McCartney "Wings Over America" Album, "Rockshow" Film Re-release Coming Soon

People either love or hate Paul McCartney's post-Beatles work, especially the band Wings.

While conceding that it took the band a few albums to gel, I always loved the band and think the latter albums (London Town and Back to the Egg) are very underrated.

A few years back, Macca put out the splendid DVD Wingspan, which chronicled the whole of the 70s for Paul, from the Beatles break-up and his massive depression following it, to his re-energized career and the ashes to glory story of Wings.

The apex for Wings was this mid 70s period where McCartney could sell out arenas again and put out great sounding singles that placed well in the charts. Once Wings achieved this massive success, I get the feeling McCartney felt vindicated and didn't need to prove himself anymore, and then Wings kind of petered out.

Wings Over America, the triple album that chronicled the 1976 tour I just mentioned, is going to come out in expanded, remastered format on May 28. This version will have an additional disc from a California concert, plus a DVD of the Wings special Wings Over The World. There will also be the regular less expensive version that maps to the original release, but of course also remastered.

Also being released is the film Rockshow, the full concert (not the edited version that came out on VHS and Betamax in 1980) fully restored from the original 35mm film and with restored & remastered sound. I didn't know this before looking into the re-release but this tour was the only time McCartney toured the States in the 70s, and it was his first appearance there since the mid-60s with the Beatles, so no wonder it was such a success!

I had Rockshow on a video tape and watched it a million times. Its the ultimate chronicle of live Wings, from Paul pulling out old Beatles tunes in an acoustic set (I've Just Seen A Face, Blackbird), to Wings hits (Live and Let Die, Band on the Run), to Wings B-sides (Letting Go, Rockshow, Let Me Roll It).

Rockshow will also be shown on the big screen for one night only on May 15. For a listing of theaters, go to http://rockshowonscreen.com/.

Below is a YouTube of Let Me Roll It from the film. It'll be nice to have a cleaned up version. I was wondering when this might come out again, and I happy to see it's imminent!

Stones, The Who, McCartney, Roger Waters, Springsteen to Rock MSG for Hurricane Sandy

I would be crucified for suggesting there is an upside to horrible tragic events like 9-11 and Hurricane Sandy, but New York tragedies do tend to lead to the most killer all-star charity concerts.

Take tonight, where the 12-12-12 Concert for Hurricane Sandy cranks up at 7:30 p.m. ET, with this crazy all-star cast: Paul McCartney, The Rolling Stones, Roger Waters, Bruce Springsteen, The Who, Eric Clapton, Dave Grohl, Bon Jovi, Billy Joel, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, and Chris Martin of Coldplay. I am sure there will be guests too.

Some of the pre-event buzz says that Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl will do some kind of a duet, and Roger Waters told Jimmy Fallon last night that he’d be closing with Comfortably Numb with the assistance of a special guest, Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder. That will be pretty cool.

My kid has his Christmas program tonight – I really have to tell the school to consult with my rock and roll calendar before booking shit – so it’ll be DVR all the way for me!

Here is the full video from Waters’ interview on Fallon last night. Fallon is always so freaked out by Waters, it’s funny! Hulu won’t let me embed the video but you can see it here.

Paul McCartney Digitizes A Lifetime, Puts It In HP Cloud

It's well-known by Beatles fans that John Lennon agreed to film and record most of his life, long before reality TV and Big Brother. The treasure trove of audio and film was tapped for the fantastic Imagine movie, as well as the Anthology series, which used loads of interviews from John's life to match the volume of fresh interviews from the other three guys, all of whom were alive at the time.

But you know who else kept the cameras running, and for much longer? Paul McCartney. And now, McCartney's lifetime of home movies, videos, photographs, documents, unreleased music, paintings and numerous other items will be stored in perpetuity on a new private cloud system designed, built and maintained by HP, according to this eWEEK article.

According to the article:

McCartney has been one of the world's most-renowned entertainment content creators for two generations. Like many people, his personal collection has been stored all these years on old-school media that's considered at risk.

"This is quite an undertaking, and the process is ongoing--and will be for awhile," Scott Anderson, HP's entertainment marketing manager, told eWEEK. "We believe there are more than 1 million assets in this library; there are shelves and shelves of boxes containing all sorts of things, personal and business. It all will eventually be digitized."

