The Great McCartney Re-Listen: "Beatle Paul", Part 1

The Great McCartney Re-Listen... is my journey though the works of Paul McCartney. Over many many posts, I will uncovering his tropes, tricks and musical experiments through-out his complex and diverse solo career. But before we skip ahead to 1970's McCartney (I). We need to start at the beginning... 

As a solo writer within the Lennon-McCartney partnership and the band's bass player, Paul McCartney starts with a handful of solo tunes. Yet, the tunes that he brings to the band are stand-outs, microcosms of pop, and later giants within the greater classic rock landscape. The success of the Beatles allows McCartney to explore musically unlike any other songwriter, amassing a bag of "songwriting tricks" to produce songs. As collaborator, Lennon and McCartney fuel the Beatle machine with endless tuneful songs until 1969. 

1962-1966

Paul's contributions to the first two Beatle albums are minimal, but not slight. Please Please Me offers 'P.S. I Love You' and 'I Saw Her Standing There', and With the Beatles contains re-recorded version 'Hold Me Tight' and the classic 'All My Loving'. These four are prime early McCartney. Over his time in the Beatles and Wings, Paul applies clever songwriting devices to transform simple ditties into "hits". An iconic pop song, 'All My Loving' was the first televised live Beatles song in America. 'I Saw Her Standing There' has been absorbed into the greater rock and roll lexicon, but also beaten to a pulp by horrible bar bands since 1964. These two songs in particular are exciting on first listen. The focus is on punchy rhythms, harmonies, melodies that ring in your head days after, and end in two minute bursts. They are immediate as they are impressionable, each having a musical identity all to themselves, while also being a variation on the Mersey Beat theme. His use of letter-writing in songs, first appears in 'P.S. I Love You' and adjacent in 'All My Loving.' The words are the focus on these songs, while the set dressing is melody, harmony, and choice chords. McCartney embodies the spirit of a young creative, sparking out in all these areas, some more than others, but his work is singular and fits in the Beatle mold. 'Standing There' is the first of many 'rockers', utilizing a variation of Chuck Berry rock and roll format. It's a musical idiom that he reaches to a few times in the Beatles, but in Wings in 'Hi, Hi, Hi', 'Rock Show', and 'Helen Wheels'.

Singles take precedent in 1963, 1964 and 1965, but the Beatles as a unit and the Lennon-McCartney partnership work the best on the albums. They take chances, and eventually abandon the Mersey Beat sound. 

As Beatlemania progresses, his strength in melody develops as much as his voice does. The ideas are stronger, and smarter. 'Can't Buy Me Love,' 'And I Love Her', and 'Things We Said Today' from the soundtrack to A Hard Day's Night, are incredible pieces of work. 'Can't Buy Me Love' takes the Beatle single formula and shakes it up a bit, relying on guitar hooks and Paul's rocker vocal to carry the song. 'And I Love Her' is one of his greatest pop ballads, and vehicle for George as a guitarist. McCartney Celtic influence isn't quite apparent in the work of the Beatles, arriving in slight bursts like in 'And I Love Her'. 'Things We Said Today' is a Lennon-esque pensive track that goes unnoticed by the casual fan. This is one of the cooler deep tracks that weaves another one of those Celtic inspirited melodies into a pop song.  

Beatles for Sale sports 'Every Little Thing', 'What You're Doing', 'Eight Days a Week' and 'I’ll Follow the Sun'. Designating his Irish Tenor for some and his Little Richard voice for others, BFS finds all the Beatles exhausted from Beatlemania. These songs are dialed in, and upon closer examination, they do sound very tired. Yet, there is an advancement in the songwriting on BFS. The songs on BFS are more concentrated, intentional and the production leans towards the experimental. Not only are they tired of being Beatles, but they are tired of the old formula. The acoustic element, which occasionally appears on previous albums and releases, comes to the forefront, and becomes an integral part of the overall Beatle sound. The songs are slower, and not as punchy as before, but they are effective in melody and harmony. 

With Help!, Paul and John are writing apart more frequently. Still, the vehicle for Beatle material is the collaboration between the two. They are not also growing artistically apart, but also physically, with Paul being in London and John in Weybridge. Collaboration only happening in-studio or on the road. The separation allowed each writer to explore deeper themes and individual styles. 

George also begins to take songwriting seriously, having two original compositions on the UK version of Help! While not a threat to Lennon-McCartney at this time, Harrison writes in a similar vein, he's the first Beatlesque songwriter. The studio becomes Paul's fortress of solitude, and later buys 7 Cavendish Avenue, to be a walk away from EMI Studios. While his obsessive control over a song reaches it's peak while in Wings, Paul's focus on the sound of a record and it's production gestates during the failed sessions of 'That Means a Lot'. While the Specter-ish groove was initiated in its earliest form on 'What You're Doing' and perfected in 'Ticket to Ride' (February 15th, 1965), 'That Means a Lot' was attempted twice (February 20; March 3, 1965) and aborted as a track for Help!. It was given to American singer PJ Proby after meeting the group during the filming of the Around The Beatles TV special in April 1964. While that track reached #24 on the NME chart, 'That Means a Lot' is an interesting Paul song where he is reaching for something outside of the Beatles sound. It doesn't sound like the Beatles, but is Beatles adjacent. 

A seismic bomb and instant "Popular Music" standard, 'Yesterday' is the most covered song of all time. Usurped by 'Hey Jude' as the Beatle song, 'Yesterday' is a songwriting behemoth. I don't particularly care for this song, and like 'That Means A lot' doesn't quite fit the Beatle mold the way some of his other acoustic work does. 

