Red Rose Speedway

With Paul McCartney's new album, Memory Almost Full, due out the first Tuesday of June, this month seems as good a time as any to review Macca's solo career. I am a fan, not a fanatic; I'm in awe of the guy's talent, though, and find a lot of creative inspiration in his work. I don't own all of his solo albums but I own a lot of them. I'll be writing about them, in the order they were released, over the next few weeks.


It's no understatement to say that Paul McCartney's early post-Beatles work was not well received in the press. Jon Landau described Ram as "the nadir in the decomposition of Sixties rock thus far" and said it was "so incredibly inconsequential and so monumentally irrelevant you can't even [hate] it: it is difficult to concentrate on, let alone dislike or even hate." In his review of Wild Life, John Mendelsohn dismissed McCartney's first three solo albums as "largely high on sentiment but rather flaccid musically and impotent lyrically, trivial and unaffecting." These two selections are pretty representative of other contemporaneous reviews I've seen. More than a few get vicious; McCartney should probably be glad there was no Pitchfork back in the early 70s.

It's easy to imagine that critics back then were acting like kids in a divorce, feeling compelled to choose sides during a devastating breakup. Most chose John Lennon (although a thoughtful few decided that both John and Paul suffered greatly and equally from the absence of the other).

In retrospect, I think, McCartney wins the post-Beatles battle by a landslide. Even Lennon's best solo work (Plastic Ono Band, Imagine) is self-important and all too often mean-spirited (check out "How Do You Sleep?"). His worst solo work (Sometime In New York, the experimental albums with Yoko) is completely unlistenable. At his worst, McCartney is lightweight, but at least his work evinces enough craft to keep you engaged.

That said, Red Rose Speedway is one of those albums that helps explain why critics were so enraged at McCartney. Approach this album with high enough expectations--as critics of the day probably did--and this record is even more infuriating than Wild Life, which doesn't even present the pretense of craft or, for that matter, effort. Red Rose Speedway has hooks galore; it's just that on most of it it's hard to shake the sense that McCartney isn't really giving it his all. The lyrics are just a little too dopey, the arrangements a bit too underdeveloped, too simplistic--where the McCartney of Ram might have developed a contrapuntal line or an elaborate background vocal, the McCartney of Red Rose Speedway seems perfectly content with a facile guitar line or a simple stacked triad in the harmonies.

McCartney seems to be coasting on pure talent here, but because that talent is so prodigious, there's much here to enjoy for those who don't arrive expecting a masterpiece. The opening track, "Big Barn Bed," is an infectious trifle that probably celebrates domesticity, but with lines like "Weeping on a willow/Sleeping on a pillow/Leaping armadillo," it just as likely celebrates a particularly potent bong hit. "My Love" is a crafty bit of schmaltz, "Get On the Right Thing" is a great example of the sort of arena rock bombast at which McCartney excels, "One More Kiss" is a country throwaway most songwriters would gladly take credit for… and thus the album proceeds. It's a little like watching a great boxer who's perfectly happy to outbox an inferior opponent without even trying to deliver a knockout blow. It's all very impressive while at the same time a little disappointing.

There's no need for me to go on; the great Lenny Kaye (aka "Doc Rock") wrote a brilliant review of this album in Rolling Stone that pretty much says it all.

The current reissue of Red Rose Speedway includes several stellar bonus tracks, including the rocking "Hi Hi Hi." My favorite--one of my favorite McCartney songs, in fact--is "C Moon," a reggaefied homage to the McCartneys' love for one another. The term "C Moon," for those wondering, is the opposite of "L 7." Put an L and a 7 together and you get a square; hence, "L 7" for "square." Put a C and a crescent moon together and you get a circle; hence, "C Moon" for "cool." The song is quite a workout, complete with a great vocal and an equally great horn chart.