"He [McCartney] is one of the most prolific artists of all time--he's got thousands of hours of videotape that's been taken through his career; he's got artwork, he's got his music, of course," Anderson said. "Much of it is on media that's susceptible [to physical damage]." McCartney was looking for a company "that he could trust to work with him to preserve his unique assets," Anderson said.

The article also discusses the possibility of McCartney opening access to parts of this vast library to the public. I for one will be happy to roam those halls! You?

Paul McCartney Reissues His Crappiest Albums

I was surprised to see all the promo around Paul McCartney reissuing his two solo albums McCartney and McCartney II. Both albums were put out as transitional exercises and were really Paul blowing off steam between formal recording projects.

I know there are a lot of people who hold McCartney close to their hearts, but as much as I have tried to enjoy that album, I still think it's mostly garbage. And don't get me started on McCartney II. A total piece of crap.

But I guess Paul is trying to save up for honeymoon number three, so he is putting out major packaging options around these reissues, such as double-disc Special Editions and Deluxe Editions, with DVDs and more bonus content. They will also be available on vinyl and digitally. Both versions come with all sorts of bonus tracks, including live material and B-sides.

The packages look gorgeous but you can't polish a turd. Hell, even in the below promo videos, Paul admits these were fun projects and were not supposed to be consumed as real top-notch recordings.

Unlike Pete Townshend's Scoop series, which offer loads of raw, unpolished noodlings and Who demos, Sir Paul is basically reissuing dross.

Paul is almost apologetic in the below but you tell me - are you going to buy any of this? Am I smoking dope here?

Paul McCartney and KISS? Say It Ain't So!

Seano is gonna love this one. Word on the street is that Paul McCartney has tapped a number of bands to play some Beatles and Wings tunes for some kind of tribute CD. Didn't know people were supposed to coordinate their OWN tribute CDs but it's all good...

Anyway, several sources say that Paul McCartney is asking KISS to play on the disc, and the rumor is that they will do Venus and Mars. Now, I assume what they really mean is the Wings tune Rockshow, which follows the short Venus and Mars intro on the album of the same name.

Bill Joel and The Cure are also rumored to be contributing. In terms of KISS, I could totally hear Paul Stanley belting this one out:

The Grammy Awards - Neil, Vultures, Maiden, Jeff Beck Win

I did not watch the Grammy Awards tonight. In fact I stopped watching the annual show ages ago. My last good Grammy memory was watching Train perform Drops of Jupiter in 2006 and thinking that they were so fucking good even though that song got way overplayed.

Train won again tonight for a far inferior song but there were some other nice wins. Neil Young won for Best Rock Song with Angry World - his first Grammy win for an actual song (he won for "best art direction on a boxed or special limited edition package" last year - come the hell on), so that injustice has finally been righted.

Them Crooked Vultures took Best Hard Rock Performance for New Fang, beating out Ozzy, Stone Temple Pilots and Soundgarden. They for sure deserved it - that band is super and I look forward to the second album this year.

And Iron Maiden took Best Metal Performance for El Dorado, beating out Megadeath and Slayer - I guess Jethro Tull didn't have an album out this year.

Jeff Beck took best Pop Instrumental Performance and Best Rock Instrumental Performance, and Paul McCartney took Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance for Helter Skelter from Good Evening in NYC, so good for him.

Of course the filmmakers who brought us Rush: Beyond The Lighted Stage got snubbed for The Doors film, proving that the band can't get into any of these awards or Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame spots even through the back door.

But overall some nice solid rock and hard rock was acknowledged tonight, and for that I am thankful.

But now I can't get that goddamn Train song out of my head again. Here it is so you too can relive the over saturation (right after the youngling's cello solo):

McCartney Joins Starr Onstage For Birthday Surprise

Any dream of a Beatles reunion was of course shattered by Lennon's senseless murder in 1980. We did get as good of a reunion possible with the Anthology project. The DVD bonus features of the three surviving Beatles jamming is pretty priceless even though they seem a little tentative around each other.

Of course with Harrison's death a few years later, we have half the band dead. Just like The Who as a matter of fact. So we take whatever we can get when it comes to reunions.

