PAUL McCARTNEY & WINGS
WINGS:
Paul McCartney: lead and backing vocals, piano, bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, electric piano, mellotron, celeste, Moog synthesizer, ocarina
Linda McCartney: vocals, piano, electric piano, organ, electric harpsicord, percussion
Denny Laine: vocals, guitars, bass guitar, harmonica
Henry McCullough: lead guitars, backing vocals, percussion
Denny Seiwell: drums, percussion
all music and lyrics by Paul and Linda McCartney except
(from the original double album version)
"Seaside Woman" music and lyrics by Linda McCartney
"I Would Only Smile" music and lyrics by Denny Laine
"Tragedy" music and lyrics by Gerald H. Nelson & Fred B. Burch
Produced by Paul McCartney
Released May 4, 1973
I remember the look of utter frustration on the face of the record store clerk to this day.
I was perhaps about 11 or 12 years old and I was now in the stage of beginning to purchase records and cassettes on my own. Usually, when I performed this feat, I knew exactly what I was looking for, so all I would have to do was seek, find, purchase and go on my way...while also not allowing myself get into a position where I would be forced to speak out loud to a clerk, as the thought of that terrified me due to my own sense of social anxiety. But, on this one particular day, I had to unwillingly face my fear but there was something at work that was even stronger than my fear...it was the music and I wanted to get the album I was looking for.
The album in question was Paul McCartney & Wings' "Red Rose Speedway," and it was my next planned journey through McCartney's post-Beatles discography. At this time of my life, my Dad had purchased for me my first boom box (the very one my Mom still uses to this day) and to initiate the machine, he gave me Paul McCartney's delightfully oddball, ahead of the curve second homemade solo album "McCartney II" (released May 16, 1980). I soon followed that with the final album from Wings, the bizarre, multi-faceted audio joyride of "Back To The Egg" (released June 8, 1979) and the most celebrated Wings release, the classic "Band On The Run" (released November 30, 1973).
Being one who felt to harbor a sense of consistency, I wanted to find "Red Rose Speedway" on cassette, so that it would match with my other McCartney solo/Wings albums whereas all of my Beatles' albums were on vinyl. I arrived at JR's Music Shop in Evergreen Plaza (both now long lost to time) and began my general browsing as was my pattern and then, I began to scour the cassettes, which if memory serves me correctly, were not exactly locked away but were encased in some sort of theft preventative plastic casing. As I looked and I did not quickly notice the album, I began to internally grow discomforted. Not that the object of my desire wasn't present but the thought that I might have to actually approach the clerk and...ask if they had the tape in stock.
What ensued was an increasingly miserable dance between myself and the clerk, where barely audible words from me were squeezed out to the initially helpful clerk, who gradually became more and more visibly frustrated, especially as my overall nervousness made me internally confuse myself with not only what I was saying but how I was asking for help. My mind was jumbling "Red Rose Speedway" with "REO Speedwagon" and what ultimately emerged from me was just the title, which I think the clerk thought was a band name, which was completely foreign to him.
Finally, I realized my mistake and coughed out, "It's an album by Paul McCartney & Wings."
Oooh, the look of fury that came my way as I could see that I had profusely wasted the clerk's ample time searching for something that didn't exist but could be easily discovered if I had only told him the band's name first and then, the title. He wordlessly stomped over to the cassettes, instantly found the album, took it to the counter, unearthed it from its plastic shield, and rang it up. I wordlessly paid the total and all but ran from the store, filled with embarrassment and shame.
But...I still got the album I wanted.
As much as that memory has imprinted itself upon my connection to the album, as the experiences of how we are formally introduced to the work play as much of a part as that first, and subsequent listenings, there is another memory that imprinted the album further.
Growing up, I lived very close to my Grandparents, in which there also lived an Uncle and two sibling cousins (to whom I will always consider my own older siblings for how closely we grew up together). There were times during which my parents needed me to either stay at my Grandparents for the day while they worked or even rarer situations where I needed to spend the night.
This memory arrived during a "spend the night" period (I think my parents went on a vacation...), as I felt the need to bring my boom box with me as well as my few cassettes, which included my latest purchase. Admittedly, my first reaction towards "Red Rose Speedway" was decidedly muted. I was not as fond of it compared with the others. Like so much of the solo material from all four members post The Beatles, aside from radio singles that I had already loved, this album certainly was not The Beatles, obviously. It just sounded weird to my ears, with the clear elements of country music not being too favorable. I clearly didn't get it and I felt myself agreeing with the album reviews, which were middling at best, that perhaps this was not one of McCartney's stronger efforts.
