new introductory bit here.

This is a reviews page based on my own collection, which just keeps growing despite itself. If it isn't listed here, it's because I don't own it yet, or I haven't gotten around to it yet.

Also, bother your local "new rock" radio station and make sure they are playing "new rock" and not "Rock the Casbah," which is not new.

note: entries in red text indicate my pick for the artist's best available album. A gold numeral indicates the POPocalypse winner of the year's best album; second- and third-place winners are in blue. Green lettering indicates an obviously exploitative record company compilation without apparent artist input. Purple lettering indicates something nobody legally got paid for.

Macca�s solo career has been one of incredible ups and downs, marred by three unfortunate factors: the British press have always hated him, he keeps sabotaging his �rock� image with cutesy, down-home stupidity, and, surrounding himself with yes-men, he has lacked a stablizing, caustic force to prevent him doing anything completely embarassing and to tell him �Paul, get a haircut.�

After trying in vain to keep the Beatles together after they began drifting apart in 1969, Paul was the first to go public with their split, suing to dissolve their partnership. The media instantly decided he instigated the end of Britain�s most beloved band, but the publicity did a good deal for his 1970 debut, McCartney, a simple, self-produced and played record. A lo-fi album thirty years ahead of its time, some of the tracks have aged very well indeed. He followed this up with the hit �Another Day� single, and the album Ram in 1971. Most of the reviews and biographies are snide and dismissive about all this material, although quite a few musicians have been very forthright with praise for Ram, and many modern pop acts have called it an influence.

Feeling the need for a band environment, albeit one where he was in control, Paul formed Wings in 1971. The initial lineup joined him (on vocals and bass) with session drummer Denny Seiwell, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine, and his musically untrained wife Linda on keyboards and harmonies. This lineup recorded their disastrous debut Wild Life, which was released to savage reviews that December. Wild Life would have been an unacceptable debut album by any band; that it came from an ex-Beatle is shocking. The first track, �Mumbo,� is a meandering thumper of barely intelligible nonsense lyrics and sets the stage for 45 minutes of barely listenable rawk sludge. Only on the last track, �Dear Friend,� does anything resembling a melody make itself known through the muddy production and mix. Listening to this album, you would never believe that Paul had ever worked with George Martin.

Wings had an interesting 1972, releasing three non-LP singles with their newly added second guitarist Henry McCullough and doing a surprise tour of British universities before playing European dates. The first Wings single, �Give Ireland Back to the Irish,� was unsurprisingly banned by the BBC, so Paul snidely followed it up with a rock rendition of �Mary Had a Little Lamb.� This amusing act of revenge gave him a top 10 hit, but it also wrecked Wings� street cred. Who could possibly take them seriously when they�re making TV appearances nuzzling with a flock of sheep? Their next single, the double A-side �Hi Hi Hi�/�C Moon,� was also banned, although there is some contradictory evidence whether it was over drug allusions, or the reference to Paul�s �body gun,� or both. Nevertheless, it was Wings� first convincing rocker, and a good �un, although �C Moon,� a stupid cod-reggae number which has remained one of Paul�s personal favorites, is embarassing and dated and needs to stop showing up in compilations and concerts. In early 1973, this five-piece released Red Rose Speedway, which is still nowhere near Paul�s Beatles batting average, but it does contain the beautiful "Little Lamb Dragonfly," which is probably the best song he'd done since that split. On the other hand, it has the disturbingly saccharine "My Love," which was always crap and has aged terribly. It closes with an interesting medley of four half-finished songs. The album was a hit, but yet again panned by critics, many of whom were finding Linda�s harmonies barely listenable. A British-only reissue from 1993 adds four bonus B-sides from that period. This version of Wings closed shop with the hit theme to Live and Let Die that summer.

Seiwell and McCullough left Paul (apparently at the airport) before Wings flew to Nigeria to record Band on the Run. After four critical disasters, Paul and his now three-piece act pulled his best album out of a hat. Band is urgent, exciting and fun, a monster hit that, despite a 70s sound, maintains a timeless pop vibe. "Jet" and "Let Me Roll It" may be the best songs (or maybe it's "No Words"), but the whole album is at least as good as what Macca was up to in the 60s and restored much of his lost critical standing in one thrilling burst of over-the-top glam. The 1999 reissue, by the way, comes boxed with a second disc with alternate takes and mixes and interviews. The one with Dustin Hoffman (present when Paul wrote "Picasso's Last Words") is very goofy.

