George Harrison writes song with Paul McCartney from beyond the grave

Meanwhile, Jason Mraz looks like a young McCartney in his new vid.

(xpost x 2)

time to watch the LET IT BE film again to get the real story, and where's THAT dvd release when it's at home?

"he never said a single nice thing about george's contributions to the fabs, and certainly not about his solo stuff while he was still alive"

Totally false. (And haha, did George ever say anything nice about Paul's solo stuff?)

And what in the world is wrong w/ how he looks in that picture? Dude is 63.

George:
"All Things Must Pass" - probably the best triple album ever made.
"Living in the Material World" - a bunch of great songs, including the gorgeous, Spector-esque "Don't Make Me Wait Too Long".
the song "Cheer Down"
putting out Ravi Shankar albums
bankrolling "Life of Brian", "Time Bandits", among others. (his song for the closing "Time Bandits" credits is great)

Paul:
"McCartney"
"Ram"
"Band on the Run"

George wins.

x-post

Songs? As in plural? I think there was one. Made sense to me at the time. Message has become totally muddled w/ the U.S./U.K. "war on terror." Oh well. (I don't really want to get into a political debate about it.)

"playing a shit "safe" set at the SuperBowl"

Whatever. What was it, four songs? Yeah, what a dick.

"re-releasing Beatles' albums that have been re-mixed to suit his tastes"

You dream this or something? Because it hasn't happened. The only remixing of Beatles songs was for the Yellow Submarine Songtrack. Paul was not involved w/ the mixing - Paul, George, and Ringo all OK-ed the mixes when they were done. Was he involved w/ the mixing of Let It Be ... Naked? I didn't think he was. In any case, it's a new Let It Be album and not a remix of the old album. You wanna make the case that it's about "Paul doing it to suit his tastes," that's a whole argument. Don't know the extent to which he was involved and I also recall Ringo saying that he really liked it when it came out.

"insisting that his name appear first on all the Beatles compositions"

Uh, I don't think so. From what I understand, there was one instance where he asked for this - something to do w/ "Yesterday." Apparently, Yoko said no or something.

"this is a guy who put out a news story that his new wife had made him stop smoking pot"

Did he "put out" this news story like he "put out" this story about this new song? Or did he merely mention it to someone and someone decided to write a story about it?

Ads are essentially music videos in an era when most artists - including living legends - don't have a shot at getting on the air with an actual music video. They can be strategically deployed to raise one's profile and timed to a new album's release. It's no more questionable than doing a photo spread for a glossy mag, or plying a dozen section editors with Belvedere at a "listening party."

...And sorry for the horrid sentence structure.

Matos being cryptic. What's desperate about that review?

Michael, good point, but I feel like it's more ridiculous that the ad is for a huge investment firm. Particularly when Sir Paul clearly doesn't need the money.

I imagine that's been covered on the other thread, though, so apologies in advance.

Paul McCartney

Chaos & Creation In The Backyard

****

The premise of Paul Mccartney working with Nigel Godrich was clear from the start. McCartney wanted a producer who appreciated his storied past but at the same time believed that, at sixty-three, he has a vital future. For his part, Godrich -- who is best-known for his work with Radiohead and Beck -- had expressed interest in collaborating with an established artist whose reputation extended further back than the Nineties. A win-win, right?
Right. Chaos and Creation in the Backyard is the freshest-sounding McCartney album in years. It is as spare, in its way, as Driving Rain (2001), his most recent studio effort, but it's more daring, more assured and more surprising. For starters, Driving Rain was a band album, while this is a genuine solo album in that McCartney plays nearly all the instruments on it -- four of the album's thirteen tracks credit no other musicians. It's an approach that recalls McCartney, the homemade 1970 release that launched the singer's post-Beatles career. And as on that record, the tingling sense of a new beginning is palpable.

Though it's clearly the product of a true partnership between the artist and his producer, Chaos is instantly recognizable as a McCartney album. For one thing, that voice is front and center, as wistful and full of yearning as ever, effortlessly lending these songs a rich sense of emotional conviction. And that grounding frees Godrich to roughen up McCartney's innate melodic smoothness. "Jenny Wren" is an acoustic ballad in the manner of "Mother Nature's Son." But a solo on duduk -- a haunting, hollow-sounding Armenian woodwind -- transports the song into an unsettled, dreamlike realm and darkens its mood. Similarly, the string arrangements that permeate the album rigorously avoid the romantic lushness typical of McCartney in the past. Instead, they slither in and out of the mix, providing eerie atmospherics to songs like "Riding to Vanity Fair." Instruments such as melodica, harmonium, harpsichord and spinet introduce distinctly non-rock elements into McCartney's sound and contribute to an overall feel of delicate, stately surrealism.

All of the above means, alas, that, with a couple of exceptions, Chaos doesn't rock -- its most significant drawback. (When McCartney tears off a guitar solo on "Promise to You Girl," the effect is jolting.) But without feeling showy, Chaos seduces the listener into a playful world of musical ideas that shimmer and disappear. The sound bears a complex relationship to the album's theme, an autumnal assessment of the things that fade and the things that last. What fades are the enervating distractions of daily life, every ego-charged detail that seems critical at the moment but that causes us to lose "sight of life day by day."

And, for McCartney, of course, what lasts is love -- the engine of the creation mentioned in the title, the ultimate weapon against chaos. This is not the silly love of "Silly Love Songs." It's the challenge of one of his most famous lyrics: "And in the end, the love you take/Is equal to the love you make." It's a call to a better self, in other words, and a promise that, as he sings in "Anyway," this album's closing track, "If a love is strong enough, it may never end."

ANTHONY DECURTIS
(Posted Sep 22, 2005)

And he doesn't say anything about Driving Rain being pretty weak.

Actually, Matos, I think that review's kind of remarkable for the simple reason that it's very straightforward. I like the conceit that "This is something that should work on paper -- and it does." In that sense, it kind of captures the craftsman in Paul.

So, desperate? I don't think so.

Ha, OK I missed the joke. I thought you were comparing it to something like the Astral Weeks piece from Stranded!

though the Macca review is pretty humdrum as writing y'ask me

A) Sometimes, though, a good review really does just tell you about the record. Must everything be a Greil Marcus college thesis?

B) It's Rolling Stone for God's sake -- be thankful Rob Sheffield or Joe Levy weren't assigned to this.

Particularly when Sir Paul clearly doesn't need the money.

This clause comes up a lot in relation to McCartney. I myself wonder that sometimes (especially when he mints mediocre live albums out of his tour recordings), but then I kind of slap myself for doing this. Who the hell are we to decide who needs the money and who doesn't? Is there an income cap after which the artist is morally obligated to YSI us all his new music for free? (Granted, Boris Grebenshikov - Russia's rough equivalent to McCartney - puts good-quality rips of his albums on his official site the day the album comes out, but it's Russia we're talking about, so he makes whatever money he does from concerts anyway). I don't think one should make any assumptions about McCartney's greed before perusing his tax declarations and tallying up his charity work. And who on earth would actually want to do that?!

no, but it can certainly be better than "A win-win, right? Right."

B) It's Rolling Stone for God's sake -- be thankful Rob Sheffield or Joe Levy weren't assigned to this.

I wish Sheffield had written it!

The rock legend, Ringo Starr and George Harrison posed for a photograph outside the studio where the track was recorded - when the bird wandered in shot at the last minute from a neighbouring farm. .

The singer said: "That's John. Spooky, eh? It was like John was hanging around. We felt that all through the recording".

Please put it up for me to steal when you get home. kthxbye