Which leads me to this post. Ringo turned 70 this week. He is on his umpteenth All-Starr band tour and who joined as a surprise guest in New York? The one and only Sir Paul. As reported by Spinner:

All Ringo Starr asked for as a 70th birthday gift on July 7 was "peace and love" from all his fans around the world. However, he was the one who delivered a big birthday surprise to the wildly cheering attendees at his celebratory concert at Radio City Music Hall in New York when Paul McCartney joined the legendary Beatles drummer onstage, fronting Ringo's All-Starr Band for a joyous encore appropriately consisting of the Fab Four's 'Birthday.' Sir Paul, clad in a tight black suit and skinny tie right out of 1964, waggled his iconic Höfner bass in time while delivering his full-throated take on the song. Starr merrily bashed away behind him on his kit alongside his drummer son Zak Starkey, with Joe Walsh joining in to supply guitar pyrotechnics.

And thanks to the Internet (God bless the Internet), here it is:

Paul McCartney A Crooked Vulture?

In the holy shit department, here is an article verbatim from ClassicRock.com:

Sir Paul McCartney was very nearly a member of Them Crooked Vultures.

The Beatles legend told The Daily Mail that it all came about when he went out for a meal with Dave Grohl after the Grammy Awards last year.

“Dave told me he was starting this band with Josh [Homme].

“I asked him who was playing bass and he rather sheepishly told me he’d approached John [Paul Jones].

“So you read it here first: Paul McCartney was nearly the bass player in Them Crooked Vultures.”

I am glad it's JPJ but shit, that would have been interesting!

CD Review - Paul McCartney - Good Evening New York City

I can divide what any long-standing artist plays live into three categories:

1) The songs they feel that they HAVE to play. These are the hits that the majority of the audience wants to hear but that long-time fans are probably tired of.
2) Songs from the catalog. Not the hits but the stuff people have probably heard if they are fans.
3) Deep cuts – obscure songs or new songs that the majority of attendees have likely not heard.

Striking the proper balance between these three categories makes or breaks the concert. For example, the last time I saw The Who they had just put out a new album and they leaned so heavily on these category 3 songs in their set that they had no time for category 2 songs. This would have been great but I hated their new album and so had to suffer through those new songs live plus all the weathered warhorses like Behind Blue Eyes, Pinball Wizard and Baba O’Riley. What I missed was cat 2 stuff like Slip Kid, Relay, Bargain, I Don’t Even Know Myself – hell even Another Tricky Day would have been sweet.

On the other hand, Rush did a great job on the last tour. Doing seven songs from their brand new album (category 3), most of the cat 1 hits like Tom Sawyer, Limelight, Spirit of Radio, etc, and lots of category 2 gems like Natural Science and Force Ten, and even a handful of more category 3 rarities like Digital Man, Entre Nous (never played live prior to that tour) and Circumstances. Great balance, and reviews of the tour were positive overall.

Some bands who have been around forever unwisely do nothing but category 1 songs. That’s OK until you have seen them a few times and then it gets old fast. Come to think of it, The Who have fallen into that rut for me as well! Sucks ass because I love The Who!

One guy who could for sure fall into the category 1-only doldrums is Paul McCartney. I mean come on. The guy could do two hours of Beatles and Wings hits and be done with it. Look at his last few live albums. Stuff like Hey Jude, Yesterday, Live and Let Die and Band On The Run are on every single one of them. Do we need five identical live versions of Let It Be? No.

But McCartney is a smart cookie and knows how to vary it up with category 2 and 3 songs. Take his new CD, the double disc/DVD Good Evening New York City. Yes, he rehashed all those cat 1s again but digs way deep into 2: Drive My Car, Paperback Writer, Got to Get You Into My Life, Let Me Roll It, I’ve Got A Feeling. And I’d say there are many, many category 3 songs here. He does two excellent songs from the recent Fireman album (Sing the Changes and Highways). I’d venture to say that after hearing these two songs live, they stand up with the best of McCartney’s work. And boy, a few years ago I would not have bet that that was possible.

(Oh, and a shout out to Bob’s Bloggery, who reviewed this disc and is the reason I bought it. Thanks, Bob!)

Other newer gems are Calico Skies and Flaming Pie from Flaming Pie – again, I think that the live versions stand up really well with the rest of the repertoire. He also dusted off some great old nuggets – Mrs Vanderbilt (from Band on the Run – has he ever played that live?), Day Tripper, Helter Skelter, and I’m Down. A couple of other songs (Only Mama Knows and Here Today) are nice but don’t go over as well. I love Here Today because it’s an open letter to Lennon, but it just doesn’t have a great melody.

