The Beatles' Solo Careers Poll - Voting and General Discussion Thread

I must've been looking at a British track listing or something?

It wasn't on the UK version of Band on the Run, so it's possible!

Okay - I think this really is the last of it, though my knowledge of 90s-00s b-sides and stuff is pretty hazy. I put *** next to ones I think people who like McCartney solo stuff but haven't gone beyond the albums should definitely check out. In general I do think he drew some kind of line between "good enough for album filler" and "not" - - - a lot of these have incredible riffs or main hooks but it's obvious they're missing some element (a bridge, a chord change) that would really make them special.

PAUL MCCARTNEY MISCELLANEY/MOP-UP

1970s

1882
A Love For You ***
Best Friend
Boil Crisis ***
Country Dreamer ***
Did We Meet Somewhere Before?
Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance
The Great Cock and Seagull Race
Helen Wheels ***
Henry’s Blues
Hey Diddle ***
I Would Only Smile
Jazz Street
Lunch Box – Odd Sox
Mama’s Little Girl
Night Out
Robber’s Ball ***
Rode All Night ***
Same Time Next Year ***
Soily ***
Sunshine Sometime
Thank You Darling
The Mess
Tragedy ***
Waterspout ***
Zoo Gang (Theme) ***

1980s

Atlantic Ocean
Blue Sway
Bogey Wobble
Christian Bop
Don't Break the Promise
Hanglide
I Love This House
It’s Not True
Lindiana ***
Love Mix
My Big Day
On The Way
P.S. Love Me Do (the nadir)
Return to Pepperland ***
Squid ***
Tough on a Tightrope
Twenty Fine Fingers aka Twenty-Five Fingers
Twice in a Lifetime
Write Away
Yvonne ***

1990s

All My Trials (trad.)

2000s

I’m Partial To Your Abracadabra (Dury)
Maybe Baby (Holly)
Summer of ‘59 ***

Linda McCartney - Wide Prairie

"i got up" and "the light comes from within" are both fun and would have worked on "white album, vol. 3" if they had stayed together and got around to doing that.

Yeah, I think that's pretty much everything - I can't think of anything else not yet mentioned. There could well be, though!

(xpost)

Good luck, guys.

Doc are those all (generally speaking) non-album tracks?

i wonder how long it would take to listen to all of these tracks. i recently had a bunch of long-distance drives i was doing and i ended up listening to every beatles album in order over the course of a few days -- tbh it was kind of startling to realize how little time it took to listen to everything they recorded. (confirmed my old suspicion that revolver is their finest hour.) feel like i'll at least need to try to listen to all the major stuff here to even begin to know what to vote for.

there's some tracks on this posthumous lennon release that i don't think got released anywhere else -- side 2 is all walls & bridges outtakes but i think side 1 might qualify for the poll:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Menlove_Ave.

huh yeah I got some of those because I think they appeared on other reissues, but was missing:

Here We Go Again (I don't think I've ever heard this? off to youtube...)
Rock 'n' Roll People

this is actually p interesting

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4_6P6Z_acw

Re: my Macca list: a decent number are unreleased, bootleg-only cuts that I meant to keep separate but got tangled in somewhere along the way, maybe once I saw that you were counting never-released things like "Suicide." "Soily" and "The Mess" were live only, but got released on Wings Over America and as the b-side to "My Love," respectively. "P.S. Love Me Do" was concert warm-up background music on some godforsaken tour, which I believe was also the principal purpose of the later Twin Freaks material (obviously better by orders of magnitude). Then there's a sprinkling of b-sides and/or things that were unreleased until they showed up on bonus editions of the albums (e.g. the "Paul McCartney Collection" CDs in the early 90s, and the more recent remasters which rescued a bunch of the Ram through Red Rose Speedway material). Several are soundtrack cuts or attempted soundtrack cuts - "Did We Meet Somewhere Before?" for example, is in Rock 'n' Roll High School (!) but didn't make it to the soundtrack LP. "Gotta Sing, Gotta Dance" is from a TV special; "Zoo Gang" was a TV show theme. A bunch of the 80s ones were from the abortive sessions between Press and Flowers in the Dirt - some of those trickled out as 90s B-sides, for example "Squid" which is a really pretty instrumental.

Freelance Hellraiser toured as opening DJ with Paul, but I don't think Twin Freaks was conceived for him to just put on and have a smoke

I listened to Liverpool Sound Collage a few years but had forgotten about it -- glad to have the reminder, this is good.

― WilliamC, Wednesday, May 16, 2018 5:13 AM (one hour ago)

Super Furry Animals were heavily involved with that, iirc.

― Le Baton Rose (Turrican), Wednesday, May 16, 2018 5:20 AM (one hour ago)

one track is SFA remixing unreleased Beatles sessions, and IIUC the last track is Paul remixing what they turned in

also IIUC the Real Gone Dub track is a Youth solo joint, if anyone recompiles a mega-Macca list for voting

I noticed that about the Real Gone Dub track but left it in anyway in case Macca muttered over it at some point or something

I better see fuckin' "Press" on some lists!

my ballot is going to be so boring it'll seem like an AI made it

tragically, the "Paul Mcartney" appearing on Matt Berry's Rain Came Down is a convincing simulacrum played by Peter Serafinowicz, but he should be eligible anyway

tbh with some of these solo guest appearances things it was really hard to determine which tracks the ex-Beatle actually contributed to. Some of those albums Ringo played on for example (Nilsson, etc.), he's not the only drummer on the album, but it's basically impossible to determine which tracks are him and which are, say, Jim Keltner.

