Paul speaks his mind, and (John Lennon voice) minds his Speke
I wrote about the new Paul album for the new issue of Uncut, and for the latest Uncut Greats which is out next week. It’s a really good record. Or, as I say more formally here:
In among the many key 20thcentury artists that Paul McCartney has in his collection – we’re thinking alongside the paintings by Magritte and de Kooning – he also has an extensive collection of Paul McCartney. The classic Beatles instruments, which he acquires when Abbey Road want more space in the cupboard. His old school desk – in fact, to a certain extent, even his old school. This is someone who not only, as his recent flurry of documentaries suggests, wants to be in tight control of the Paul McCartney story. If possible, he wants to own the actual landmarks in it.
First glances at The Boys Of Dungeon Lane – a Google Earth image will show you a young lad in a school cap crossing a road in Speke – and the first music from it – the wheezy and nostalgic “The Days We Left Behind”, complete with mention of Forthlin Road, the McCartney family home – suggested that the album might offer more of the same. Namely, a solemn, “Hurt”-style it’s-not-dark-yet acoustic rumination on the Young Paul story. It might have played like one of the museums on Liverpool’s blustery waterfront: old photographs, the boys, the changed world, the last word.
In truth, it’s that most Sgt Peppery Paul notion: the nostalgic not-quite-concept album. Here, it’s Colonel McCartney’s Trip Down Memory Lane, in which Paul looks tenderly in through the window on versions of his younger self. “Home To Us”, which bowls along like a 1980s sitcom theme, duly features an appearance from Ringo on vocals and drums, two ex-Beatles looking back warmly on their humble origins. Elsewhere he and Lennon hatch a “secret code” at their writing sessions by the front room fire in “The Days We Left Behind”, while in “Down South”, he remembers hitchhiking to Harlech in Wales with George Harrison in 1958.
There are pop songs and psych songs (the crazy “Mountain Top” is ace) but the best song is “Salesman Saint”, which returns us to Forthlin Road and a tender reminiscence of the fortitude of McCartney’s working class parents, sustained by no greater comfort than the occasional ciggie and songs on the wireless: “//They couldn’t take any more/But they had to carry on//”. The appearance of a swing band in the arrangement is a classic Paul move. At first glance it’s super-sentimental, but give it a minute: in its way it’s completely avant-garde, sounding as if it’s been dropped in from another song, an older radio. It’s the 1967 musique concrete Paul on nothing stronger than a ration book – and a reminder that in tough times, it’s love which will see us through.
Uncut is in shops today, or here, and Uncut Greats (out next week) can be ordered here.