plus the relatively rare film soundtrack number ‘Twice in a Lifetime’ (I could have done without the ‘Say Say Say’ remix which flipped the Macca/Jacko vocal lines, though I see why it was included). But considering both that and the second Tug of War disc both had around 40 minutes of free space, this was pretty thin gruel. Why didn’t they include ‘Blackpool’, a track earmarked as the b-side of the cancelled ‘The Man’ single in 1984? Or the 1981 version of ‘No Values’, later re-recorded for Broad Street? Or ‘All The Love is There’, the song he cut with Stewart Copeland of The Police? Or the acoustic reprise of ‘Tug of War’ which was originally planned for its parent album? Or the three-part medley which originally welded ‘Sweetest Little Show’ with ‘Unbelievable Experience’ and the similarly unreleased ‘Any Younger’? Or some of the jams with Stevie Wonder and Carl Perkins recorded during the early 1981 sessions at George Martin’s studio in Montserrat? Hell, if demos were so important, why not include the terrific one Paul wrote and recorded for the Everly Brothers during this period, ‘On The Wings of a Nightingale’? Or the one he presumably must have cut for the song ‘Runaway’, recorded by the band Ivory in the early 1980s, or even the two tunes he gave Ringo for 1981’s Stop and Smell The Roses?

If these albums represented a huge missed opportunity, worse was to follow. In the summer of 2016, it was announced Paul had re-signed with the Capitol/EMI record label, and the accompanying press release touted that  “a comprehensive plan for the artist’s catalogue is being conceived.….. and will be implemented beginning July 2017.” This sounded promising, and hinted at a change of approach – after all, why would you need to conceive a “comprehensive plan” if you were just going to carry on with the Archive series in the same way? However, the next release – which actually emerged in March 2017 – proved to be the most controversial and divisive of the series so far.

The standard Archive version of ‘Flowers in the Dirt’, 2017

Again, on paper, Flowers in the Dirt (1989) promised so much. Another stellar album, it spawned some of his best-ever b-sides and bonus tracks. Lengthy recording sessions from 1986-89 also produced a plethora of unused songs, some of which saw a release on the Flaming Pie singles a decade later, while others (such as ‘Return to Pepperland’) languished in the vaults. And when the tracklisting for the Archive edition revealed that not only would the widely-bootlegged acoustic demos he recorded with Elvis Costello in 1987 feature, but also initial studio recordings of the same songs laid down the following year – recordings some of us didn’t even know existed – it looked like this package would really deliver. Sadly, that was where the good news ended.

First,  only the 1987 Costello demos (which most hardcore Macca fans already owned) would be included on the standard two-disc edition. If you wanted the really juicy 1988 studio versions, you had to splash out on the deluxe edition which, in the UK, was on sale for an eye-watering £130. Even though both sets of tracks would have fitted comfortably onto one CD. Not only that, but all other non-Costello outtakes from this period were completely ignored. As for all those great b-sides I mentioned, well, they were available if you bought the pricey package…..but only as digital downloads. This senseless decision understandably infuriated lots of loyal McCartney fans. There was even a petition on change.org, which attracted more than 1,000 signatures, urging MPL to add in an extra disc with the download songs, but to no avail. A spokesman claimed Paul didn’t want the Archive packages to contain more than four discs (including DVDs) – a bizarre, rather arbitrary “rule” which strangely didn’t apply to the Ram reissue, for example, or the more recent Flaming Pie release. Surely, when you are asking people to pay through the nose for a package like this, you should provide physical content? MPL seemed more interested in the accompanying books (including a less-than-essential photo book documenting the making of the video for ‘This One’ and a catalogue from one of Linda’s photo exhibitions) than actual McCartney music. Madness.

The ad for the full ‘Flowers’ deluxe package

In retrospect, I’m less bothered by the fact the b-sides were download-only than by the fact they weren’t even remastered, and so didn’t sound any better than the versions we already had – again, in total contrast to earlier Archive releases. It betrays a real lack of care towards how Paul’s music is presented. There are some truly great tracks there – ‘The Loveliest Thing’ is among my favourite Macca numbers ever, and there are many devotees of ‘Flying To My Home’, for example – and yet they were just tossed out without being upgraded or even put on a disc, like they didn’t matter. Even more perplexing, given the emphasis this release put on Paul’s collaborations with Elvis Costello (something he ultimately backed away from when making the original album), the downloads also featured four further co-writes, including acoustic demos of two completely unheard tracks plus the wonderful b-side ‘Back On My Feet’. As there was plenty of empty space on both bonus discs (again), why not put these in alongside the rest of the Costello-related tracks? The whole thing felt slapdash, ill conceived and a case study in how to alienate your (limited) target audience. If they had dropped a couple of the books, shoved in a couple of extra discs and pegged the price at around £100, I think many of us would have thought it was a luxury worth raiding the piggy bank for. As it was, well…..I have four friends who are huge Macca fans, and only one among the five of us actually bought the deluxe edition.