After spending 1974 recording and promoting both Band and the subsequent �Junior�s Farm� single, Wings was back to a five piece with the addition of drummer Joe English and guitarist Jimmy McCulloch. Venus & Mars was another mammoth hit in 1975, led by the fantastic �Listen to What the Man Said� and containing a convincing mix of rockers, ballads and pop songs. Paul looked like a shaggy dog with an uneven mop on his head, but the band was well-tuned for lush, commercial success. This same lineup produced Wings at the Speed of Sound the following year. Another commercial smash, Sound has not aged well, sounding less like a Paul McCartney album and more like an hour of soft rock classic radio hell. Wings kicked off a world tour in 1976, and Paul was finally allowed into the US after his frequent drug busts had kept him out previously. The stadium tour was a huge success and prompted the live triple LP Wings Over America that Christmas.

1977 saw Wings in the odd position of going from critical whipping-boys to being one of the biggest bands on the planet, but Paul seemed uncomfortable with his triumphant rock role, and unwilling to continue being a rock-and-roll star. Wings split again, and the McCartneys and Laine recorded the �Mull of Kintyre� single, a lush, bagpipe-filled ballad which defied media expectations in this Year of Punk (McCartney was targetted as one of those things most bloated and excessive about rock) and became the biggest selling single in British history. (It remains #4 on that list today.) CBS in America were not confident in the song, and promoted the unconvincing rocker B-side �Girl's School� instead; it missed the top 30. Paul�s balladeer side also ruled 1978�s London Town, which sold really well and spawned the soft-shuffling dance hit �With a Little Luck,� but the album was justifiably savaged.

The next year, Paul again built Wings up to a five-piece, adding Laurence Juber and Steve Holly for the disco smash �Goodnight Tonight.� This led into Wings� last album, the controversial Back to the Egg. Not many people like this one, which is just experimental enough to irritate Paul's fan base, and just traditional enough to warrant the usual slurs on his name. Paul's picked up a short-lived fascination with Can, apparently, judging from the strange radio interference on two tracks, but he also has room for some more raucous than usual fast numbers and some beautiful ballads like the sublime "Winter Rose." Guest stars include Pete Townshend, Dave Gilmour and half of Led Zeppelin. It is easily superior to the last two Wings albums, and has lots of charms for people to discover, but it only dented the top 10 briefly in America and the UK and had no singles hit the top 20. Wings toured Britain that autumn before flying to Japan in 1980, where Paul did not play any concerts, but instead spent more than a week in jail for posession of pot.

Wings did not formally disintegrate until 1981, but in the interim, Paul retired to his home studio to record another solo record by himself. The resulting McCartney II is totally unlistenable. It seems that Paul tried to get all hip and new wave by locking himself in a closet with a synth and vocoder. The result was instantly dated and, while some of the songwriting ("Waterfalls," "One of These Days") is very good, the performances are horrible. Most people don't even record their soundchecks. Paul did for nine minutes and called it a song.

Like a lot of big 70s acts, McCartney was fumbling in the 1980s as younger acts passed him by. His next four albums were made with veteran session musicians, but what Paul was badly needing was someone to tell him �no.� 1982�s Tug of War was a return to form, and had several great tracks, including the minor hit �Take it Away� and the beautiful ballad �Wanderlust.� On the other hand, the artistically barren �Ebony and Ivory,� despite its huge sales, helped cement him as a soft-rock balladeer unwilling to experiment. A ghastly, treacly duet with Michael Jackson called �The Girl is Mine� followed. Again, this clicked in the short run, but further wrecked his credibility. The next Jackson duet, �Say Say Say,� at least had a tempo, but nobody likes it anymore. It appeared on the awful Pipes of Peace, which is technically proficient but devoid of anything original. Even the melodies seem hackneyed and stale.

His reputation continued to stumble with Give My Regards to Broad Street, an album and feature film which contained the spectacular �No More Lonely Nights� single, but nothing else of interest. The film was mostly incoherent and the album missed the US top 20. He did make the top reaches of the chart the next year with the horrendous singalong theme �Spies Like Us,� which didn�t do anything for his critical standing either. Between the two, there was a UK-only #3 single, the sappy "We All Stand Together," the theme to the children's film Rupert and the Frog Song. No words exist which could describe what the music press thought of Paul singing a song with a cartoon teddy bear.

Press to Play followed in 1986. The sleeve is a soft-focus black and white George Hurrell photo of Paul and Linda cuddling mushily together. It is a nice photo, but not one that anybody wanted to leave a record store with. In its defense, the album is uncommercial, and contains some of the weirdest music of Paul's career, like "Pretty Little Head," which is apparently about cavemen traders. It�s intriguing a few times, but baffling in the end. The best of the material, �Tough on a Tightrope,� wasn�t even on the vinyl version of the album.

