Paul Is Not Dead


Memory Almost Full Cover

Well that was me
Royal Iris
On the river
MerseybeatinÂ’
With the band
That was me

There will come a time — distressingly soon, I have a feeling — that the only Beatle who isn’t dead is Paul McCartney. I don’t say this because I have some inside track on the state of Ringo Starr’s health — I fondly wish him a long and happy existence — but because the Gods of Irony work that way.

June 18th will be Sir Paul’s 65th birthday — meaning (among other things) that his new solo album, Memory Almost Full, will have been written and recorded at that once unimaginably far-off age of 64. Far from having rented a cottage in the Isle of Wight (if it’s not too dear), McCartney’s last decade has been noteworthy for tumult and chaos. Of the record’s title, he says,

The album title came after I had finished everything. For me, that’s when they normally come, with the exception of maybe Sgt. Peppers, otherwise I don’t think I have ever made an album with The Beatles, Wings or solo where I have thought of a title and a concept. I was thinking about what would sum the whole thing up and ‘Memory Almost Full’ sprung to mind. It’s a phrase that seemed to embrace modern life; in modern life our brains can get a bit overloaded.


MaccaA title like Memory Almost Full might lead one to expect a meditation on age and death, and that is exactly what Paul has delivered. The first single, “Dance Tonight,” is a bit of inconsequential fluff, pleasantly buoyed by a jaunty mandolin and a dry kick drum pulse, dedicated to a proposition no more complex than the fact that “everybody’s gonna feel all right tonight.” As a single record, it’s charming enough — but as the lead-in track to this record, its effect is deeply ironic: Oh, no — by the end of this record you will have felt nearly everything but “all right.”

No: Check that. It is not a depressing album — one could really never accuse McCartney of trying to bum out his audience. What it is is a record by a man who has led an astonishingly full life, who knows he’s not immortal, and who faces his inevitable demise with clear-eyed honesty. It’s the artist’s fate ever to express in public what we all feel privately. This is a grave responsibility, and McCartney’s always been at his best when he takes it seriously. He has, of course, disappointed us by disappearing into boater-and-cane cotton-candy crap for most of his post-Beatles career, but, as he pointed out in the Anthology series, he has no regrets about the fact that the Beatles were almost never negative, that their message was always to “take a sad song and make it better.” (There is, of course, no better example of this than the transcendently life-affirming “Hey Jude.”)

“My Ever-Present Past,” the second single, also the second track on Memory Almost Full, is a more accurate harbinger of what is to follow. A midtempo rocker that displays a typically angular and vertical McCartney melody, full of those jumps and intervals that fit his voice so well, its subject matter is the confusion that overwhelms the aging and overfilled mind (I believe it’s this theme that inspired the album’s title):

ThereÂ’’s far too much on my plate
Don’Â’t have no time to be a decent lover
I hope it’Â’s never too late
Searching for the time that has gone so fast
The time that I thought would last
My ever present past

The third track, “See Your Sunshine,” is the only throwaway track on a record remarkable for its thematic consistency — the verse “They want to see you in the front line,” seeming to make the song a love-ditty to the departed Linda (who typically occupied the back line in Wings’ stage set), and perhaps a kiss-off to the departed-in-a-different-sense Heather Mills.

It is with the fourth track, “Only Mama Knows,” that things begin to get dark and interesting. Much of the rest of the album is crossfaded, one song into another, and we are clearly being asked to consider the songs from this point on as a suite. Beginning with a theme-statement in the form of an insistent little orchestral passage, all chromatic cellos and two-note police-siren violins, “Mama,” concerned with a child’s rage at parental abandonment, explodes into harder rocking than anything I’ve heard from McCartney since Band on the Run.

The little orchestral passage returns, leading us into “You Tell Me,” a truly haunting meditation on memory:

When was that summer when it never rained?
The air was buzzing with the sweet old honey bee
LetÂ’’s see
You tell me

Were we there? Was it real?
Is it truly how I feel
Maybe
You tell me

More orchestral link-music, and we’re into “Mr. Bellamy,” at which point I’m tempted to invoke a comparison I don’t throw around lightly: Brian Wilson. While clearly a McCartney song, “Bellamy” is itself a mini-suite of disparate parts, rather in the “Band on the Run” vein, with a staccato piano figure that would not be out of place on a Cat Stevens record, a broad tonal palette that includes clarinet, violins, clavinet, and brief electric guitar stabs. The lyric concerns itself with a cheerful lunatic who refuses entreaties to descend from a tree: “I like it up here!”