Now that he is unshackled from Heather Mills, he can dust off My Love again – a song I love despite its schmaltzy-ness. PS – next tour bring back Maybe I’m Amazed, Paul!

Anyway, the secret sauce to pulling all of this off is his latest band. These guys totally rock. Let’s start with the drummer, Abe Laboriel Jr. Huge black dude who beats the ever living shit out of the kit. No way could Paul do Helter Skelter with any of his previous drummers. He is a powerhouse and he drives the band big time. And he sings harmony to boot. Actually, everyone in his band sings, which comes in handy for stuff like Eleanor Rigby and Paperback Writer.

Guitarist Rusty Anderson and guitarist/bassist Brian Ray fill out the front line. Anderson has all the licks down but plays them with his own style and it’s very fresh. Ray is a smoking bass player and he not only has Macca’s parts down pat, he has the feel as well. So when Paul picks up the guitar or moves to piano, it’s Ray that holds down the bottom end.

Rounding out the five-piece is Paul “Wix” Wickens who has been with McCartney for more than 15 years and plays keyboards, harmonica, accordion etc. The jack of all trades that makes it possible to do stuff like A Day In The Life.

What? Oh yeah, Paul pays tribute to three members of the Beatles family who have departed – Linda with My Love, as noted. And he does A Day In The Life, which morphs into Give Peace A Chance. Very cool. That, along with Here Today is a very nice way to remember Lennon. For George, Paul does Something on the ukulele but then the whole band comes in just in time for the solo. Ray absolutely nails Paul’s bass part to a T here.

The other neat thing is that the show is in the new Citi Field, which was built next door to the recently demolished Shea Stadium. So on the DVD there is all sorts of banter about the Beatles’ 1965 gig at Shea. Paul keeps referring back to that gig and even notes that I’m Down was played there. In the DVD, the audio and video switches back and forth between the Beatles 1965 Shea performance of I’m Down and the 2009 Citi Field one. Kind of jarring at first but it’s kind of cool. That is the song where Lennon got so giddy that he played the keyboard solo with his elbow. Wickens does the same in tribute.

The DVD has the whole show – all 33 songs plus the between-song stage banter omitted from the CDs. I usually am not fond of McCartney’s live videos because they spend waaaay too much time on audience members singing along, to the point that I stopped buying them ages ago. But this one keeps it to a minimum.

And I guess I ought to end by saying that McCartney’s voice sounds truly excellent. A little rough on the high end but solid, which is how he was a couple of years ago when I saw him (with this very same band) in Portland. And once again I am blown away by how good he is on bass. It’s the old Hofner all night long and he knows how to work that thing. And piano as well. I can’t imagine Lady Madonna is very easy to pull off unless you got the chops.

McCartney fan? Get this damn CD. ‘Nuff said.

Book Review - Paul McCartney A Life - By Peter Ames Carlin

I got the book Paul McCartney – A Life, by Peter Ames Carlin for Christmas and just finished it last night. It’s a comprehensive book that looks at McCartney’s entire life and career up to present day. Carlin interviewed scores of people – old bandmates, employees, friends etc. The only people not interviewed are members of McCartney’s family, or any of the former Beatles/their families. Maybe he tried and they said no.

But what he got let him put together what reads like a facts-based account of McCartney’s career. He looks at all the angles – was McCartney an obsessed workaholic who disregarded the input of all but his closest collaborators (Lennon and Linda McCartney)? Or was he an insecure worry-wart, eager to ‘set the record straight’ by rewriting history of his contributions to The Beatles and the songs credited to “Lennon/McCartney?” Or was he a savant following his muse to greater and greater heights (but in the shadow of Lennon), anyone with an opinion be damned?

The cool thing about Carlin’s book is that unlike most writers, he does not take sides. This is not a “Paul is an insecure dick” book, nor is it a glowing re-writing of history putting forth that Paul for the most part drove The Beatles and Lennon was along for the ride. Most books take one of those two angles. Rather, Carlin lays out the facts and lets the reader decide.

