Things I Will Keep #26: PAUL MCCARTNEY, McCartney II

Paul McCartney
McCartney II
1980, Columbia Records

I love January. To me, it’s one of the best months. Even as a lifelong Texan who despises cold weather, I can still enjoy January.

What can I say? I like a nice Christmas tree tossed out on a curb. It’s a beautiful sight.

The holidays are over and now we can really relax. I can die now and not feel bad about ruining anyone’s festive plans. So can you. So can anybody. Isn’t that nice?

January to me is about appreciating normalcy. The humdrum becomes fresh air after Christmas and New Year’s. The stores are open at regular hours and fifteen people aren’t always offering me a bunch of fattening food.

Also, the worst music ever made is no longer playing absolutely everywhere.

What would Paul McCartney think of my bad attitude? From what I gather, he’s an old stoner and probably wouldn’t give a damn. He probably wouldn’t even care that I consider HIS Christmas song (“Wonderful Christmastime”) to be among the most wretched of the December canon.

In this hypothetical scenario though in which Paul McCartney and I are hanging out and talking about Christmas, I might try to swing the discussion to McCartney II and why I consider it to be perfect January music.

And then Paul might shoot back with “You know, I recorded ‘Wonderful Christmastime’ during the sessions for McCartney II. I did it all meself at home at me farm in Scotland”.

And then I would say “I KNOW, that’s so crazy!”

It would be a very stimulating conversation.

So, McCartney II.

When I wanted to write about this good feeling I have right now, this January feeling, McCartney II was the first album that leaped to mind. It’s music for getting back to work. These songs are for a time of nothing much special going on except for this music. It goes well with quiet winter air.

These self-produced, one-man-band recordings are sparse and minimally decorated. They are trees without lights and doors without wreaths.

There’s an inherent fascination in hearing McCartney work alone. His 1970 solo LP, made with similar methods, accidentally helped to usher in a movement. From there, the likes of Stevie Wonder, Todd Rundgren, and Emitt Rhodes followed suit and refined a new genre for multi-instrumentalist pop geniuses who don’t allow other hands to touch their melodies. This extended into the underground with guys such as R. Stevie Moore and Tom Marolda of The Toms.

One of my favorite stories from McCartney’s solo career is from when he hired Nigel Godrich, the “fifth Beatle” of Radiohead, to produce the Chaos and Creation in the Backyard album, which came out in 2005. Godrich did something that I would be terrified to do.

He told McCartney that his songs needed work and that his backing band wasn’t up to snuff. Godrich wanted to record with only McCartney on guitar, bass, drums, and piano.

The very thought of saying THAT to Sir Paul gives me a panic attack, but Godrich did it and it almost got him fired. Despite being offended at first, McCartney went with it and the result is one of his best 21st century solo records, full of luscious songcraft and English fog.

He should have made records like that more often, but I understand why he didn’t. There were a few decades when McCartney could hardly get a good review to save his life. His LPs sold and he had hits, but critics took hatchets to them. McCartney himself was surprised in later years to find that Ram had emerged as a classic over the decades because he remembered so clearly how much it got smashed in the press when it was released.

See the 1994 movie Backbeat, about the early Hamburg nightclub years of the Beatles, for a great example of how uncool McCartney was for a time. The film dares to present “Long Tall Sally” as a showcase for John’s screaming and shouting, when every real Beatles fan knows that Paul always took the lead for that one. In the media, McCartney wasn’t allowed to be a rocker. Or an artist.

McCartney and McCartney II, made a decade apart, were deemed especially bad. Critics called them flimsy and unfinished. I bet the makers of Backbeat never even heard them.

When I eventually got hold of them though, I had 90s indie rock kid ears and the very things that got Paul roasted back in 1980 were what sounded good to me.

I loved bare-bones production. I loved the sound of an artist doing their own thing. I loved short songs and blips and bleeps and blurps. McCartney II, in particular, sounded like it should have a Matador Records logo somewhere on it.

My LEAST favorite moment on it is the big single, but I still like it. “Coming Up” is sturdy whitebread funk with sincere energy and it’s awfully excited to exist. It’s also notable among Beatles nerds as the song that John Lennon claimed as an inspiration to start recording new music again after his five-year hiatus. He heard his old friend on the radio, liked it, and got competitive. Lennon put out the Double Fantasy album six months later.

“Temporary Secretary” is extra fun. It’s Paul officially greeting the 1980s by going full New Wave. It’s catchy and obnoxious, but that’s okay. New Wave was supposed to be a little obnoxious (Devo and Talking Heads never wanted to make soothing sounds). It’s a cult favorite track that McCartney himself likes enough to make it a regular on his recent arena tours.

Those two songs are a nice opening attack, but when McCartney II becomes one of my favorite albums is afterward when the January frost settles in and we truly feel like we’re wandering.

The track 3 blues workout (“On the Way”) feels like it barely belongs with what came before, but it sounds great. Other non sequiturs on an album that’s all but built on left turns include “Bogey Music”, which comes off like Martians imitating Elvis Presley, and the slow, misty “Summer’s Day Song”, which has always sounded like winter music to me. To me, it’s a person shivering in the cold and dreaming of warmer days.

The two synthesizer-dominated instrumentals, “Front Parlour” and “Frozen Jap” sound like something out of a forgotten cartoon from the dreamy edges of my memories and imagination. They are essential.

Meanwhile, you’re never going to be a Paul fan if you don’t like a pretty ballad and there are two of those here. “Waterfalls” is the tender love song, sent over the top by some moody synth work. “One of These Days” is an “everything’s going to be alright” song that closes out the album and drops all of the keyboards for a single, humble guitar and a haunting vocal echo.

If you dig the LP’s chill vibes and dreamy trip-outs, the B-sides are essential shit. “Check My Machine” is a terrific alien groove and “Secret Friend” manages to find the place where New Wave, loungey jazz, and McCartney’s own sweet way with a melody meet. There are 20-year-old bedroom musicians right now who’d be happy to pop out with something as transcendent as those tracks. I write this in 2025 and even McCartney’s throwaways from this period refuse to age.

Speaking of aging, the older I get the more sympathetic I am to Paul McCartney. Okay, sure, maybe he never really suffered from his years of being uncool. If Paul ever felt truly bothered by how Rolling Stone treated him, he could always meditate on a plush, comfy stack of money.

What I admire though over the years is that he always kept going. How did Paul respond to the bad reviews? With another album the next year. And then another one a year after that. And then another one.

That’s how you do it.

What is it like to be loved ALL of the time by EVERYONE for EVERYTHING that you do? No one knows. That hasn’t happened, yet. We’re still waiting for a specimen to study.

All that I can do right now is think about January. The party’s over and now a wide open, quiet expanse greets you and you can do anything that you want within it. It’s cold at first, but that’s a part of the test.

I never thought too deeply about that before, but the wild freedom of McCartney II has it on my mind all day.

It’s a great album.