^^It's really Bernard Purdie

heh

does anyone want to volunteer to do images for this poll? I have no idea what to do

it's weird, but this album is def better than George's own 1974 album (Dark Horse) and it's almost all him + Keltner, Voorman etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvr9Y75SUVk&list=PLkJpdntodN-7gmwVIBgK77nvIg_pLE3_q&index=0

what's the album? the link is broken, at least for me.

just drafted, read back over, and saved to a .txt a truly dorky twenty-two song spree of blurbs on mccartney obscurities. best left unposted? a 100-song ballot does give one some room, but in a discography with "maybe i'm amazed," "jet," "no more lonely nights," "with a little luck," "say say say," and even "my brave face," "no more lonely nights," "take it away," "junior's farm," etc., etc., does anyone really need to add "morse moose and the grey goose" to their pre-ballot listening?

Splinter "The Place I Love". Splinter is just two vocalists/songwriters that George signed to his label. He produced the whole thing, with his usual cadre of sidemen (Keltner, Voorman, Billy Preston, Willie Weeks, etc.)

xp

best left unposted?

if not here, where

rec.music.beatles in 1998

"No More Lonely Nights" = one of Paul's very best, with Gilmour's best session solo.

but yeah maybe i'll wait til after your "hi hi hi"s and such have gotten their due. wouldn't want someone going "i keep hearing this paul mccartney is supposed to be a big deal, let me check out doctor casino's recommendations" and being instantly turned away by the likes of "mumbo" and "ode to a koala bear."

Hey Mumbo's kinda cool, imo. Also so far as yr list of obscurities goes A Love for You might make my ballot, if I make one. V worth hearing, tho Cold Cuts is mostly pretty middling.

Doctor Casino please post your annotated list, we can handle it, I promise :)

Oh yeah, cosign on that

"secret friend" is so good, the b-side of 'temporary secretary' (which i've never been able to get into). 'one of these days' , also from the mccartney II sessions, reminds me a bit of simon and garfunkel. they'll both be high up on my ballot, i think.

"Temporary Secretary" would've been a menace if it had been a bigger hit. I only had to endure it at indie disco bars in the early '00s.

I like "Somedays" off Flaming Pie, the first of several times where McCartney has addressed in song some of the negative aspects of fame and wealth: "Don't ask me where I found that picture on the wall/How much it cost or what it's worth."

Cool Baroque oboe part

I don’t think I’ve heard 85% of all of these

Temporary Secretary is so irritating. Dude you just made Check My Machine, but that doesn't make the album?

each anti-"temporary secretary" post just bumps it up a slot on my ballot

Five tracks from George Harrison possibly? I've got "Blow Away," "Love Comes to Everyone," "Faster," "If You Believe," and "Soft Touch."

We haven't accounted yet for the songs included on the musical discs that accompanied these books:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_by_George_Harrison
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_by_George_Harrison_2

And start up the cement mixer, I'm probably going with every song on Side One of Gone Troppo.

okay so here are some less-heralded McCartney songs I am irredeemably fond of, and might conceivably vote for, in chronological order. 100 tracks gives one some room for some of the detours, odd genre experiments, four-track inside jokes, and inexplicable stoner fantasies that make his bloated discography so charming for die-hards, and so irritating for those who wish he would just take the extra week's work to write less stupid lyrics to his best melodies.

i'm assuming that everyone knows mccartney, ram, band on the run, mccartney ii, tug of war, flowers in the dirt, and his numerous smash hit singles. if not, those should really be the focus of any catchup ballot-listening, with ram and band on the run at the head. this is for people who just can't muster sifting through the rest of that massive discography. would love to see other people's faves!

Mumbo all i really need from Wild Life and an encapsulation of why that album completely flopped and was hated - sloppy, pointless, basically lyric-less warmup exercises with a not particularly tight band. it's great!

Big Barn Bed; Getting Closer the "Mumbos" of Red Rose Speedway and Back to the Egg, respectively. the bands are tighter, letting the idiosyncratic, weird, totally hollow and totally appealing lyrics glide right in on enthusiastic deliveries. "SAY YOU DON'T LOVE HIM - - My salamander!" may be the best opening line to any solo McCartney album.

Medley (Hold Me Tight, Lazy Dynamite, Hands Of Love, Power Cut) this album is 42 minutes long and closes with an eleven-minute medley with maybe twenty-five unique lines in the lyrics; a pure exercise in melody and arranging, it's no "Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey" but I just love this guy putting this much energy and enthusiasm into this thing and it still feels like it's arrived somewhere when we get to the endless go-rounds of "Baby I love you so" as the other melodic motifs weave their way back in.

