My Evolution Revolution of the Solo Fabs (Or Imagine Living in the Material World, say London Town, with Beaucoups of Blues) Part 6: Wild Life Live

After leaving the Beatles, it’s amazing that Paul McCartney was even remotely interested in forming a new band.  That he did, indeed, form a new band—and not just a backing band (although there’s some of that, too)—but a band, whose members would contribute (a few) songs and sing lead (occasionally), and that that band would become HUGE, staggers the mind.  It was a gamble on McCartney’s part, but Wings proved to be a band in its own right.  A good, and often great band.  And, above all, Wings wasn’t, nor tried to be, the Beatles Part II.

One could argue that Ram is a Wings album.  But officially, and in my own estimation, Ram is a Paul and Linda album.  Which means that Wild Life is, what many would considerer, the inauspicious debut of Wings.

But I like the album.  

Like his famous enthusiastic four-count opening for I Saw Her Standing There, which ushered in The Beatles, McCartney ushered in Wings with an equally enthusiastic “Take it Tony!”, a cue for engineer Tony Clarke to make sure the tapes were a-rollin’.  Mumbo, the song Tony was a-takin’, is a rocking tune with nonsense lyrics delivered by McCartney with an intensity that powers the tune along.  Yea, it may be a throwaway jam fest, but it’s a really fun throwaway jam fest, and does show off some of the musicianship found within the new band.

There’s no rescuing Bip Bop.  It sounds like a song that one would noodle around with while sitting on the back porch, perhaps between sips of an alcoholic beverage.  Lyrically insipid (for what lyrics there are), it’s a real head-scratcher that McCartney would not only include the song on an album meant to introduce his new band, but to include it as the second track, following the lyric-less Mumbo, means that there are two lyric-impaired songs ushering in the new band.

Next up is Love is Strange, which for me, was the first time I’d ever heard the song.  (It would be a year os so before I discovered Micky and Sylvia).  The reggae-infused tune works great for Paul and especially Linda, who sings like she’s really enjoying herself.  After hearing the classic Micky and Silvia version, the Wings version impressed me even more with it’s inspired use of reggae, making the song, in that version of course, a Wings song.  The classic still belonging to Micky and Sylvia.

Sometime it’s easy to forget how much the Fabs’ liked the blues.  All four of ‘em include blues tunes on their solo outings, and Wild Life is one of McCartney’s best.  I’m not in the school that thinks the song is another well-veiled snipe at the Lennons’ and their radical politics.  (“We’re breathing a lot, a lot of political nonsense in the air”).  It’s hard to think that McCartney would swipe at Lennon on side one, and on the other, offer a delicate and emotional peace treaty.  To me, Wild Life is about the obvious: protecting animals and saving the planet.  Paul and Linda were on the green wagon long before it became fashionable, and I think Wild Life attests to that.  And McCartney’s vocal attack (does he sometimes say “am-inals”?) seems to hammer home the sentiment.

Side two offers decent songs written to, for and about Paul and Linda’s relationship.  I particularly like I Am Your Singer, which once again features Linda, and pretty much sums up their partnership.

There’s nothing to say, really, about the two, brief instrumental “links”, Bip Bop and Mumbo, except that they weren’t named on the original album and I thought they were bonus cuts when picking up the CD.

And Dear Friend, as mentioned, is a call for a truce with Lennon.  One can only imagine what kind of song McCartney would have written, after having heard How Do You Sleep?, if Paul was still in a fighting mood.  But fortunately for us, and especially for them, Paul instead decided to lay down his arms and to give peace a chance.

The Concert For Bangla Desh remains one of the best live concert recordings ever.  It was the first time George Harrison appeared on stage as a solo artist and it was also the first-ever benefit rock concert, which, like the single Bangla Desh, was to bring awareness and much needed aid and relief to the refugees of the war-torn country.  George Harrison brought in a bunch of his friends, creating a supergroup that delivered.  And some.

The concert itself was put together quickly, which meant that there wasn’t much time for preparations for recording the event.  This meant, that try as he might, co-producer Phil Spector wasn’t able to completely construct his wall of sound.  This means that the songs Harrison performs from his All Things Must Pass album, Wah-Wah in particular, explode with an energy and vibrancy that were never able to break through on the studio recordings.  The Bangla Desh version of Awaiting on You All, even with the forgotten lyrics, could have been released as a single; it just rocks.