Where did I land? Well, I have always seen McCartney as unnecessarily insecure. There is no reason why he needs to trumpet what he did in The Beatles. His vast catalog of amazing songs speaks for itself. Latter 70s Wings material and a few glowing spots in his solo career back up the notion that he is a master of the melody, an amazing songwriter who didn’t need anyone else to help him.

Of course he was rudderless in the early 70s. Unlike Lennon and especially Harrison, McCartney didn’t have a backlog of songs to draw from. Also he was the odd man out, shut out creatively and business-wise by his three best friends who at the moment despised him. It’s amazing the dude landed on his feet at all.

The book portrays Linda McCartney as the savior who helped him get on his feet when he was down and out. Carlin again reports the facts, that Linda was not a good musician (by her own account even), but that her presence in McCartney’s creative life helped drive him to the great success of Wings and his other endeavors. The fact that she could be a bit overbearing was offset by the fact that anyone not overbearing was pretty much ignored by McCartney!

Having read way too much about the Beatles already, I knew a lot of the subject matter. But there was a lot that was new to me as well. For example, the turmoil of the songwriting sessions for the Anthology series, where the three surviving Beatles were all concerned they would not be fairly represented in the mix of the new song Free As A Bird. And how they had a three hour ‘airing out’ session in Harrison’s back yard and seemed to come back happier and got back to work.

I appreciated the themes that Carlin kept coming back to, that 1) events in Paul’s childhood affected how he behaved through the rest of his life, and 2) because he was mega-successful from a very early age, McCartney has a very distorted sense of how things are supposed to be, and this frequently clouds his judgement across the board.

Another recurring theme in the book is all of the ‘what if’s’ and close calls regarding Beatle reunions. I didn’t know that Lennon and McCartney hung out several times in the 70s and even jammed in a studio one time, with McCartney on drums. I found the bootleg of that session and it’s interesting to say the least but not very magical. They are all pretty wasted and it’s during Lennon’s “Lost Weekend.” But damn, it's interesting!

There were even a few times in the 70s when three of the four Beatles played together and just for purely logistical reasons the fourth wasn’t there (not because he wasn’t invited or because there was bad blood). The recounting of these events in the book makes me believe that the Beatles absolutely would have reunited at some point if Lennon had not been killed in 1980, if even for a one-off.

Anyway, for the most part McCartney comes across as a positive if slightly bemused artist (in the purest sense of the word) who struggles with various insecurities and the inability to identify a really good idea from a really bad idea.

It’s a fascinating read and even if you think you know all there is to know about the Beatles or McCartney I promise you will learn something from this book. And Carlin does it in 340 pages, which is a feat in and of itself. There is a LOT to cover in those pages and he does a great job not glossing over anything but not hammering the reader to death with details. And to back up his facts, there is a much appreciated appendix that outlines where he got all of his quotes and info. Very nice.

Neil Young and Paul McCartney Go Apeshit

I am really not sure what to say about this, except that even though it doesn't sound that great, make sure to watch all the way to the end. The last two minutes are the payoff.

XM Radio Gets It Right With McCartney Channel

I have been listening a lot lately to XM Radio channel 27, which is called Paul McCartney's Fireman Radio. The channel runs for a month and plays nothing but Paul McCartney solo stuff, Wings and the three Fireman albums. The only time you hear a Beatles tune is if they run a live McCartney/Wings version of it, of which there are plenty, so you get a fair amount of Beatles too.

I know a lot of people are totally sick of McCartney and probably feel like 24/7 of the man is akin to going to the dentist. But I have to say, I am enjoying it quite a bit.

He has had such a long career, there is a lot to choose from. And unlike XM Radio's Zeppelin channel, they are getting the playlist right.

The Zep channel was basically a souped up rock-block weekend for a month. Yeah, they played every track from the 8 or 9 albums, but they barely dipped into the live stuff (even official releases like the BBC concerts and Song Remains the Same). The only solo stuff they played was Robert Plant's more popular stuff. No Firm even. It sucked.

In contrast, I have heard a bunch of very deep McCartney album cuts (Ram On, for example), as well as stuff that is fairly obscure. For example, there was a short instrumental called In Private that I thought was from a Fireman album. But a quick iTunes search told me it was a bonus track from the deluxe version of Memory Almost Full.

So I bought the song. There have been a few other cool tracks I have bought as one-offs after hearing them, actually. Which I guess is the idea.

They are for sure pimping the new Fireman album but that's OK, as I like that as well.