Single Pigeon got love upthread - it's terrific, this one incredibly focused little piano gem, in the same album of sprawling Technicolor nonsense that includes "Big Barn Bed," the medley, and a preposterous instrumental titled "Loup (1st Indian on the Moon)" which I'm surprised Jamiroquai never tried to arrange for the digeridoo.

Magneto & Titanium Man whiz! bang! comics aren't just for kids anymore! It won Geir's poll of Venus & Mars! of the half-dozen or so mccartney songs i got through in my abortive attempt at a double-album of covers, this was the most fun to learn and satisfying to record. "and the CRIM-SON DY-NA-MOooo!"

I've Had Enough and Name and Address late-70s attempts at glam-stomp and Elvis. macca was a man out of time and somehow everything comes through his filter just slightly wrong and weird. Catchy!

Waterspout a sweet little drum machine number from late in the Wings era that still sounds to me like it belongs on McCartney II. The narrative is perhaps thin but something about the warbly sound and the opening line "Daddy loved a dancer" makes it feel more substantial to me, like this is an old man telling the story of how he met his bride or something.

Morse Moose and the Grey Goose maybe the most "Paul McCartney album track" song title ever. all the theatrics and drama of a "Live and Let Die," surrounding what appears to be the story of a deep-sea moose struggling to use Morse code with his hooves. if it was played for wackiness it'd be death on record but McCartney seems completely unaware that this is a stupid idea for a song, and gives it his all. it rules.

Boil Crisis a truly odd attempt at ... post-punk? I think? Most of the versions online have terrible sound but there's a Youtube of the "Unsurpassed Rudeness" bootleg gets it. The kind of bizarre "Famous Groupies" stoner narrative lyrics that got rarer going into the 80s. "One night in the life of a kid named Sid, he was scoring with a broad in a pyramid." If this was a Tall Dwarves or Elephant 6 track or something people would be all over it. See also "Give Us A Chord, Roy."

Arrow Through Me this has gotten a lot of ILM love over the years so just wanted to make sure it got a shout-out here. It gets compared to Steely Dan, which I don't quite hear but I will concede it is surely the yachtiest Beatles song. wish he'd done a whole album like this.

Baby's Request his best ever "old-timey" number? what a tune on this one.

I'll Give You A Ring cheery, bouncy b-side to "Take It Away," and your basic charming trifle, feeling very much like just him and a four-track (though hardly lo-fi); if it were arranged with drum machine and synths it'd be very comfortable on McCartney II but the little touches of "I love pre-rock pop" kind of mark the classicist adult-contemporary turn he was making at this point.

Ode To A Koala Bear b-side to "Say Say Say" and sort of epitomzies Paul's strengths and weaknesses by this point: lovely, singable melody, but the four-track homemade tracks are devolving to just bashing out the chords to hold together a demo before he loses interest and wanders onto something else. there are so many 80s Paul tracks like this. but this also has that spark of weirdness in choosing a koala bear as the central metaphor, deflating (or, if you're less tolerant of all this, spoiling) what could have been a serious ballad of devotion. like, he doesn't sing "i will walk with you to the end of the passage" like this is supposed to be a silly throwaway! it is also easy to hear the refrain as "my little koala nightmare" and i've always liked that.

Pretty Little Head - Best thing on Press to Play besides "Press" and for real his last great "wtf" lyrics. hillsmen! hillsmen!

Put It There beautiful and well-focused father-son fable. if some of these others feel like shapless non-ideas, this (like "baby's request") is a testament to the songcraft he continued to have up his sleeve. avoid the music video, it's a different take/mix and the vocal feels muggy.

Loveliest Thing B-side to "Figure of Eight" that should have closed Flowers in the Dirt (as it did the expanded 1993 CD). except when the louder drums kick in for the chorus, an unforced-feeling would-be piano-bar staple.

Hope of Deliverance okay this was a decent-sized hit but I feel like it's on nobody's radar and it's reeeeeeeeeal fuckin' catchy.

Honey Hush, No Other Baby, and Movie Magg highlights of Run Devil Run, the quickie rock covers album recorded while he was grieving for Linda. boomer throwback albums like this are a dime a dozen but he had a good band and his singing was more focused and motivated than it'd been in years, even on the better Flaming Pie cuts.

this is for people who just can't muster sifting through the rest of that massive discography.

this is mostly me, although i'm doing my best to give each album at least one listen in the next few weeks. i'll give more attention to tracks you highlighted!

A couple on there I'd hesitated on, but you're right for sure on "Big Barn Bed" and I don't know why I wouldn't include "Mumbo." "Morse Moose" I will revisit.

Shout out, though, to "Tomorrow," as my favorite from Wild Life.

oh man

SIDE A SAY SAY SAY
SIDE B ODE TO A KOALA BEAR

is still the funniest thing ever

the "You Really Got A Hold On Me" melody in the first line in particular, it really sounds like he was so stoned he started singing a different song. he doesn't repeat it either iirc

I'm rather glad I picked up vg copies of Wild Life, Ram and The Sound of the Sand (David Thomas, v weirdly) from the same op shop 20 years ago

There's only five songs on Casino's list that I'd consider voting for! Not gonna say which ones...