And speaking of rocking, the live version of Bangla Desh achieves the intensity of the original single.  But live, Harrison’s vocal, while still filled with urgency, is confident and powerful.  It’s a great note on which to end the concert.

The spotlight on Ringo for It Don’t Come Easy is also great fun.  What’s a missed lyric here and there, right?

As I am more-or-less charting the Fabs’ solo efforts, I won’t go into how stellar Dylan’s set is, that Clapton’s solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps is (understandably, given his condition) pretty uninspired.  I also won’t note that Leon Russell seemed to be trying to upstage everybody. 

My Evolution Revolution of the Solo Fabs (Or Imagine Living in the Material World, say London Town, with Beaucoups of Blues) Part 5: Lennon Gets Back

In my hasty conclusion to my assessment of Paul and Linda’s Ram, I neglected to mention the mono version of the album.  Originally the mono edition of Ram was only released as a radio promo, therefore becoming one of the many Beatle-related holy grails for collectors.  Fortunately, the mono mix was included in the mega-deluxe edition of the recent re-release of Ram.  And it—just like the mono mixes of the Beatles albums—is considerable different than the stereo version; and just like the mono Beatle albums, mono Ram rules!  (The bass, drums and percussion are punchier, and the lead vocals are a bit more forward making the entire album even more engaging.  Just check out the fade of Monkberry Moon Delight and “don’t get left behind”…)

Bangla Desh, rock’s first charity single is also, if I’m not mistaken, the only non-album single released by George Harrison.  (Although he did have a couple of non-album B-Sides).  It’s not fair to access Bangla Desh as one might a traditional single.  Yes, it’s a song that sounds like what it was, one that Harrison basically knocked off in a few minutes; and yes, the (over)-production is what one would expect from Phil Spector; and yes, Harrison’s vocal is uncomfortably strained.  But, as a charity single, designed to shine a spotlight on the humanitarian crisis in Bangledesh, and, without involving politics, act as a call of action, Bangla Desh is pretty perfect.

Harrison is almost out-Lennon-ing John with his (Harrison’s) unexpectedly raw and emotional song.  And like many of Lennon’s singles, Harrison’s tune has the easy to remember and sing refrain, “Bangla Desh/Bangla Desh” which is pretty much the whole point of the song.  Harrison’s wry sense of humor is also on display to great effect with the final verse’s “Now won’t you give some bread to get the starving fed.” 

(This may be the worst album cover ever.)

As mentioned, the production is—Spector-ed.  But that doesn’t diminish the performances, which rocks pretty well.  And even Harrison’s voice, strained as it is (and which portends his singing in his ill-fated 1974 U.S. tour) actually works to the benefit of the song by adding a sense of urgency.  (An urgency which Harrison obviously felt and is proved by his naming the song Bangla Desh instead of Bangladesh.)  Oddly, except for the 1990 CD release of the uninspired and calculated The Best of George Harrison (originally compiled and released by Capitol Records in 1976), Bangla Desh has not been remastered or released on CD.  The single’s B-Side, the wonderful, thoughtful, powerful Deep Blue, a song inspired by the death of Harrison’s mother, finally saw CD release as bonus track on the remastered Living in the Material World.  

Following his pessimistic and fatalistic masterpiece, Plastic Ono Band,  John Lennon returns with an album, much of which lyrically could have been part of Plastic Ono Band, but which musically is full of warmth and optimism (mostly), epitomized by the album’s idealistic title track, Imagine.  

I honestly can’t remember the song Imagine pre-December 1980.  I mean, I knew the song was pretty much perfect and all (actually no “pretty much” about it; it is perfect), but after his murder, Imagine and Lennon are one and the same.  Originally a song that was a gentle commentary on the zeitgeist of the early 70s, Imagine, has been elevated to near-national anthem status all over the world.  The fascinating thing is, while Imagine espouses peace, it does so at the expense of nationalism.   