Anyway, good for XM for getting it right this time. What other artists would benefit from this format? They ought to have a Dylan channel that not only plays the umpteen hundred Dylan albums but goes into his stuff with The Band and how about the umpteen thousand cover versions of his songs? I don't expect you'd hear many repeats on that channel! Maybe they have it in the works? Who else?

CD Review - The Fireman "Electric Arguments"

OK, so since I kind of assed out in an earlier post, talking about an album I had never even heard, I felt obligated to go and buy the CD by Paul McCartney and producer Youth, called Electric Arguments. Their 'band' is called The Fireman. I have been listening to it for a couple of days straight and I really like it.

While fans of Maybe I'm Amazed, Band on the Run and Take It Away may be a little shocked at how free form this is, fans of McCartney's more experimental side will be satisfied.

Take the first track, Nothing Too Much Out Of Sight. On first listen, it sounds like Helter Skelter's younger brother with a heavy riff, thrashing McCartnery-played drums, and a screamy vocal. There is distorted harmonica, bass, slide guitar and vocals. On second and third listen, I noticed the thing alternates between bars of 6 and 8, which makes for a loping kind of weird groove.

There is no verse-chorus-verse structure on this CD. It's very free flowing and jammy and for the most part vocals are like another instrument. And they clearly smoked boatloads of weed while recording some of these tunes.

There are also a number of different styles on the album. Highway is almost a throwback to the Taxman riff and is really catchy. The songs Traveling Light and Is This Love? sound like something you'd hear in a day spa. Dance Till We're High sounds like a Motown throwback. I also heard a lot of the chiming, big background vocal and instrumental sounds that were on most of the Beach Boys' albums in the 60s. Two Magpies is in the Blackbird/Bluebird vein.

But in general it's hard to pin down what style this is. It's really all over the map. When Peter Gabriel put out Passion in the 80s, I could not get that out of my CD player. I thought it was so cool that he had broken out of the song structure and laid down some of the most interesting instrumental music I had heard in a long time. The difference is that the Fireman CD is not so rooted in one style of music - in Passion's case Eastern music - and it's not a soundtrack. So there were no constraints whatsoever on the song structure.

The 'single' from the CD is Sing the Changes. Check that one out on iTunes and if you dig it, this album might be for you.

Paul McCartney Dishes on Firemen, Art, Poetry and iTunes

A great interview with Paul McCartney posted at Entertainment Weekly today. McCartney talks about the two albums he has done with producer Martin Glover (who also co-founded the band Killing Joke) under the name The Firemen. Glover is better known as "Youth" and he has also worked on mixes by U2, Dido and a number of 80s bands like Depeche Mode (yowsa).

The interview got me kind of stoked to check out the Firemen albums. Just like with the Sgt. Pepper album, recording without the baggage of the McCartney name was probably liberating. Sounds like the music came together fairly organically, which is usually a good thing too. The latest album, Electric Arguments, has received lots of good reviews and is reported to be sort of trancy, but with vocals. Sounds like I ought to check it out.

McCartney talks about a bunch of other stuff. These were other interesting nuggets:

Q. Can you tell me anything about this new Rock Band Beatles thing?
A. Well, I see people playing it and they look...completely funny. But I like the idea that it introduces kids to music. It’s a great thing to be immersed in. And you know, various ideas are always being brought to us [as the Beatles] where we look at it and decide, is it a good thing? And the guys from Rock Band, they said, "We’d like to do just a special Beatles edition, we’d like to do different periods -- you know, you get early days, Liverpool, then psychedelic, and on from there." It’s very cool.

Q. Does this bode well for getting the Beatles on iTunes, finally?
A. It’s a bit of a sticky issue. We want it to happen. The record company was taken over by new people quite recently, so there is a gridlock of sorts. I’d like to make it happen. Though I am not part of the negotiations, thank goodness [laughs].

"New" Beatles Song Might See Light of Day

The buzz today in Beatles-land is that an unreleased 1967 song called "Carnival of Light" may be finally released, if McCartney can get Ringo and the Lennon/Harrison widows to buy off on the idea.

But don't expect Penny Lane part two. According to the Associated Press, this is a 14-minute experimental song containing distorted guitar and gargling sounds -- and even includes McCartney and Lennon shouting "Barcelona!" and "Are you all right?"

