What was the first song you heard from Paul McCartney that made you a fan?
-
@njr I just listened to Beautiful Night for the first time. It's a fairly good song, but I would say it lacks the inspiration factor that is a key ingredient to ascertain whether the song is part of the Pauline Pantheon. Of course, ascertaining this isn't a science, it's rather subjective, but as far as I'm concerned I feel like I can detect that inspiration component in any given song and parts of songs. It's almost like a substance that Paul seemed to contain more of in the past which we can date beginning with the Help and Hard Days Night era (sure, he had a bit of it with the overrated Yesterday & a couple of other tunes prior to that, but to me not definitively so). So from that point all the way up to I would say Band on the Run, his inspiration substance or juice consistently was like 90%. Almost every song on all his solo albums up to Band on the Run seem to have that inspiration juice in high content. From Venus and Mars forward, that juice seems to be running out and diminishing steadily from album to album until the last two albums it's nearly devoid.
I'm a bit of a fiction writer myself, having written many stories and a few novels. As a lark, I thought of a cool idea of imagining the current Paul (but this was many years ago when I first had the idea, and I still would imagine it as the Paul of 2010 let's say -- that seems to be the beginning of his transformation into an establishment celebrity who self promotes a lot and doesn't seem to be a songwriter the way he used to be). So the gimmick of my little story was imagining Paul just on some trip he's making to one of his properties in Ireland or Scotland or whatever, and of course he's going with an entourage of cars, including bodyguards, and I slip in to the story his awareness that the way he used to get musical inspiration was by getting away from it all, which he laments his increasingly busy lifestyle is making less possible. So this was one of his ways of doing it. As his entourage is repairing into the farmstead to set up and get settled for a two or three-day stay which Paul had carved out for himself from his busy schedule, Paul takes an acoustic guitar out of the van, goes over all alone to the other side of the barn, says hello to one of the horses, then sits down on the clover nearby next to a tree, takes off his boots and socks and just starts picking and strumming away singing random stuff until inspiration strikes.
-
@fast-city-line Well, I disagree with some of what you said in the beginning of your (long) post - I freaking LOVE Beautiful Night and the fact that Ringo drums on it and sings at the end. The video is great too! Linda appears briefly in it as well.
And I doubt very much Paul would go up to his farm in Scotland again, let alone with a car caravan of bodyguards! The man travels alone on British railways for goodness sake! I do agree that his “creative juices” have dwindled in the past 20 years. I DON’T agree that Yesterday is over-rated! My God, it is the most covered song in history (well, at least the 20th & 21st centuries!) And, it is a magnificently beautiful & poignant song written by a young man who was still only 22!
-
Having technical difficulties posting. wanted to edit my last post to say “car caravan of people + bodyguards” but the website threw me out but thankfully the post is still there.
-
@njr
I hear you. When it comes to the songs we like and why we like them, at a certain point it's kind of pointless to try to persuade the person who disagrees. Although it can be fun sometimes to try to articulate why I like a song, it's probably impossible to persuade someone who disagrees.Yesterday is a very good song and I think it is one of the inspired songs, it's just that I've grown weary of it, and even many years ago I was only revitalized by it by hearing the Ray Charles version. There's another song that to me has a similar style and sort of what I would call a "flat affect" -- which for a poignant song I think can be a compelling device, sometimes better than operatically getting over-emotional -- and that is Michelle, which melodically and musically I much prefer to Yesterday. Even better than those two, with that same flat affect style: I Will.
-
@fast-city-line I gave my daughter the middle name Michelle for that song, plus her dad’s name is Michael!
-
@fast-city-line Confused - you like I Will or not? I love it and had it played at my wedding to my kids’ dad. (Also Here, There and Everywhere) We divorced in 1989, but remained friends and went together to see Paul in 2002 (Beatles music was one of the things that brought us together in 1980) and he sang HTAE that night! He bought me the (floor seat) ticket for my birthday which was the day before the concert, then I bought us Bruce Springsteen tickets for his birthday which is 2 weeks before mine!
-
@njr said in What was the first song you heard from Paul McCartney that made you a fan?:
@fast-city-line Well, I disagree with some of what you said in the beginning of your (long) post - I freaking LOVE Beautiful Night and the fact that Ringo drums on it and sings at the end. The video is great too! Linda appears briefly in it as well.
And I doubt very much Paul would go up to his farm in Scotland again, let alone with a car caravan of bodyguards! The man travels alone on British railways for goodness sake! I do agree that his “creative juices” have dwindled in the past 20 years. I DON’T agree that Yesterday is over-rated! My God, it is the most covered song in history (well, at least the 20th & 21st centuries!) And, it is a magnificently beautiful & poignant song written by a young man who was still only 22!
Yesterday is a mini masterpiece. It's just been done to death over so many decades. I believe, She's Leaving Home, is Yesterday's equal, it shoulda been played at every Macca concert, in my honest opinion.
-
@wandy Agree about She’s Leaving Home. He has done Yesterday to death and dropped it in 2019. He added She’s Leaving home in the 2nd half of his 2002 tour on Sept. 21st. He didn’t sing it when I saw him in Atlanta May 12, 2002. ️
-
@njr said in What was the first song you heard from Paul McCartney that made you a fan?:
@wandy Agree about She’s Leaving Home. He has done Yesterday to death and dropped it in 2019. He added She’s Leaving home in the 2nd half of his 2002 tour on Sept. 21st. He didn’t sing it when I saw him in Atlanta May 12, 2002. ️
He's never done SLH when I've seen him. I've seen him about 5 times over the years. That was the problem when the Beatles stopped touring, when they recorded songs after 1966, those songs NEVER got played live again. And if Macca had decided to give up show business, or to stop touring himself completely, those wonderful songs, like SLH, would just remain a recording ️
-
@njr Oh yeah, I love I Will. Maybe I wasn't clear but I said I like I Will better (even) than Michelle or Yesterday. Here There and Everywhere also right up there almost on a par with I Will. I Will definitely one of my top faves of his.
-
@fast-city-line said in What was the first song you heard from Paul McCartney that made you a fan?:
@njr Oh yeah, I love I Will. Maybe I wasn't clear but I said I like I Will better (even) than Michelle or Yesterday. Here There and Everywhere also right up there almost on a par with I Will. I Will definitely one of my top faves of his.
McCartney the master of writing, what apparently seem, very simplistic songs. I Will. Blackbird. Bluebird. Mother Nature's Son. Heart of The country. Mamunia. Oh the list is endless! BUT you try ( or me or anybody else) and write just ONE!! Bet you can't do it!!
-
@wandy Excellent list of songs!