The box set kicks off with McCartney’s first post-Beatles single, the lovelorn and still-resonant “Another Day,” which could have easily fit on Let It Be. Understated, elegiac, and uncharacteristically muted, it was McCartney playing his best role: empathetic observer of others. The flip side, “Oh Woman, Oh Why” showcased a hammy Howlin’ Wolf impersonation so unrestrained and cartoony that he resembled a furry green Muppet more than any Delta bluesman.
And thus begins the story of McCartney’s solo career, a tale of cheery productivity and even cheerier disregard for results. Wherever there is inspiration there must be inanity, and with each gold nugget unearthed comes at least one nose-wrinkling dirt lump, a reality that comes into focus when each song is granted its own piece of vinyl and bespoke cover art. There is a particularly instructive humiliation in selecting a side of vinyl that contains only “We All Stand Together (The Frog Song)” and flipping it over only to be confronted by “We All Stand Together (Humming Version).”
After “Another Day,” we find ourselves abruptly in the Wings years, a discography that has proved itself remarkably immune to large-scale critical rediscovery or revival. These were the happy-hippie years, when Linda McCartney twirled onstage, bedecking the microphone with scarves and playing keyboard, harmonizing with Paul in her yowling, indelible way. Linda, frequently the target of derision from her husband’s fans, openly derided the group: “We just picked the wrong people,” she told Playboy in 1984. And here is Paul, remembering his time in Wings in Sheffield’s liner-notes essay: “It was the weirdest thing…There was me, having been one of the world’s most famous people, a member of the Beatles, playing in this semi-professional band kind of thing.”
If Paul had dubbed Wings “Paul McCartney and the Semi-Professional Band Kind of Thing,” they might have gotten a fairer shot: People would have understood just how badly Paul needed to be surrounded by people, any people, playing music and making records. If it wasn’t going to the Beatles, well…here were these guys. Paul and Linda were the heart of Wings, if there was such a thing, and the lovely moments in their discography arise directly out of their dizzy, daft chemistry. There were a lot of bongos in these songs, as well as the near-constant implication of bare feet. “You are my song, I am your singer,” they sang to each other, trading the lines and turning them into two halves of one mantra.
Surfing through McCartney’s Wings discography single by single turns up all manner of sidelong pleasures and revelations. The 1950s tribute “Love is Strange” works up a diffident ska-skiffle groove and then throws in a wayward guitar solo that provoked me into imagining a Built to Spill cover. The repetitive chant of “Let ’Em In” was dismissed by rock critics as doggerel, but Philly Soul legend Billy Paul heard a radical call to inclusion in McCartney’s language—“Someone’s knockin at the door…do me a favor, open the door and let ’em in,”—and recorded a cover that spliced in snippets of speeches from Malcolm X.
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