It was 1966 when Beatle records by the hundreds were being burned in the southern United States because of a misunderstanding of a quote about Jesus, Lennon had given to a British newspaper.  A mere five years later he has a hit song with boldly stated lyrics, “Imagine there’s no heaven” and “Imagine…no religion, too.”  These lyrics are accepted 

  

and indeed sung today by the masses.  But I wonder, had Lennon lived and the song were released today, would the anti-religious lyrics be condemned?  Indeed, given his views on religion, one wonders what kinds of conversations John and the very spiritual George Harrison must have had.  Ah, to be a fly on the wall….  

While it took just one line from Elvis Costello to skewer Lennon’s hypocrocsy in regards to capitalism, “Was it a millionaire that said imagine no possessions.” from Costello’s song, The Other Side of Summer, I think Lennon would have liked the line, and thought it was funny.   And if not, there’s no doubt that Lennon wold have gotten his own back, ala How Do You Sleep?

Crippled Inside is as self-critical as anything found on Plastic Ono Band.  But Lennon hides the song’s cynicism behind a funky piano and Harrison’s dobro, making it a foot-tapping sing-along.

After hearing snippets, on various Beatlegs, of Lennon’s Child of Nature, a White Album period song, I’m grateful that Lennon abandoned it, because his reworking of the tune, turned it into the classic Jealous Guy.  Once again, lyrically, the song would easily fit on Plastic Ono Band.  But the lush production takes the edge off of Lennon’s self recrimination, softening it, making his lament more universal.  I wish the production were less lush and sentimental, but still love the song.

I love Lennon’s rock-blues It’s So Hard.  While once again possibly in Plastic Ono Band’s wheelhouse, Lennon keeps the lyrical chronicling of his daily struggles so general that everyone can identify with them.  I mean “You gotta eat; You gotta drink” too, right?  Plus, especially coming after Jealous Guy, this song rocks.

My feelings for I Don’t Want To Be a Soldier have changed throughout the years.  When I first heard it, at age 15-16, I found it pretty boring, with little substance, musically, to sustain the six-minute tune.  Then, in 1980, when the draft registration (for males) was reinstated, and I, along with my friends, had to “sign up”, the song took on new relevance.  But since the song isn’t really about soldiering, war, etc., but rather continues Plastic Ono Band’s self-examination, I went back to thinking it a too-long riff-song.  Now, however, while lyrically sparse and uninteresting, I really love, (and I feel I should warn you, you may want to sit down for this), I really love Phil Spector’s production.  His wall of echo, particularly on Lennon’s vocals, but critically on the awesome sax solo by King Kurtis, adds an aura of anxiety, that increases with the seemingly endless repetition of the riff.  

The line “no short-haired yellow-bellied son of Tricky Dicky” from Give Me Some Truth, is not only funny, but fun to sing.  (“Tight-lipped condescending mommy’s little chauvinists” isn’t quite as funny, but still fun to sing.)  And Oh My Love, another Let It Be-ish era song, is surely one of the most delicate songs Lennon and co-writer Yoko, ever wrote.  I’m not sure who came up with Harrison’s guitar part, but it’s as fundamental to the song as is his guitar work in the Fabs’ And I Love Her.  (And countless others.)

Like so much of Plastic Ono Band, I felt Lennon wrote How specifically about me.  Many days, I still do.  

Lennon answers his own question, How? with the album’s final song, the jubilant Oh Yoko!  Catchy and easy to sing-along with (“in the middle of a shave/in the middle of a shave I call your name”) the jaunty piano and harmonica solo are just hard to resist.  Not that, early on, I didn’t try to resist.  Yoko, after all, was the sole reason that the Beatles broke up, right?  But honestly, even then when I believed that, I couldn’t resist singing along; particularly in the shower.  (“In the middle of a bath/In the middle of a bath I call your name.”)

And thus Lennon’s second classic album, Imagine.  A more produced and commercial Plastic Ono Band.

Except Plastic Ono Band didn’t include a song that eviscerated his former band mate, former song-writing partner, former friend; Paul McCartney.

With Too Many People and possibly a few other lines on Ram, McCartney was the first to commit, in song, his feelings about his former mate.  Knowing Lennon for so long, McCartney must have known that Lennon wouldn’t take things lying down, and that Lennon would surely respond in kind—and then some.  But perhaps McCartney didn’t expect Lennon would respond so blatantly and so mercilessly.  But if that’s so, it means McCartney hadn’t listened to the raw and honest-till-it-hurts Plastic Ono Band.  After his Strawberry Fields/Lucy in the Sky period, and certainly in his solo works, Lennon’s lyrics tended to be pretty straight forward and blunt.   But he was never as straight forward and blunt as he was in his open letter to McCartney, How Do You Sleep?  