The ad for the ‘Red Rose Speedway’ reissue in 2018

To be fair, it seems MPL/Capitol took heed of the backlash around Flowers because, although we had to wait 21 months for them, the next Archive sets saw a big improvement. In December 2018, we lurched back to the early days of Paul’s solo career and the first incarnation of Wings, with reissues of Wild Life (1971) and Red Rose Speedway (1973). The former, recorded in little over a week with a threadbare collection of songs, was never going to offer much in the way of bonus goodies, though the compilers did their best, seemingly throwing on every sketchy home recording from that period they could find – including three brief snippets of guitar noodling which didn’t even have titles. Red Rose Speedway, on the other hand, was put together over the course of a year and was originally planned as a double album, and the resulting Archive edition is possibly the best one to date. The deluxe version contained the original double LP version of the album, including a clutch of unreleased numbers, plus a batch of other outtakes, live recordings and singles/b-sides. At around £150, it was still a pretty pricey affair but, crucially, almost all of the really worthwhile bonus music was also made available on the standard two-disc version of the release, and there was no download-only nonsense. So everyone was happy.

The mega ‘Wings 1971-73’ box – a snip at, er, £300

The only sour note came when a special Wings 1971-73 box set was also produced which combined both deluxe album packages and also threw in an exclusive live album from the band’s 1972 European tour….all for a trifling £300. Another poke in the eye for fans with more limited budgets (remember, this came out within weeks of the costly Beatles’ White Album and Lennon Imagine box sets) or those of us who just aren’t that interested in the books and other trinkets. Bearing in mind people buying both deluxe Wings albums would be paying the best part of £300 for them anyway, couldn’t Capitol have just released Wings Over Europe as a regular, standalone release? Plenty of people would have snapped it up. As it is, in this day and age, it quickly emerged onto the market through other, less “official” routes, but I just don’t see the sense of lining the bootleggers’ pockets when it could – and should – have been available for anyone to buy.

Still, there were signs of a more considered approach. But with the Archive Collection, it always seems to be one step forward followed by two steps back. The widely expected reissue of the remaining Wings albums London Town and Back To The Egg was bypassed and in July this year (sadly, 19 months between releases now seems to be the norm) we zoomed forward in the McCartney timeline with the release of his 1997 effort, Flaming Pie. Again, lots of potential with this one. We know he recorded a number of tracks with Steve Miller other than the ones which made the album, including ‘Sweet Home Country Girl’ and ‘Soul Boy’. Then there was ‘Cello in the Ruins’, a track recorded during the Pie sessions and almost issued on a charity fundraising album in 1995. And the cover of ‘A Room With A View’, released on a Noel Coward tribute album in 1997. So did the Archive edition feature any of these? No. Of course not.

This year’s ‘Flaming Pie’ reissue

What we got instead were demos of songs we already have on the album. Lots of demos. Home demos, studio demos, run through demos and, in some cases, multiple versions of the same song. I don’t know about anyone else, but I could happily have lived without four versions of ‘Beautiful Night’ and three each of ‘Great Day’ and ‘Calico Skies’, not least because none of them really that different. The rough mixes of the album songs featured here are equally pointless. And while they did include all the b-sides from the album’s three singles, most of them were recorded a decade earlier and have nothing to do with Flaming Pie. I can deal with that though – what is really annoying is that several of them are only available through the deluxe pay wall (now topping £200) and, even worse, are still embedded in the Oobu Joobu mini radio shows as featured on the original singles. I’m struggling to see the artistic value in that, as I’m sure most people would just want to listen to the songs in isolation. It’s strange how MPL/Capitol will go to the trouble of removing a few seconds of live stage banter at the beginning of ‘The Mess’ (as included on the Red Rose Speedway reissue) which fans had got used to hearing for 45 years, yet couldn’t be bothered to trim off many minutes of pseudo DJ chat and frippery – welded either side of six songs – that I can’t imagine many people ever wanting to listen to more than a couple of times.

So that’s where we are. In my next post, I’ll reflect on the Archive Collection as a whole, how it could be improved, and what I’d really like to see happen to the McCartney back catalogue going forward.