Yet, I bought it and still, I continued to listen. And during this stay at my Grandparents, during the Chicago heat and humidity of Summer--as my Grandparents were not apt to turn on their air conditioner unless during extreme temperatures...and even then, they would sit on their back porch at night with the door wide open--this album then deeply imprinted upon me for the remainder of my life.
To me, Paul McCartney & Wings' "Red Rose Speedway" is exclusively a "Summer album." I couldn't even imagine listening to it during the Winter months. It is a work that sounds like the long heat of the day and the equally lengthy, languid humid nights. It is the sight of wildflowers and fireflies augmented by the sound of cicadas. Sun drenched skies and stagnant air and Summer days that feel to stretch for miles without end...until it does, typically signaled by school bells.
The distinctive pastoral, rustic quality of the album in its entirety arrives from the dryness of the overall sound, the up front prevalence of more acoustic sounding instruments. It's not as studio slick at what was to follow on then future albums like "Venus and Mars" (released May 27, 1975), for instance. Despite some rockers here and there, "Red Rose Speedway" sounds decidedly non-urban, quite the opposite of how the album's title sounds metallic--like a race car.
In fact, the homegrown nature of the work makes it feel like a collection of campfire songs. A feeling that has only blossomed over time.
Over time, I had learned that Paul McCartney originally conceived of "Red Rose Speedway" as a double album, a point of extreme interest for me as I am a devotee of the double album format. While bootleg versions have existed over the decades since the original album's release, McCartney himself eventually reconfigured the intended double album for the "Red Rose Speedway" reissue for his Paul McCartney Archives series (released October 18, 2018).
And now for the uninitiated, I would like to present the two different track listings...
"Red Rose Speedway: Original 1973 Release"
SIDE ONE
1. Big Barn Bed
2. My Love
3. Get On The Right Thing
4, One More Kiss
5. Little Lamb Dragonfly
SIDE TWO:
6. Single Pigeon
7. When The Night
8. Loup (1st Indian On The Moon)
9: Medley: Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands Of Love/Power Cut
"Red Rose Speedway": Double Album version
SIDE ONE
1. Night Out
2. Get On The Right Thing
3. Country Dreamer
4. Big Barn Bed
5. My Love
SIDE TWO
6. Single Pigeon
7. When The Night
8. Seaside Woman
9. I Lie Around
10.The Mess (live at the Hague)
SIDE THREE
11.Best Friend (live in Antwerp)
12.Loup (1st Indian On The Moon)
13.Medley: Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands Of Love/Power Cut
SIDE FOUR
14.Mama's Little Girl
15.I Would Only Smile
16.One More Kiss
17.Tragedy
18.Little Lamb Dragonfly
At the time of the original release and thereafter, the 9 songs excised from the intended double album saw the light of day as B-sides and the like. On the 2 disc Archives reissue, Disc One contains the original 1973 album while Disc Two contains all of the odds and ends plus even more rarities and singles released at the time. Yet, I had never heard the album start to finish as McCartney intended.
That is, until just the other late afternoon as I was reading with my cat Rooney sleeping nearby ...and then, everything clicked into place in ways it never had before, making me wonder that if it had been released as a double album originally, would I have held the same muted reaction towards it or would it have been different? Furthermore, the experiences that imprinted themselves with my life with the album, would they still have been intrinsic to the experience? Even so, and despite the what ifs, this is about my reaction to it now, combined with all that I felt before, and my relationship with the work has been enormously enhanced and enriched my experience.
The original version of "Red Rose Speedway," while having grown more affection towards it, I do still feel that it is an album that is often very pretty, but there is this sense of a mid range pleasantness that makes the entire album feel a bit weightless.
For the double album version, we begin with a veritable BANG as "Night Out" sounds like its title; raucous, lively, bursting with energy and vocalized essentially with a chant instead of lyrics. It perfectly give an image of a big night on the town, whether in London or New York or Chicago or any cosmopolitan city. Moving "Get On The Right Thing" to the immediate second song on the album, the nighttime energy is sustained greatly as the track now contains a full plastic soul euphoria-courtesy of McCartney's standout lead vocals augmented by those Jackson 5 styled harmony vocals and hand claps-I never quite felt before.
With the entry of B-side "Country Dreamer" into the third song on Side One, then followed by original album opener "Big Barn Bed," the story of the album came into focus for me: after a night on the town, we are now heading back to the quieter comforts and security of home, which more firmly ties this album thematically to McCartney's initial post Beatles life, family and rural lifestyle plus the more homemade, ramshackle work contained upon "McCartney" (released April 17, 1970), "Ram (released May 17, 1971), the single "Another Day" (released February 19, 1971) and Wings' debut "Wild Life" (released December 3, 1971). These feelings were cemented with the superb "My Love," once an interlude now placed as the album side's climax. These five songs within this configuration demonstrated the artistry the resides inside what makes the most effective track sequence as for me, I heard a story being told when before I did not.