In the song, Lennon takes aim at McCartney with venom and cheap shots as well as some head-scratchers.  (“Sgt Pepper took you by surprise”?  Surprised at what?  It’s success?  Sgt. Pepper was McCartney’s idea.  If anyone was surprised at the success of Sgt. Pepper, one would think it would have been Lennon himself.)  

The line, “The only thing you done was Yesterday” is not only obviously false, but perhaps reflects a jealousy on John’s part.  Especially considering the original couplet was, “You probably pinched that bitch anyway.”  Of course it was John who had “pinched” some lyrics from Chuck Berry to use in Come Together, but who’s counting.  (The couplet used, the admittedly brilliantly-snide “And since you’ve gone your just Another Day” was contributed by upstanding manager of the stars, Allen Klein.  The very same guy who represented John, George and Ringo, but whom Paul didn’t trust.  You know, the guy that, after he found out he had been pretty much played, Lennon wrote the song Steal and Glass about.)

Up until this time, Harrison, while writing about his own frustrations about his fellow band-mates in song, had not specifically pointed at Paul.  That changed with his participation on How Do You Sleep?  Harrison’s guitar work is inspired and tonally fits perfectly with the song.  One gets the impression that he and John were having a blast taking the piss out of McCartney.

Fortunately, while he appears elsewhere on the album, Ringo does not play on How Do You Sleep?  And apparently he helped to tone down the lyrics, many of which, although not credited, were written by Yoko.

It’s a time-and-place song that illustrates much more about Lennon than anything else.  Lennon says as much in various interviews, proclaiming that, at the time, he wasn’t feeling vicious, but was rather using his resentment towards Paul as a catalyst to write a song.  Of course that doesn’t exactly jive when hearing in one of the session outtakes, John sing, “How do you sleep?  You C—[word].” 

 While I don’t think it fits at all with the rest of the Imagine album, I actually like the song How Do You Sleep?  It’s juvenilely clever, with, as mentioned, some great slide guitar work by Harrison.  When I first got the album, it was certainly the song I wanted to hear the most, especially after having read how savage it was.  In that regard, the song didn’t disappoint.  But I was disappointed that my copy of the album didn’t included the postcard, which was a photograph of a bow-legged Lennon holding a pig; a mocking poke at McCartney’s Ram cover.  After seeing that it didn't have the postcard, I immediately brought the album back and had the clerk at my local Sam Goody open every single copy of Imagine they had to check for that postcard.  But none of them had it.  Which meant that, as a Beatle completist, I couldn’t sleep at night.  

My Evolution Revolution of the Solo Fabs (Or Imagine Living in the Material World, say London Town, with Beaucoups of Blues) Part 4: Macca's Masterpiece

So, 1970 saw the release of the final Beatle album, Let It Be, as well as the first solo albums by each of the former Fabs.   

 

  (And, in Ringo’s case, two solo albums.)  Whereas McCartney was a solid, if somewhat uninspired and deliberately under-produced solo debut, All Things Must Pass and Plastic Ono Band were both unqualified masterpieces.  For new material, Paul was up first in 1971 with his first solo single, Another Day.  Essentially a reworking of the themes in Eleanor Rigby, the song is not bad, but hardly worthy of a McCartney A-side, especially when contrasted with the songs on his former band-mates’ albums.  For me, it’s the flip side, Oh Woman, Oh Why which, while probably not hit material, shows the rocking side of McCartney’s writing, and brings back a bit of the throat-crunching singing/screaming he’d done on Oh! Darling.

A week after the release of Another Day, Lennon came out with another of his anthems, Power To the People.  Once again containing an easy, sing-along chorus, Power To the People seems considerable more political than Lennon’s previous anthems.  Eschewing, for the moment, his pleas for peace, Lennon flat-out states that the people should rise up in revolution, which, I guess means that at that point and time, you could count Lennon “in”.  As a song it’s a good reflection of the times, but not much more than that.