McCartney says that while recording, he told his bandmates to "just wander round all of the stuff and bang it, shout, play it. It doesn't need to make any sense."

So, fans of What's the New Mary Jane and Revolution 9, you may just get your companion piece!

1970 - What A Year for Beatles Fans

Between checking out the Lost Lennon Tapes, digging through years worth of Beatles bootlegs and re-buying early 70s Beatles solo albums Ram (McCartney), Plastic Ono Band and Imagine (Lennon) and All Things Must Pass (Harrison), I have to say, those of you who lived through 1970 had a hell of a year, musically.

Me, I turned two on the day that Jimi Hendrix died in 1970. (Oh and as a side story, according to the book The Beatles Complete Recording Sessions, the band recorded the song Birthday on the day I was born - no shit - look it up - 9-18-68).

Anyway, there was obvious uncertainty about the band's future in 1970. Let It Be the film and album were both issued in May. Anyone who has seen that movie can see that the writing was on the wall big time.

But in a bootleg interview with Harrison from 1970, he says the guys are all enjoying the freedom they have to record on their own (even giving McCartney's album a nice plug) and saying that he's sure they'll be back together soon to record a new group album. Of course that didn't happen.

Whatever the case, here is what people got in a 14-month period, full-length album wise, from the fab four:

--September 26, 1969 - Beatles - Abbey Road
--March 27, 1970 - Ringo Starr - Sentimental Journey
--April 17, 1970 - Paul McCartney - McCartney
--May 8, 1970 - Beatles - Let it Be
--May 20, 1970 - Beatles - Let it Be (the film)
--November 27, 1970 - George Harrison - All Things Must Pass (triple album)
--December 11, 1970 - John Lennon - Plastic Ono Band

Notable is how strong Lennon and Harrison's albums were. Lennon ripped the myth off of the Beatles and laid his soul bare on Plastic Ono, and Harrison had three albums worth of backlog to unleash on the world - and almost all of the non-jam songs are classic tunes.

McCartney's album is a surprising piece of crap. I have tried about ten times over the past 20 or so years to listen to it with fresh ears and the only two songs I can stand are Junk and Maybe I'm Amazed - and I prefer later versions of both to the originals.

In the Lost Lennon Tapes, Lennon tells Rolling Stone that he was surprised how bad Paul's album is, and how happy he is about that, as he is self-admittedly very, very competitive.

Ram from March 1971 is better, and I really like all the Wings albums from Band on the Run all the way to the end. I guess it took Paul some time to pick up steam while the others hit the ground running but then petered out later. Paul was for sure the 'bad guy' in the early 70s, and I am sure the pressure was rough, with three Beatles vs. one. He admits this in the truly excellent Wingspan DVD.

A very cool post sent to me by Nedmusic asks the question, what if the band HAD done one more album in 1970 or 1971? Given that the songs would have to be from the 1969-1971 period, the writer put together a pretty cool "lost album" and goes into great detail as to why he chose what he chose (and what he didn't!)

Check that out here.

McCartney Does A Day in the Life too

OK, so Neil isn't the only one doing A Day in the Life live right now.

According to Rolling Stone, Paul McCartney has dusted off this mostly Lennon tune from Sgt Pepper and is doing it live. At a June 1 concert in good old Liverpool, Paul and his band did a pretty good rendition (outside of Paul messing up the lines in his own piece of the song - not Lennon's!).

They keep flashing to Yoko in the audience. And yeah, Dave Grohl played with the band at this gig. I am not kidding - read about it here. He has now jammed with Queen, Zeppelin and McCartney that I know of - and his drummer Taylor Hawkins played with Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee from Rush as we know. WTF?

To see Paul do A Day in the Life, here ya go:

Paul McCartney - Heather Mills Water Sports

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you know I have stayed out of the whole Paul McCartney/Heather Mills divorce thing.

But I just had to post this fantastic piece of programming.

The game, named "Mucca Chucka," involves players playing the part of Heather Mills.

Points are scored by throwing virtual water over depictions of Sir Paul McCartney and his lawyer, Fiona Shackleton, in scenes echoing the incident in which Mills threw water over Shackleton in court following Mills being awarded $48 million of McCartney's fortune.

Points are deducted on the Mucca Chucka game if a player hits a depiction of a judge by mistake. The more points a player scores, the more of Sir Paul McCartney's money the player wins.