Things got worse in 1987 and 1988. After several months out of the public eye, Paul recorded a damn fine ballad, �Once Upon a Long Ago,� for a new hits album, All the Best. His US label, Capitol, didn�t only refuse to issue it as a single in America, they didn�t want it on the hits album either, so each country�s album has different track listings. In the UK, the single made #10 and the album a huge #1. In the US, it couldn�t make the top 60. Around this time, the Beatles were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Paul refused to attend, claiming it was a �fake reunion.� That didn�t sell him any records. Then he performed the decent gesture of recording an album of 50s rock standards for the Soviet label Melodiya and watched a public-relations backfire. His fans worldwide wanted to hear the quickly-counterfeited album, CHoba b CCCP (Back in the USSR), and actually decried him for �witholding� it, but the record was not issued until a limited edition 1991 release. Paul�s public image had never been lower. He needed a solid band, he needed someone to stop and make him think, and he needed a hit. With Flowers in the Dirt, he got all three.

The 1989 album is not quite a masterpiece, but it was certainly his best record in seven years if not more. He teamed with Elvis Costello to write and perform some of the songs, and assembled a very solid band, including the Pretenders� Robbie McIntosh, session drummer Chris Whitten, and the Average White Band�s Hamish Stuart. There are a couple of duds ("Figure of Eight" crams too many syllables into its structure and "Motor of Love" is at least two minutes longer than it should be), but everything else is outstanding, notably the caustic "You Want Her Too" and the really amazing "That Day is Done." This was one of 1989's most critically acclaimed albums, with four UK top 50 singles, and ushered in a minor critical renaissance for Paul. Within weeks, he was on the road for a mammoth world tour, documented in dozens of beautiful vinyl bootlegs (just as that format was dying) and with the 1990 double-CD Tripping the Live Fantastic. The album is very polished, with tracks cut and pasted from various concerts in different cities. A lot of it's Beatles stuff, of course, but most phases of Paul's career are represented at least a little. Surprisingly, the best tracks are a stomping, furious "Things We Said Today," and the intricate, complex jam of "Sgt. Pepper," which should be enough to convince anybody. However, this would have been a more immediate and honest set without the selections from various cities, studio trickery, and snippets from soundchecks between songs. Tripping was also made available in a one-CD �highlights! version. There was also a live single of "All My Trials" in England; the performance was never issued in the US. He also wrote a classical work called Liverpool Oratorio which caught the critics� attention, but unsurprisingly did not find a rock audience.

With his critical standing at an all-time high and a growing crowd of young fans, the band stopped by MTV�s Unplugged for a laid-back, acoustic set of rock standards, Beatles songs and a few tracks from his 1971 debut. Chris Whitten was otherwise engaged, and Blair Cunningham, formerly of Haircut 100, subbed for him. Paul�s rapport with the audience is very fun and loose, showing him more relaxed or happy than he�d seemed in years. The resulting numbered, limited edition album was actually his best Billboard showing in eight years. Paul had another top 20 US hit with Off the Ground in 1993, but the album is sadly quite uneven. It has some extremely strong tracks, like "Get Out of My Way" and "I Owe it All to You," and the single "Hope of Deliverance" is quite memorable. But it is rushed in places, and Paul�s conscience is way, way out on his sleeve ("Looking for Changes" tries really, really hard). Musically and technically, it is a strong album performed well. All the problems are down to Paul's writing.

The band toured the world again that year, with another sellout series of stadium shows which was recapped with the flop Paul is Live. Perhaps, with two studio records, two mammoth tours, three live albums, the Russian LP, Liverpool Oratorio and a brace of singles full of unavailable B-sides on the market within five years, Paul had overextended himself and the album only made UK #34 and US #71. It isn�t as strong as Fantastic despite, again, being a mishmosh of performances from several shows, but only ("only") eleven of 24 tracks are Beatles songs, and one of those is a radically reworked soundcheck version of "I Wanna Be Your Man." All the material is played with strength and energy, and the closing improvisation jam of "A Fine Day" is quite good. Nevertheless, nobody was complaining much when Paul elected to leave the solo spotlight for a while.

His next several moves were with the Beatles again, as the surviving three and Yoko Ono settled their squabbles and business differences and began archiving their old work in a very lucrative deal with Capitol. First up was Beatles at the Beeb in 1994. A six-part TV series (shown as three �specials� in the USA), The Beatles Anthology, followed in 1995, with three companion CD sets issued into 1996. The CD sets contained two newly-recorded Beatles songs, produced by Jeff Lynne and built around old John Lennon demos, and while the radio didn�t play them as much as the public bought them, 1995 felt so much like Beatlemania all over again that even the Rutles reunited for another spoof.

