McCartney* – McCartney

This vinyl that is over fifty years old still sounds fantastic.

That first uk pressing is marvelous - everything sounds beautiful, clear, with great dynamics high and low ends - this vinyl beats every remaster I have ever heard

I agree with the comment below ! The -2U/-2U matrix sounds awesome indeed !

The -2U/-2U cut sounds magnificent. It seriously sounds like Paul McCartney is in the room, and so are the instruments.

This album has limited production, but that is the charm. It is not the greatest album, but this and Ram are my favourite of PM albums.

Years and years ago, I seeing an Australian pressing on the Apple label on which the last cut on side 1 was listed as "Man Was He Lonely". Does anyone here have that issue or seen it themselves?

If you received the UK version of this album as I did in 1970, you found it full of propaganda, not just the album jacket images, but the four accompanying pages that went on endlessly about how happy Paul and Linda were to have stepped out of the Beatles, to have stepped out of the city and discovered a life for themselves and their family in a more tranquil setting.

It’s not my intention to say or imply that the album isn’t good, what I am saying is that I was sure that the character of the album would be a leap beyond the Beatles, a no doubt super-duper extravaganza which would pale in comparison to anything the Beatles had ever done. Yet compared to what the Beatles had done, this record for me was decidedly second rate, where for the first time I came to the realization that Paul could only write the likes of “Let It Be” and “Hey Jude” because John Lennon was in the wings tweaking the sound, infusing those songs with his visions, with the results being a Beatles’ song, that Lennon and McCartney were two halves of a whole, and that without each other, the solo material of these four musicians who changed the world would never equal the tenor or scope of their previous incarnation.

On the whole, even with Paul’s emphasis on simplicity, there are good and even great moments within the construct of most of the songs, yet the songs seemed rather playful and unfinished in their nature, as if there were an important element that had been intentionally left out. It’s not until “Maybe I’m Amazed,” a powerful and visionary song finds its groove that one understands that the album is about loneliness, a loneliness that can only be dispelled by love, not ion, just love. While Linda is the focal point of all this love and attention, I’m sure that subconsciously she’s standing in for his bandmates in general, where Paul is now out on his own and alone.

Most of the rest of the songs come across as fractured memories, reminding me of this or that, pleasing, yet very elusive, certainly not on even footing with anything Lennon and McCartney had done together. Though in retrospect, perhaps what Paul’s doing here is re-introducing himself to the world, where listeners are face to face with Paul’s vocals alone, minus any studio inflections. Of course all this means that if one is coming to this album with the mindset of hearing quasi-Beatles material, think again, because what you’re going to get is the simplicity of Paul, alone on his own without John to shake things up and make them bigger than they are. That being said, I imagine that those who come to this album thirty or forty years after its release, will find it to be conceptually entirely different, especially without all of the hoopla surrounding the so-recent demise of the world’s first musical love affair … instead of the hollowness I hear.

In of my observations, Paul’s first outing was panned by nearly everyone as being lightweight and filled with fluff, while the same folks expressed concerns the Lennon’s work was too experimental in nature. McCartney was such a vital and strong aspect of the Beatles that one would think those attributes would surely manifest themselves on this record, though while this album may sound lightweight, it’s overflowing with emotional possibilities that include realism (reality), love, depression, and a seductive element for the discovery within the unknown (being on his own). Without a doubt, all of the songs are well crafted and presented with care, where perhaps this was the only sort of album Paul McCartney could have made in order to break free of his shadow.

While there may be far too many musical pathways intersecting for me to see this record as openly in 2019, as those hearing it for the first time today, perhaps that’s a really good thing, as they get to experience this record without all of the pretenses and baggage that came with the record for those of us who lived though those times.

Review by Jenell Kesler