“It’s terrible”: the Paul McCartney song thought didn’t sound right
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(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
By the time Paul McCartney left The Beatles, he still had a good handle on what made a great record. Even if he was going it alone without the rest of his Fab bandmates, bringing Wings together felt like a no-brainer after establishing his foundation on his solo debut and RAM. That doesn’t mean that everything came together easily, and while McCartney did get the final say, he felt that some of the instruments on this deep cut should have been recorded a little bit better.
Then again, was there anyone trying to assert their dominance over McCartney at this point? He had already planned everything that Wings could do, and even if it wasn’t the greatest thing in the world, there was no doubt that what he was doing was carefully choreographed rather than thrown together to make something that sounded finished.
Even when he started giving bandmates some wiggle room, it was hard to deny that they came through with the lesser moments of the band’s career. There would be the odd moment where things worked out, like the solo on ‘My Love’ or Jimmy McCullough’s feature on ‘Medicine Jar’, but there was no one asserting that a song like ‘Cook of the House’ should go down as an undisputed masterpiece.
Out of all the band-focused albums, Venus and Mars is still one of the biggest highlights of Macca’s solo years. After Band on the Run set everything on the right track, hearing him make his own version of a rock and roll stadium event worked wonders on tunes like ‘Rock Show’ and ‘Listen To What The Man Said’.
There was still a side of him that leaned slightly outside of rock and roll, and the B-sides from this era are where that really shines. Outside of ‘Sally G’ being ripped straight out of a country record from the time, ‘Baby Face’ was one of McCartney’s first experiments with jazz, featuring the Tuxedo Jazz Band from New Orleans.
The song itself sounds fine, but in terms of the raw recording, McCartney thought that the brass section never got the right sound, saying, “I took the track and asked these fellows to overdub, and like these guys don’t know what earphones are, they’re a trad band right? A genuine New Orleans brass band. They couldn’t get the tempo for a while, but then they started to get it. It’s a terrible sound if you’re looking at it critically, but it’s got a lovely joyousness about it.”
And while the brass section does sound a bit piercing, it does at least serve its purpose in the recording. The whole song is supposed to be like witnessing a live band playing together, which means having one’s ears blown out more than a few times whenever the brass section hits the right note.
Still, given his turn towards lighter jazz on Kisses on the Bottom later, it seemed like McCartney was more interested in softer takes on the genre than what ‘Baby Face’ was. It still worked well, but sometimes it makes more sense to separate the balladeer side of life from the Little Richard-style shouts.
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