Paul McCartney
John Carvill
Andrew Sarris, doyen of auteurist film critics, dubbed A Hard Day’s Night “the Citizen Kane of jukebox musicals”. Wild over-praise, or sly, back-handed compliment?"Jukebox musical" connotes the sort of "exploitation film" Elvis churned out. Corporate suits with Dollar sign eyes may have wanted to exploit The Beatles, but the band were too savvy. Despite the fact that pop phenomena tended to fizzle out fast, meaning their time in the spotlight might be limited, The Beatles had refused several film offers before A Hard Day’s Night, holding out for something real, something, in John Lennon’s Read more ...
John Carvill
Do we need any more Beatles books? The answer is: that’s the wrong question. What we need is more Beatles books that are worth reading. As the musician and music historian Bob Stanley pointed out, in his 2007 review of Jonathan Gould’s Can’t Buy Me Love, probably the best biography of The Beatles to date, “the subject is pretty much inexhaustible if the writer is good enough.”Gould is more than good enough, and he spent nearly two decades writing his book; whereas Ian Leslie has worked his up from a Covid-era blog post paean to Paul McCartney that went, as they say, viral. Leslie attests to Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
On 24th February 2022, when Vladimir Putin launched his “special military operation”, life in Ukraine changed abruptly and in a brutal fashion. Soon the impact of the war was felt around the world – and not only in rising food and energy prices. Yet its repercussions in Russia were silenced or at least muffled by state censorship of the media and by the clampdown on dissent.Russian friends living in this alternative reality tell me that only a small minority actually believes the Kremlin’s propaganda. Helpless or uncomprehending, most people try to block out the war and get on with day-to-day Read more ...
Nick Hasted
Leave a 78-year-old ex-Beatle locked down for long enough, and this what he comes up with: a sequel to his two previous wholly solo albums, cooked up in his Sussex home studio. The results find the once derided, “Thumbs Aloft” McCartney’s slow creative redemption nearly complete.Loved up and by his own account stoned for much of the Seventies and Eighties, his easy musical fecundity was only jolted into full power by trauma and challenge: the Fabs’ bitter divorce for McCartney (1970), career back to the wall in Kenya for Band on the Run (1973), Wings’ doldrums for the scatty, sometimes lovely Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Ambient sounds from an imaginary rail concourse fade to a full choir in the 42 seconds of “Opening Station”, the sonic scene-setting for Macca’s new hour-long set, his first album of new songs since 2013’s New. From here, Egypt Station properly leads off down the tracks with attractive piano ballad “I Don’t Know”, a sort of a slowed-up, cut-in-half adaptation of the “Lady Madonna” riff, McCartney’s voice unadorned, naked, and somewhat troubled, asking “where am I going wrong?”, his angst leavened by an assertion of love. The excellent single, “Come on to Me”, is crunchier, with solid drums Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
News just in that the vinyl soundtrack to Star Wars: The Force Awakens will feature holograms that can seen as the record is played, if a light is shone upon it. It seems that every month there’s a similarly bizarre development in the many ways that vinyl is returning to the public eye. It’s now commonplace for Graham Norton to introduce the musical guests on his TV show by waving about a vinyl copy of their new album, something unthinkable even a year ago.Here at theartsdesk on Vinyl, however, while we would certainly welcome a holographic Star Wars OST or, indeed, Graham Norton for tea, we Read more ...
Thomas H. Green
Youth, AKA Martin Glover (b 1960), is a renowned music producer and bassist in the post-punk band Killing Joke. He achieved his first success with the latter in the late Seventies and has often been at the forefront of innovation and development in British music since. Having played a key role in developing their uniquely dubby, dark sound, Youth parted ways with Killing Joke in 1982 and formed Brilliant, a band that espoused an ahead-of-its-time dance musical ethos and included the involvement of both future members of the KLF.When the musical revolution of acid house hit the UK in 1988, Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Oh to have been a fly on the wall at the Palace. “Your Majesty, we’ve had a request from a Mr Boyle. It concerns the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games.” “I’m already opening the blessed thing, aren’t I? What else do they want?” “Ma’am, they just want you to be yourself.”Enter Daniel Craig, greeted by corgis and flunkies, ushered along lushly carpeted corridors into an inner sanctum. The entire planet will have had the same thought at the same moment. They haven’t gone and got the Queen to play ball? “Good evening, Mr Bond,” suggested Her Majesty, before apparently following 007 into a Read more ...
theartsdesk
Paul and Linda McCartney: Ram (Deluxe Edition)Jasper ReesThe project to reissue the big moments in Paul McCartney’s solo career continues. McCartney and Band on the Run have already had the deluxe treatment. Now it’s the turn of 1971's Ram, the one and only time the uxorious former Beatle gave the lovely Linda equal billing. She takes a co-writing credit on half a dozen songs, supplies backing vocals and, most of all, sleeve shots of her hubby wrangling livestock and jamming. Ram is more notable for other things. Having played all the instruments on his first solo effort, it found McCartney Read more ...
Jasper Rees
Come on, the cheeky title is endearing. So it’s not the Fats Waller lyric that John Lennon would have lifted onto the album cover, but Paul McCartney has often sung of frogs and little lambs, of blackbirds and bluebirds, and even at 69 is still in touch with his inner child. Never more productively than in this homage to the age of the big-band jazz standard he ingested at his father’s feet.It’s not as if this outburst of nostalgia doesn’t belong to a through-line. With the Fabs he ceded the floor to jaunty clarinets and muted trumpets in “When I’m Sixty-Four” and “Honey Pie”, then with Wings Read more ...
Ismene Brown
Hot on the heels of the Pet Shop Boys’ foray into ballet for Sadler’s Wells next month, it’s revealed that Sir Paul McCartney has composed a ballet for New York City Ballet, a love story called Ocean’s Kingdom.Scheduled to premiere on 22 September, the four-act ballet so far has 45 minutes of music, and a cast of around 40. The New York Times reports that the first act is having its first run-through next Thursday at the Lincoln Center, NYCB’s home stage.The world premiere will be half of a gala programme including George Balanchine’s Union Jack, as a compliment to Sir Paul’s Britishness. Read more ...
Jasper Rees
It wasn't memorialised in HD. But last night Ringo Starr turned 70 and welcomed Paul McCartney onstage at Radio City Music Hall in New York for a musical celebration. There was only one song they were going to perform, and a thousand mobile phone cameras were duly held aloft to capture it. The results have sprouted overnight on YouTube, and they all have the grainy shakycam quality of all that old footage from the Cavern Club. If you're of the Fabophiliac persuasion you'll no doubt be wanting to devour the lot. Which you can do right here on theartsdesk.This is the closest to the stage, so Read more ...