Sides Two and Three allow "Red Rose Speedway" to expand and breathe with the additions of differing sounds, textures and voices. Just as with the original, Side Two opens with both the pensive "Single Pigeon" and the Fats Domino-esque (with a hint of Todd Rundgren) "When The Night." From here, the album grows with Linda McCartney's regatta de blanc "Seaside Woman," a selection that feels like a sequel to The Beatles' "Ob-La-Di-Ob-La-Da," perhaps the story from the point of view from the children of Desmond and Molly Jones, making this song another ode to hearth and home, mirroring the McCartneys lives at that time. "I Lie Around," featuring Denny Laine on most of the lead vocals, rises the musical temperature with grand orchestral flourishes that recall the landscape as heard upon "Ram."
Side Two concludes and Side Three opens with two live tracks, the raucous "The Mess" and the chugging blues of "Best Friend," respectively, selections that are decidedly less Shea Stadium and are ore suggestive of friends bashing it out in the barn on a Summer's afternoon. To that end, "Best Friend," whether McCartney would admit to it or not, certainly feels as if it is addressing his then fractured relationship with John Lennon as they were trading barbs through songs and musical images as well as via their legal struggles.
Side Three continues and concludes with the remainder of what existed on the original album's second half, the experimental instrumental "Loup (1st Indian On The Moon)" and the four song "Medley: Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands Of Love/Power Cut." Again, song placement is key as what once felt to almost float way now feels like we are on a journey while still sticking to a certain domestic theme, that campfire song feeling I mentioned earlier. These are songs for a Summer's night, under the moonlight, stars and dancing fireflies.
The emotional zenith of the album arrives on Side Four with five exquisitely placed and sequenced tracks, three of which did not appear on the original album. "Mama's Little Girl" is such classic McCartney that I am stunned that he left it off of the truncated release and to follow that level of fragile tenderness with Denny Laine's stunning, wistful "I Would Only Smile" and then follow up with the relaxed "One More Kiss," you feel the album is coming in for its landing. The beautifully sung "Tragedy," itself a cover of the Thomas Wayne and the DeLons single (released 1959) serves as the lullaby before the farewell and goodnight that is "Little Lamb Dragonfly."
It feels so obvious to me listening now that "Little Lamb Dragonfly," which originally concluded Side One, should ALWAYS have been the album's finale no matter the track listing and I wish that in that regard McCartney had listened greater to his artistic instincts because he was 100% correct. The song, a hybrid of two compositions and reportedly about a dying lamb merged with possibly more feelings towards his then fractured relationship with Lennon, was one that always drifted past me regardless of its obvious beauty. It hit me on this night listening to this double album version that while the song is always the same, it was always in the wrong place. And now...the song just hits differently and connects with a melancholic power that sustains long after the "la la las" fade out.
"Little Lamb Dragonfly" is not only the period at the end of the sentence that is "Red Rose Speedway," it is the line in the sand of Paul McCartney's evolution during this particular stage of his post Beatles existence. With this song as the full double album's finale, it gave me the feeling that this signified his shelter from the storm, moving into greater adulthood from the hurricane of being a Beatle into calmer, quieter life on a farm with Linda and their children...which greater prepared him for the next phase larger scaled phase beginning with "Band On The Run" and concluding with the triple live album victory lap "Wings Over America" (released December 10, 1976).
"Little Lamb Dragonfly," in its way, is a goodbye. To childhood, a past life, a certain sense of innocence while also serving as a salutation to the new innocence of love and family and being swept into its grandest embrace.
While watching Peter Jackson's extraordinary "The Beatles: Get Back" (2021) documentary, one of the marvels to witness was the moment when we saw Paul McCartney, over a span of about two minutes, essentially will what would become "Get Back" into life. Throughout the documentary, we also see McCartney noodling away on songs that would appear not only upon The Beatles' "Abbey Road" (released September 24, 1969) but more songs that would surface upon solo releases. It was staggering to see just how much music poured right out of him. I experienced that same sensation while listening to the double album version of "Red Rose Speedway" as the melodies felt to joyously overflow and congeal into a full artistic statement that has previously eluded me all of these years in its originally released form.
Yes, I know there are some to many who will never embrace this album as well as those who might love it jus as it stands as a single album. I know that there are those who dislike the double album format in general and as previously stated, I am not one of those people. For me, it was just fascinating to experience with my own ears that to my ear, Paul McCartney's original instincts were the right ones all along and from now on, this is the way that will choose to listen to this album.
Music always finds you at the time it was designed to and the journey with that music will take which ever twists and turns it needs and dictates as you grow with it. What a journey this has been, one that has taken me to this beautiful space.
And now...let me click "PLAY" so I can hear it all over again.
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