Knock yourselves out!

McCartney Takes $50 Million Hit

CNN is reporting that Paul McCartney will get out of his marriage to Heather Mills by paying her $35 million plus $15 million of assets (would 150,000 copies of the Beatles butcher album take care of it, luv?).

This news is enough to validate Gene Simmons' "never get married - it's bad for you financially" edict, but really, is $50 million all that much to a guy whose net worth is supposed to range from half a billion to a billion and change, depending on who you ask?

Put it this way - He could pay four ex-wives the same amount and just equal the amount Robert Plant turned down to tour with Zeppelin.

CD Review - The Beatles "Love"

On the suggestion of fellow poster Ned Music, I picked up the new Beatles CD “Love.” The CD is the soundtrack to the Cirque du Soleil show of the same name, and it combines both familiar and unheard of snips from Beatles songs across their catalog and does a mash-up into new pieces of music.

It was created over a period of two years by original Beatles producer George Martin and his son, Miles. From the liner notes, Miles and George reveal that the idea for the show came from Harrison and a Cirque du Soleil industry friend.

When it was time to come up with the music for the show, the Martins were given full access to all Beatles studio tapes and were told to create about an hour and a half of music any way they wanted to, with the only rule that it had to be sourced from sounds The Beatles had already created.

What a fun project this must have been, and I have to say I am totally blown away by the result. Totally blown away.

Anyone who has been in love with The Beatles since childhood, like I have, has heard every Beatles song so many times that we turn off stuff like Hey Jude and While My Guitar Gently Weeps when it comes on the radio. We’ve just heard it so many times, it’s old.

The six CD Anthology series that was released in the 90s breathed new life into the catalog with outtakes, unreleased songs and alternate mixes. And the new soundtrack to Yellow Submarine that came out in 1999 is still a treat to my ears, because it offered re-mixed versions of fifteen classic tunes.

Not re-mastered versions of the same mixes, mind you – but RE-mixes. George Martin actually did new mixes from the original master tapes, so they are much fresher and you actually hear bits of music (like guitar parts, bass lines, etc) that were not audible in the original mixes. Much, much more than a soundtrack CD, pick that one up if you want fresh versions of the old warhorses.

Or get Love.

George and Miles created a masterpiece with this. Some of the more innovative songs are the combination of Tomorrow Never Knows with Within You Without You, where George Harrison sings his Indian mantra lyrics from Within You Without You over the hammering drum beat of Tomorrow Never Knows. Or how about Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite, which seamlessly segues into the heavy chord outro of I Want You (She’s So Heavy) with McCartney screaming heavily distorted verses from Helter Skelter in the background.

I think my favorite cut by far, though, is the new version of Strawberry Fields Forever. As we learned in the Anthology Series volume 2, Lennon recorded a number of versions of this song, from a gentle acoustic ballad to the version that ends with thundering drums, crazy noises and electric guitar fills.

For the Love version, the producers created a seamless mashup of all the versions. The song starts with the gentle acoustic version and every verse switches to a new, more layered and intense cut. I am 100 percent convinced this is the version Lennon wanted to hear but technologically could not be pulled off in the 1960s.

And then there is just the cool factor of hearing the solo from Taxman in Drive My Car, the drum solo from The End meld into Get Back, or the chord progression of Dear Prudence over the end of Come Together. There are sounds on the CD I am having trouble placing, and that’s why it’s so fun to keep listening to it over and over again. For example, is that really Clapton’s solo from While My Guitar Gently Weeps isolated and pasted in the end freak out part of Strawberry Fields? I know I hear the Piggies piano solo in there too…

And finally, since The Martins were given free reign to ‘mess with’ The Beatles’ legacy, the remixed versions of songs that they didn’t really mess with that much, are worth the price of the CD alone. For example, this new mix of I Am The Walrus blows away any version I have ever heard. Miles in the liner notes said he expected the master tapes to be in dodgy shape and to have tons of hiss, but he said what he found were perfect. Add some modern mixing and engineering technology and what you get is vibrant and shimmering.

Funky mixes and mashups aside, this music leaps from your speakers. Walrus, Come Together and especially Revolution are pounding. These tracks sound like they were recorded yesterday instead of 40 years ago.

Have I said enough? Go buy the fricking CD.