By 1997, Paul was ready to re-emerge as a solo act, and he did it, again, with a simple, mostly self-played set called Flaming Pie. This rode the newfound Beatles commercial success and made #2 in both the UK and the States. It is a well-regarded critical and commercial comeback which mixes both brilliant and puzzling songs. He gets a little bit of assistance from Steve Miller, George Martin, Ringo and his talented son James, but his great band from the early 90s is gone. The album doesn't seem very cohesive, but it has some great numbers like "Young Boy," "Little Willow" and "Really Love You." Sadly it starts with the weakest track, and the title song is one of the oddest bits of dated nonsense he's done since the 60s. Around the same time, he did a strange radio series called Oobu Joobu syndicated by Westwood One. The series was carried by only a few stations worldwide, but it featured interviews and unreleased songs, some of which appeared on the Flaming Pie singles.

Linda McCartney died from breast cancer in April 1998, giving Flaming Pie�s simple, campfire feel an even more poignant tone. Paul was naturally out of the public eye for many months before resuming his career with Run Devil Run in late 1999. The album mixed obscure 50s rock covers with new originals performed in the same style by a band including British rock veterans Dave Gilmour and Ian Paice. "Lonesome Town," "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" and the single "No Other Baby" are all extremely good tunes. Despite considerable publicity, and the huge attention that a performance at Liverpool�s Cavern Club brought, the album did not sell very well.

In late 2000, he was focussed on the promotion of the Beatles 1 collection and had found a new love with model Heather Mills. 2001 saw the successful release of Wingspan, a hits album that focussed on the 1970s, and a subsequent TV film. Meanwhile, Paul continued to support vegetarianism and the removal of land mines, and exhibited his paintings and read some of his poetry. Driving Rain was released in 2001, short weeks after the attacks on New York City. The album had mostly been recorded in California earlier that year, after veteran producer David Kahne assembled a band including Rusty Anderson, Abe Laboriel Jr. and Gabe Dixon, and was very well received, even if it does run a couple of tracks long. This was his first set of original songs since Linda's death, and addressed his own sorrow and his new happiness with Heather. In the wake of the attack, Paul penned a new song, "Freedom," which was appended to Driving Rain as a bonus track and performed at The Concert for New York City which he helped organize. Not that Paul McCartney has any reason to pay attention to the Billboard charts anymore, but Capitol truly dropped the ball on the singles for this album. "From a Lover to a Friend" was initially offered to retail, then recalled within two weeks because they planned to issue "Freedom," and donate proceeds to charity, instead. "Freedom" did sell quite well according to the sales charts, but the simplistic, patriotic tune was soundly ignored by radio programmers in favor of the album's first track, the fantastic "Lonely Road," which was never pulled as a single.

In April 2002, McCartney started his first US tour in nine years, accompanied by Anderson and Laboriel, with Brian Ray providing additional guitar and Paul "Wix" Wickens, who had played on the last two tours, replacing Dixon. The first leg of the tour ran six weeks and each show grossed around a million dollars. In the summer, the band played at Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee, and Paul cheekily took the opportunity to play the Abbey Road tune "Her Majesty" in her presence. He and Heather married in Ireland and the tour resumed for another two months of US dates in the fall before visiting Japan. The promotion made Driving Rain a gold record despite its initially low chart position, as it continued to sell throughout the year. A live album, McCartney's fifth, Back in the U.S., was released Thanksgiving week and debuted in the US top 10. A decent document of the spring tour, albeit with all of Paul's stage banter excised, it prompted public controversy over Paul's decision to recredit the Beatles songs as "written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon" rather than the traditional "Lennon/McCartney." (12/02)

PAUL McCARTNEY: Wingspan (2001, UK #5, US #2, **)
For the third time, Paul released a hits album. For the third time, it wasn't very good. Wingspan collects 18 chart hits from 1970-84 on a "Hits" disc, and 22 of his favorite songs from the same period on a "History" disc. No sense of chronology, some top 20 songs on the "History," no representation of the Flowers in the Dirt band... any fan could compile this same set for a road trip.

PAUL McCARTNEY & WINGS: Live in Newcastle (Newcastle 7/10/73, Mistral Records)
Wings undertook a brief UK tour to promote the "Live and Let Die" single. This was the last show of the tour. Sounds like the audience tape was sped up slightly, but it is only noticeable when Paul is speaking. This is a good document, but sadly, Wings didn't have very many good songs in its repertoire yet. Linda's "Seaside Woman" is a big problem.

WINGS: Wings Over Boston (Boston 5/22/73, unlabelled)
This is a good audience recording that captures the band very well, but it also captures some furious arguments within the audience about people standing up in front of them. Of the performances, "The Long and Winding Road" and "Letting Go" are standouts.