Paul McCartney - Creem

Tuf Of War
Paul McCartney

Joe (Whatta Ya Want It’s Summer) Fernbacher, Creem, 8/82

My coolitarian ire was anxiously poised, ready to strike out viciously, like a pit full of slightly agitated pythons. I was lost in the angst of a You Asked For It ecstasy. Venom was slowly dripping onto the tiles of my mind, pooling like some mad mongoloid’s spittle. Vitriolic fungoes were bouncing around in slow motion in front of my already bloodshot eyes. Bubbles of smirk and grin were floating around me in delicate circles just waiting for me to pick them out of the air and insert them into my review. At last I was going to loose my pent-up dislike for Paul McCartney in print. Whaa-hooo!!!

So you can imagine how I quailed when this LP, Tug Of War, turned out to be not only fascinating, but quite good. Now what the hell was I supposed to do? Give it a good, objective review? (...excuse me, I just smashed my head against the wall) Miss my deadline and not have to deal with it at all? (...excuse me I just had to check my wallet) Or, was I supposed to go out and in typical CREEM style forge ahead with dauntless courage and fury of purpose? It was a dilemma. How was I going to resolve the tug of war between my soul and heart? Hey, Tug Of War, not a bad segue. (Slow dissolve to black.)

Now let me just say I haven’t read any of the reviews on this album yet, but I’m sure every mother’s son is going to call it a classic, a masterpiece, a work of genius, and all those other tedious homilies. The other thing I’m sure of is that those same sons are going to focus in on Paul’s song to John Lennon, “Here Today.” I, for one, don’t have to be constantly reminded of Lennon’s death; it happened, it wasn’t pleasant, and I don’t think he should be eulogized by every recording artist his music influenced. That, in my book, is exploitation, and rock’n’rollers always seem to come in for some of the grossest and most vengeful exploitation when they take that ride on the big bar chord into the void. It’s a shame, and I’m sick of it.

Anyway, enough from the soap box. “Here Today” is a simple song recalling a few shared moments between two friends. The sadness in McCartney’s voice speaks louder than anything any reviewer could possibly write about it.

Okay, so now that my obligatory John Lennon paragraph is out of the way let’s talk a little about Tug Of War. As a whole, the album is without a doubt the most palatable thing McCartney’s released in quite a while, and the reason for its digestibility has a lot to do with his teaming up with George Martin. Martin’s production helped out the Beatles to the nth degree because he was able to fill in the spaces they’d leave behind with snippets of musical texturing that rounded out their overall sound just perfectly. And that’s exactly what he’s accomplished on Tug Of War--whenever there’s a lapse, he’ll add a little extra echo, a shushing of strings, or an over-produced tinkling of the ivories. Just enough to flesh the whole thing out. Just enough to make it feel more complete.

The two collaborations with Stevie Wonder are contradictory. “Ebony And Ivory” is just a little too cutesy and reminds me of all the bad qualities McCartney displays when he’s trying too hard. He knows he can sing, write and play almost any style he wants to, and it’s this very quality that makes him, on occasion, boring and pretentious. What you hear when you listen to “What’s That You’re Doing,” a song that’s got the same funkalicious power and potency of Wonder’s “Superstitious,” is McCartney lettin’ loose with all his power and style.

The collaboration with Carl Perkins can be easily summed up by the low, rumbling cackling from Perkins at the end of the song. “Get It” is just filler.

Now we come to the two songs that were responsible for me taking this record (sort of) seriously. “Ballroom Dancing” is in the grand silly tradition of “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” and “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer,” and it shows that McCartney still has that sense of wackiness that made the Beatles so endearing. (I never really thought the Beatles were all that exciting--but that, as they say, is another story.)

“The Pound Is Sinking” is my favorite. I mean, Paul does a great job rhyming pesos, lira, marks, drachmas, francs, dollars, yen, rubles, and of course, ye pound. But if he wanted to make this a truly great work of art, he’ have done a 10 minute version including a few of the other great monetary units like the afghani from Afghanistan, the Albanian lek, Algeria’s dinar, Chile’s escudo, Costa Rica’s colon, the krone of Denmark, the ever-popular markka from Finland, the Hungarian forint, cordobas from Nicaragua, the wons of North Korea, the Polish zloty, the baht of Thailand, or perhaps my personal fave, the kwacha of Zambia. He should’ve mentioned some of these. But hey, no matter what your currency may be, you could do worse than spending some of it on Tug Of War.

P.S. I don’t know if this means anything, but is it a mere coincidence that Tug Of War was released all too close to the date of Sgt. Pepper’s release? Does this mean that the 60s “really” are coming back? And, if they are, does anybody know where I can get some good mescaline? Anyway. Later.

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