Ringo’s first single is up next, and, as first singles from the Fabs are concerned, it’s the best.  (Harrison’s first single, My Sweet Lord, had broken the Beatle tradition of not releasing songs that were on their albums, which the Fabs’ themselves broke with Abbey Road and Let It Be.  This restriction, of course didn’t apply to the U.S. albums, where the Fabs had no control of what and when something was released.)  With it’s instantly recognizable guitar opening, Ringo’s It Don’t Come Easy is pretty much perfect Ringo and has remained his theme song.  The flip side, Early 1970, is an open love letter to his former band-mates.  Each former Beatle gets a verse, with McCartney’s including an interesting invitation.  Since Ringo had played drums on both Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Harrison’s All Thing’s Must Pass (and Harrison had played on Lennon’s Instant Karma as well as both sides of Ringo’s single), Ringo’s line “And when he comes to town I wonder if he’ll play with me” is Ringo offering Paul an olive branch, which Paul would eventually accept. 

And then came Ram.

The album had me from the first line of the first song, Too Many People, where Paul sings, “Piece of Caaaaaaaaake!”  Of course I later learned that while the intent was for we laymen to hear “Piece of cake” what McCartney really is singing is “Piss off, cake”, the first two words being the opening salvo, in lyrical form, directed at Lennon.  Tired of the three 

ex-Beatles vs. one dynamic, and upping the anti in the war of words he and Lennon where exchanging with each other thru the press, McCartney let loose his feelings for all the pop-buying public to hear, albeit in rather covert lyrics, which would require a bit of work from the listener.  If that listener were someone other than John Lennon, of course.  Lennon understood every veiled jibe.  And some.  

(While his lyrics were perhaps cryptic, the photo on the back of Ram’s album cover was anything but.  There’s really no mistaking what Paul meant with the picture of two actual beetles, um, not mating nor making love, but rather more you know what-ing each other.  It was, and remains, a pretty depressing photo to see on the back of Paul’s first classic solo album.)

If one had to say which was the most acerbic Beatle, I think the unanimous response would be Lennon.  But Too Many People shows that Paul could muster up a bit of the snark when he wanted to.  “Too many people preaching practices/Don’t let ‘em tell you what you wanna be”  takes dead aim at both John and Yoko.  Likewise “You took your lucky break and broke it in two”.  Pretty much the whole song is a cleverly disguised dig at his former partner.  It’s also a damn good song.

I know 3 Legs seems a rather more obvious reference to the other 3 ex-Beatles, but, to be honest, if it is, it’s cloaked really well.  While Paul convincingly says otherwise, it’s easy to see Dear Boy as written to John.  And while John was sure that the final lines in the album’s last song, the classic The Back Seat of My Car, were also a dig, Paul and Linda harmonizing on “We believe that we can’t be wrong” just fits so well within the context of the song that, even if it was a line specifically about them, Paul and Linda were singing it to everyone, and not specifically Lennon.  Or so I think.

As I mentioned, Ram, on first listen, became, at the time, my favorite McCartney album.  I’m glad I didn’t get that Too Many People was aimed at Lennon right away, because it is the first, in what would become a staple on McCartney albums; a cracker-jack opening number.  I think that, perhaps, had I known it was about Lennon, it would have had a negative effect on me, and I wouldn’t have loved it as much as I still do.  Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey had a single release and got quite a lot of airplay, and was a definite hit with my friends and even my brother, who loved to sing along with Linda as she gargled “water.”  When listening to the album, I always love anticipating Monkberry Moon Delight, a song I didn’t understand, but also kinda did.  (Whatever that means.  Understand?  Thought so.)  Another fav was/is Long Haired Lady, simple, and lyrically light though it is.  A great deal of its appeal is Linda’s middle-eight part, where she delivers with a wonderfully sarcastic tone: “Or is this the only thing you want me for?” Indeed.

Which brings me to Linda.  

She’s one of the crucial elements that makes Ram so good.  Her presence is all over the album, adding a wonderful humor and warmth that is hard to resist.  While she would be an integral member of Wings, Linda was never featured as prominently on a McCartney album again.  That’s understandable because the critics were far from kind, both to the album in general and to Linda specifically.  

Critics be damned, Ram is a great album, not inspite of, but because of Linda McCartney.  (There, I said it.)  

RAM ON!