“Gratitude” follows, a slightly sad testimonial to the effects of time on one of the great rock-and-roll voices — he tries to get that “I’m Down” roar into his voice, and I’m afraid he falls just short. It’s followed by “Vintage Clothes”: “What we are is what we are/And what we wear is vintage clothes,” but, as those of us who have lived through a fashion cycle or two know only too well, “What went out is coming back.”

Perhaps the most touching song on the record is “That Was Me,” a look back over his childhood, his adolescence, his mindboggling fame, with the astonished thought, “That was me!” It can’t be easy to have been Beatle Paul McCartney without let or hindrance for some 50 years without some coping method, some mechanism to shut oneself off from oneself, and here we see him reconnecting with the parts of himself that he shut out: “And when I think that all this stuff/Can make a life/ItÂ’’s pretty hard to take it in!” The song, despite its melancholy theme, is actually quite a fine rocker, with his voice rather more successfully roughened to his Little Richard tone.

We carry on through the acoustic “Feet in the Clouds” and the portentous “House of Wax,” (a particularly nicely reverberant recording) to “The End of the End.” You will no doubt remember the sighing, relieved last line of “The Long One” on Abbey Road (”And in the end…”), and the title of this tune clearly refers to it:

On the day that I die
IÂ’’d like jokes to be told
And stories of old
To be rolled out like carpets
That children have played on
And laid on while listening
To stories of old

You see? The love you take is equal to the love you make.*

———
*I once recorded a parody song that ended,

And in the end
The cheese you eat
Is equal to the cheese
You excrete

Trust me, it was hysterical.

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June 6th, 2007
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Viewing 30 Comments

    • ^
    • v
    Great review, Jeddie. I'll get this one. I, myself, like Sir Paul. Even his cheesey stuff.

    I mean, I like silly love songs. But, that's just me. I'm goopy that way.

    The time that I thought would last
    My ever present past

    Don't really like that first line, cuz I've never felt that way. You knowit doesn't last. But, I do like the line My ever present past.

    Reminds me of my problem with getting into new music. I need my music to have some history. A solid foundation. A little gravity.

    Anyway, I could keep writing nonsense, but I'll stop now. I'll go see if I can download this. Probably, huh?
    • ^
    • v
    I downloaded the record, but haven't listened yet. Will do soon.

    But I thoroughly enjoyed the profile in this week's New Yorker on Macca by John Colapinto. See if you can pick it up - parts of it quite sad really. They only have an abstract up.

    What comes across is that happy-go-lucky Paul has been thoroughly touched by ever-human tragedy and is only starting to realize his - his mum, his bass player, John's mum, John, Linda, George, his rebound marriage. Lots of melancholy.
    • ^
    • v
    I was surprised to find this available on eMusic and Napster-to-go with some additional tracks, including a 26 minute monologue that works through each song. I confess, I never would have gotten near it if I had to buy it without preview (take note music industry). I have to say I love this album. I've listened to it 4 times in the last 24 hours. It's simple, melodic and interesting--Dance Tonight,You Tell Me and The End of the End are just plain great. I'm going to write about this one.
    • ^
    • v
    From a deli man, that's a rave!
    • ^
    • v
    But, I do like the line My ever present past.

    Reminds me of my problem with getting into new music. I need my music to have some history. A solid foundation. A little gravity.

    GlueBirl, you have absolutely hit the nub of the biscuit on the head of the apostrophe.

    Paul's problem post-Lennon's-assassination is that he's not, you know, dead. He's actually had to live into middle age. He didn't get to give us "Working Class Hero" and then be providentially assassinated. Those of us who've accompanied him there deeply appreciate the implicit message in something like "Vintage Clothes," where the idea is, "I've seen this before, honestly it bores me, what else can you show me?"

    Since our society seems to work according to ever-narrowing cycles of nostalgia, where what's hip and what's square appear to be aimed in tighter and tighter centrifugal circles at each others' fundamental apertures, we who've seen these cycles before become less and less impressed with their allure.

    Drop out from the madness! Be your own fashion consultant! Wear and hear and watch what you like, and not what some power-mad sociopath thinks you should wear! There is no more revolutionary act.

