Live and Let Die

Paul reunited with George Martin to produce this taut, dramatic, hugely orchestrated extravaganza for Roger Moore’s first turn at playing Bond, and it worked on every level. The sudden switch into reggae for the middle eight (what does it matter to ya / when you gotta job to do…) is one of those ingenious stunts that only McCartney could have pulled off, and once again we hear him adopting an idiom, writing a song that utterly sounds like a James Bond theme. Twelve-year-old Graeme was extremely pissed that year when it lost out for best song at the Oscars to The Way We Were.

Wanderlust

A song about a sailboat (and what a good name for a yacht, yes?), and fleeing out to sea to escape the madding crowd, as well as the malign clutches of intolerant law enforcement (inspired, perhaps, by his recent stint in a Japanese jail, after he was caught bringing a little weed into the country – hey, it’s medicinal, O.K.?). George Martin was again helming the booth for this and the other songs on 1982’s Tug of War, his first album after the assassination of beloved John. Some may find Wanderlust a little over-produced and even bombastic, but I think it’s magnificent and utterly Beatle-esque, with its inter-twined backing and lead vocals and beautiful brass, besides which there it is again – the perfect musical conclusion, and our old friend the plagal cadence.

Fixing a Hole

A quirky, charming little diversion from the general grandeur of the Sgt. Pepper album, in which the usually gregarious and outgoing “happy Beatle” manages to fully inhabit the persona of a rather misanthropic recluse, albeit a contented one. Thematically, this seems more up John’s alley (see, for example, I’m So Tired and I’m Only Sleeping, Lennon’s pair of gems about being too weary and fed up to get out of bed and face the world), but musically of course it’s pure McCartney, jaunty and clever, especially in the lyrics of the chorus (and it really doesn’t matter if I’m wrong, I’m right / where I belong, I’m right / where I belong). There’ve been times when this one has served as my own personal anthem, having lived so much of my own life trying to shut out the squabbling people and random annoyances that are always trying to stop my mind from wandering where it would otherwise go.

At the Mercy

Another highly ambitious bit of artistry from Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, At the Mercy is unpretentiously orchestrated with frosty strings, and features powerful interludes that remind me of the production on Abbey Road. The comments in Part 1 with respect to How Kind of You are generally applicable here.

Find My Way

Yet another eminently catchy and thoroughly Beatle-esque track off his most recent collection, McCartney III, which, as on his two previous eponymous outings, features Paul playing all the instruments, including, in this case, an electric harpsichord. I’m reminded a little of Come and Get It, and his other songs from the White Album period, among which this one could easily mingle with nobody the wiser. The layering of guitars and keyboards in the extended coda is almost symphonic in its complexity, and we get to see him playing all of the parts juxtaposed in the composite shots of the attached video, which is very well done. It’s a joy to see him having so much fun, and still being so creative, in what was then his 79th year. He’s still got it.

Lady Madonna

It just chugs along so naturally, so smoothly, that you can perceive Lady Madonna as a completely conventional pop number, and miss how clever it is, perhaps not even noticing that Paul’s now demonstrating his easy facility with yet another musical form, this time classic R&B mixed with old-fashioned boogie-woogie. The piano groove is so infectious that it was covered by Fats Domino – think about that for a second – and the lyrics, described sometimes as inscrutable or even essentially meaningless, actually tell a complete story about a woman who has mouths to feed, and figures that the best way to make lots of easy cash is to, er, entertain a stable of paying male customers, each of them identified anonymously by a distinctive trait, and the day of his weekly appointment. The guy who arrives every Sunday likes to creep in quietly on the down low, the session with the mook on Tuesday afternoon just dragged on and on, while Wednesday’s fellow, sadly, never got his happy ending, and so on. Meanwhile, people wonder how she manages to make ends meet. Lady Madonna snuck to the top of the charts in 1968 without anybody seeming to notice what it was really about, which was a good thing, actually – the programming prudes back then would never have played it if they’d figured it out.

I Will

Just one minute and forty-five seconds of pure pop perfection, with a melody that uses every note on the musical scale, look:

It’s almost a children’s song, almost a lullaby, and very much of a piece with his earlier I’ll Follow the Sun, innocent, untroubled, and glad to be alive. One of Paul’s own favourites.

Every Night

Not a Big Statement or Monumental Masterpiece – look, they can’t all be Hey Jude, all right? – Every Night, off his first solo album, is still a highly enjoyable slice of acoustic pop, in which Paul uses a somewhat reworked snippet of melody borrowed from Abbey Road’s infinitely more sombre and serious You Never Give Me Your Money, magically morphing it from heartbreaking to joyous. It’s not a song that springs to mind when you’re asked to name his best off the top of your head, but it’s satisfying musical comfort food, pleasing whenever you happen to hear it.

You Won’t See Me

When you’re cranking out corker after corker the way Paul and John both were at this point, every one of ’em a humdinger, something’s going to get pushed to the margins where it doesn’t really belong. So it was with 1965’s You Won’t See Me off the epochal Rubber Soul, which tended to get overlooked amid the various Lennon masterworks, Girl, Norwegian Wood, and In My Life (though as to the latter, I’m with those who’re convinced that Paul’s remembering it right when he claims, as he always has, that he wrote the melody – sorry, those words are all John, sure enough, but no way Lennon ever wrote a melody like the one that graces In My Life, and I don’t care what anybody says). Yet on anybody else’s album, the wonderfully infectious You Won’t See Me would have been a standout, and an obvious candidate for release as a single. Indeed, a decade later, Anne Murray performed a cover that made it into the top ten in both Canada and the U.S., and at the time, I didn’t even know it was a Beatles original, since it wasn’t on either the “Red” or “Blue” albums. Her version isn’t half bad:

Calico Skies

Another thoroughly Beatle-esque number that harks back to the acoustic tracks on the White Album, Calico Skies is a straightforward but deeply affecting love song, one of the highlights on 1997’s Flaming Pie. Largely unnoticed, it almost qualifies as a hidden gem, except that he’s played it often in concert over the years, affording it widespread exposure among his dedicated fans.