Paul's work on Help! are exercises in pop music along the same lines of BFS, while John breaks away from the Beatle format. He succeeded were Paul doesn't and gets personal, EXTREMELY personal. Paul's songs are lighthearted, fun three minute pop songs, leaning on love as the main thesis ('She's a Woman', 'Another Girl', 'The Night Before', 'Tell Me What You See'), while John's are introspective, darker in tone and Dylanesque. The effects of Beatlemania and his constant infidelity to then-wife Cynthia provide the lyrical content on songs like 'You've Got to Hide Your Love Away', 'You're Going to Lose That Girl', 'It's Only Love' and most present on the title track. Lennon's songwriting is a mouthpiece for his helplessness, while Paul is throwing down melodic gems as if he was picking apples off a tree. 'I’ve Just Seen a Face', which replaced 'Drive My Car' on the US version of Rubber Soul, styling it as the Beatle's folk-rock album. Inspiring much of the California rock scene to take conceptual work seriously, albeit through corporate refashioning inspired Brian Wilson to create and craft the next Beach Boys album as one singular piece of music. In 1987, CDs established the "official" Beatles canon of albums, deleting the highly influential US version of Rubber Soul, as well as the other American releases. The Beatles had a different musical life in America, and in reaction to that, the Beatles later established artistic control, unseen before in the industry. 

'I'm Down', one of his best Little Richard styled vocal rockers, is relegated to the flip side to the 'Help!' single, showcasing a burgeoning creative difference between the two lead singers of the band. Unfairly left off as the final track of the Help! album, 'I'm Down' is the last time Paul uses the rocker voice in parody, and later refashioning it into the dirtier rocker voice that he uses in Wings. 

The UK version of Rubber Soul, unlike the US version, is the most pot-tinged of all the Beatles' albums. Paired with Revolver, these two albums are highly focused works, highlighting song craft, vocal harmonies and production. The genres shift song by song, allowing each it's own identity and sonic template. The work presented is an astounding achievement, only surpassed by the work to come. 

Rubber Soul opens with Paul's classic 'Drive My Car', based Aretha Franklin's version of 'Respect'. The track bursts with joy, diving deep into the stilted plastic soul and dirty Memphis sound. 'Michelle' is a pseudo-French pop track, reflective of Paul's interests outside of the Beatles. 'I'm Looking Through You', 'You Won't See Me', and 'For No One' recounts his ill-fated relationship with Jane Asher. Introspective and deeply personal, these tracks are lyrically, similar to John's songs on Help!. While not directly pointing to the relationship in name, the songs act as a trilogy of sorts: 'I'm Looking Through You' describes the initial change within the relationship; 'You Won't See Me', a snapshot of miscommunication and unwillingness to acknowledge a break-up; and post break-up despair in 'For No One'. 'I'm Looking Through You' is disguised in folk-rock production, lighthearted in tone, upbeat, and yet still pensive and questioning. Album track 'You Won't See Me' has the Beatles in full plastic soul mode, this time gender swapping with the girl groups of Motown. 'For No One' creates the singer-songwriter genre in less than two minutes. It's brooding, moody, and despondent. The lyrics are dour and forlorn, augmented by the excellent production contributed of George Martin. 

On Revolver, the album tracks turn away from the personal. His relationship with Jane Asher over in July of 1966, the songwriting becomes more abstract.  'Got To Get You Into My Life' is his blue-eyed soul anthem to pot foreshadowing big retro numbers on Band on the Run, Venus and Mars, and At the Speed of Sound, 'Good Day Sunshine' finds inspiration from other sunny mid 60's songs like the Lovin' Spoonful's 'Daydream' and the Kinks 'Sunny Afternoon'. In 'Here There, & Everywhere', Paul takes on The Beach Boys. While not surpassing the California group vocally or representative of Beatle harmony, this might be the earliest example of what would become the "Wings harmony" on tunes like 'Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey', 'Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five', 'Some People Never Know', 'Live and Let Die' and the bulk of Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. The song suffers minimally from a lack of production, but the melody and chord structure is beyond gorgeous. 'Eleanor Rigby' is undoubtedly a classic in baroque pop and the better third-person version of 'Yesterday'. 'Rigby' showcases one of his songwriting tricks he will constantly use in Wings and his solo work, the story-song. 'Another Day' is the other major example of this, and even to a lesser extent 'Get Back'. Martin's production work is unparalleled on 'Rigby', laying down the foundation for work he will do later.

Non-Album single 'Paperback Writer' utilizes a fuzzy guitar riff and the letter-as-song trick as in 'P.S. I Love You' and 'All My Loving.' 'Paperback Writer' is a power pop gem, taking the guitar fuzziness of 'And Your Bird Can Sing' and the sweet harmonies of 'Here, There & Everywhere' and mashing them up into two minutes of pop ecstasy. A vehicle for Ringo on Revolver, 'Yellow Submarine' avoids succumb into children's novelty song and redirects it toward "the pop record art piece. Highly enjoyable, George Martin's production pushes the track from being an annoying stack of chords to the Beatles' first theater-of-the-mind piece. The song acts as a bridge to Sgt. Pepper in sorts, Paul's acoustic material on the White album, and his acoustic solo tracks of Wings. 

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In August of 1966, the Beatles release Revolver to critical and commercial acclaim, and play their last concert at Candlestick Park. On the verge of their greatest musical period, the band has dropped the mop top image and traded it in for individualistic artistic pursuit. This choice alters the band's trajectory, pushing them to the edge personally, financially and artistically. The Lennon-McCartney partnership lasts for two final releases, the double a-side of 'Penny Lane / Strawberry Fields Forever' and its companion album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, before breaking down as two young men grow apart.

Next time we explore McCartney's Beatle work from 1967 until their dissolution in 1969 break-up in 1970. 

End of Part 1