    You owe it to yourself.
    • ^
    • v
    But I thoroughly enjoyed the profile in this week’s New Yorker on Macca by John Colapinto.

    Oog, that full-face photo of Sir Paul! The most uncomplimentary lighting possible! What a horror!

    I don't know about the internal workings at The New Yorker, but they seem to have hired a photog who brings out the absolute worst in his subjects. I remember a full-face photo of Dan Rather last year that should have been the casus belli is an antidefamation suit -- the most uncomplimentary photo imaginable...
    • ^
    • v
    Jeez, I loved that NYer photo. It looked like an aging showbiz guy, whatever make up just served as a garish yardstick against which could be measured the lines on the man's face. I think it said "aging teen idol with an artist's eyes" better than the profile did (and I loved the profile).

    Looking forward to the record.
    • ^
    • v
    I liked the photo too - maybe it will convince Macca to finally abandon the hideous hair dye.

    And listen, the fact that we're all still analyzing the Beatles is testament to their work and talent. I mean, we've had what, five Beatles posts here in the last week or so?

    (OK, we're old too - so fucking what? Piss off, youngster! Move along little tyke, there's nothing to see here.)
    • ^
    • v
    (OK, we’re old too - so fucking what? Piss off, youngster! Move along little tyke, there’s nothing to see here.)

    LOL!

    This post started a great conversation around the dinner table with Blue Kid last night. So, I thank you for that, Jeddie.

    Blue Kid knows how good The Beatles are/were. He loves 'em. He's got all the CDs.
    • ^
    • v
    When my oldest (now 20) was a mere 18 months, we were in the waiting room at the doc's, and Let it Be came on the music system. She said (to everyone's amazement except mine!)

    Dats Da Beeeetles!

    Speaking of
    The Beetles...
    • ^
    • v
    I'm not the student of Beatles and post-Beatles material that I should be given my age but I enjoy reading whatever Neddie has to say on the subject.

    I haven't heard the album but definitely will seek it out. (He's got a few albums I've never even heard.)

    Is there anybody else who thinks "Let 'Em In" is one of the oddest records ever to become a big AM hit?
    • ^
    • v
    Not nearly as odd as "Uncle Albert" or as obscure as "Jet" or "Band on the Run"
    • ^
    • v
    And listen, the fact that we’re all still analyzing the Beatles is testament to their work and talent.

    This is gonna sound pretentious as all hell, but here goes anyway: The Beatles' story has the arc and scope of classical tragedy. The heroes are undone by a combination of Epstein's (the Father's) death and elements of hubris that were present in them at the beginning of the story -- the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership that essentially dissolved very early on. Even the personalities assigned to the four (the handsome one, the quiet one, etc.) are literary archetypes. Note how carefully the artificially created Monkees assumed essentially the same four personalities.

    I haven't read it, but I'm told that one of Nick Hornby's novels riffs on this idea. (Wish I could remember which one.)
    • ^
    • v
    Thank you, Kevin. High compliment indeed. I'm touched.
    • ^
    • v
    Or Mull on Kintyre for that matter - McCartney's had a string of oddball hits, come to think of it.

    My 15-year-old loves the Beatles. She's learning guitar so she cam play the songs. Her friends love the Beatles. It amazes me.
    • ^
    • v
    I've been listening to Jet and Band on the Run all day like the obsessive compulsive that I can be.

    Crank it up!

    Yeeees -- Owooooo!
    • ^
    • v
    It occurs to one that Paulie's haircut during the Seventies could possibly have been referred to as "the Mullet of Kintyre."

    Just a thought.
    • ^
    • v
    Two great ones, BG - his early post-Beatles work was superb. I, for one, totally dig Maybe I'm Amazed.

    On Paul and Keith Richards, the mullet worked.
    • ^
    • v
    Here's a question that we discussed last night. Maybe some of you can give your thoughts.

    Did The Beatles have any influence whatsoever on hip hop and rap?

    Discuss.
    • ^
    • v
    Absoutely - probably the most sampled rock band. And of course, the Gray Album is considered a tour de force in artsy hip-hop circles.

    The guys who first scratched records and ran DJ samples in the Bronx in the early 70s used classic rock a lot.
    • ^
    • v
    Of course, BK was being an obstinate teen -- disagreeing with everything his out of it mom had to say, but I'm going to quote you verbatim, TW, as soon as he gets home from school.

    :)

    If anyone else has any ammunition, this old rocker could use it.

    We must stand together against the know it all tykes!
    • ^
    • v
    A lifelong love of things British started because of a Beatles tape slipped into my stocking when I was a little.

    I loved that Prague has a Beatles' wall, that the communists used to paint over and over and the students would repaint again and again. One of my teachers in Prague learned English first through the Beatles.

    I also love that when I was in China, in a bar listening to a Chinese singer-songwriter-y type, he broke out into "Let it be," putting an incredible emphasis on "IT."

    I'll definitely check out any record Neddie extols.
    • ^
    • v
    Just casually mention that Public Enemy made wonderful use of the classic Lennon-McCartney track "Tomorrow Never Knows" in their "Psycho of Greed" track - but it's only available in bootlegs.

    Then you can toss in something like, "you know - Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, The Who are all heavily sampled..."
    • ^
    • v
    This album makes me wonder why my enjoyment of McCartney's music has always greatly exceeded my respect for him. He's really good at what he does. Never game him credit for that before.
    I'm also really intrigued by the fact that I could download this DRM-free from emusic for about $3 worth of song credits. I wonder if he's just trying to get his stuff the widest exposure. I don't guess he needs the cash at this point.
    • ^
    • v
    OK, I've listened - once. And...

    I dig it. Tons of McCartney melodies - they're all over the place. The guy can roll out of bed humming a winner, I swear.

    I particularly enjoyed End of the End, actually - very light, very straightforward. He says it comes from a covnersation he had with an old Irish woman years ago, who wished him a happy death.

    Vintage Clothes - well, it comes within a clunky arrangement of being one of those easy McCartney classics. Over-produced, too many sounds. I'd love to hear him to that one Yesterday or Let It Be style.
    • ^
    • v
    Being a Macca fan, I wish I could get behind this new disc. But it's nowhere near as good as Chaos and Creation In The Backyard. "Fine Line" is the best McCartney song in decades. I think he really needs somebody pushing him, as he had in the Beatles and as he had on Chaos with producer Nigel Godrich. Going back to David Kahne as a producer just meant that he was basically cleaning out whatever was left in the closet. Still, Paul can do whatever he wants to. I think he's more than earned the right.
    • ^
    • v
    I think he really needs somebody pushing him, as he had in the Beatles and as he had on Chaos with producer Nigel Godrich.

    The Shamus took the words right off of my fingertips. There is nothing wrong with this record. Paul's post-Beatles career has those few standout records (the aforementioned and truly excellent Chaos being the most recent, ) but (except for some of the lyrics as noted by Ned) "Memory Almost Full" is just another in a long line of interchangeable, innocuous, tuneful efforts.

    But in this ever-changing world in which we live in - that's not a bad thing.
    • ^
    • v
    I haven't heard the new album and probably won't buy it. But I did read the New Yorker article by John Colapinto.

    Paul is quoted referring to the song, "That Was Me:"

    "There were two people in the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team, and I was one of them. ...One guy who wrote, 'Yesterday,' and I was him. One..who wrote..'Let It Be,' 'Fool on the Hill,' 'Lady Madonna' --...all of these things would be enough for anyone's life."

    He really said everything there is to say about realizing you're an artist and trying to create the best work you're able to, with what you have and what comes to you. How many of us get to contribute the tiniest fraction of what he had offered the world?
    • ^
    • v
    Good review, Neddie. From my point of view (and I've been listening to McCartney since "Paperback Writer,"), this is the best of all the McCartney albums, the most introspective, the most artistic.

    I read that "Memory Almost Full" is an anagram for "For my soulmate LLM (Linda Louise McCartney). And lo and behold, it is.

    That puts quite a spin on this record, wouldn't ya say?
    • ^
    • v
    What appeals to me about Paul is that at his best he acknowledges the sadness in life while trying to find some valid measure of happiness, despite it all. His new album expresses both halves of that formula better than anything since - well, I'm not sure when. If we're using the measuring stick of sustaining good work over an entire album, then maybe since he was in the band he was in before Wings. Why now? I'd guess George's and Linda's deaths have made him consider his own, which in turn made him concentrate a little harder this time around.
 

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