Records Near And Dear #2. Wings - Red Rose Speedway (1973)

Records Near And Dear #2. Wings - Red Rose Speedway (1973)

    Alternate and lost albums are always a hit across online music communities. Websites like http://albumsthatneverwere.blogspot.com/ get a significant amount of attention by proposing alternate histories and creating albums out of them - what if The Beatles had never broken up? What if The Beach Boys had finished Smile and released it as Brian Wilson envisioned it in 1967? What if Weezer put out more than two decent albums? It would seem nearly every artist with a long enough career has some material in the closet waiting to be turned into a Frankenalbum, and with a career as long and fruitful as Paul McCartney’s, it only makes sense that he has at least a couple. The first of these is 1973’s Red Rose Speedway - although, this album did technically come out. Kinda. Well, it did, but in a leaner form than intended. While the final product ended up being a single album, the initial plan was to release a double album featuring more songs contributed by the band as a whole rather than just McCartney. This was done partly in an attempt to bring the spotlight away from McCartney as the primary musician in the band, as he wanted to replicate the feeling of The Beatles where every member was of equal importance rather than Paul and Co.

    At the insistence of EMI, however, the album was cut down to 9 tracks, all of which written and sung by McCartney. Best known perhaps for the hit single My Love, the single album still retains a bit of the light, airy, vacation feel that was brought about through Wings’ first release, Wild Life, and that many tracks included on the double album version reinforced. There’s no mistaking this album for a release by any other musician, though - the homegrown atmosphere of tracks like Get On The Right Thing and Little Lamb Dragonfly wouldn’t be out of place on Paul’s second solo album Ram, and for good reason too, as they were recorded during the album’s sessions. Meanwhile, the groovy instrumentals of McCartney I are represented through Loup (1st Indian On The Moon), and on the other end of the spectrum, the granny music that Paul was derided for so often during his time in The Beatles stops by on the track Single Pigeon. Paul doesn’t hide his talent for mashing short tracks together in a medley as he did on Abbey Road either, with the 11 minute track that ends the album really being 4 separate tracks fused together.

    Overall, Red Rose Speedway is a pretty tight and often unfairly slighted record, with critical reception being pretty harsh. To give examples, Robert Christgau called it “quite possibly the worst album ever made by a rock and roller of the first rank”, and John Pidgeon (realistically quite mad that the track that bore his name was the shortest and quaintest on the album) said the album "sounds as if it was written after a big tea in front of the fire with carpet-slippered feet up; listening to it takes about as much as going ten rounds with a marshmallow fairy”. It may be a matter of taste and preference, but despite Pidgeon meaning this in a deriding way, I can’t see it as a proper dig at the music. Music exists best as a spectrum for any and every mood, and it wouldn’t make sense to be missing music for a situation and mood in which you’re in front of the fire with carpet-slippered feet.

    That said, the real intrigue of the album to me exists in the cut tracks that would’ve brought this album to the runtime of a double album. While they were floating around in various places and released through various means throughout the past 50 years, McCartney eventually released them all along with an official tracklist for the double album as part of the Red Rose Speedway Archive Collection release in 2018. Proposed opener Night Out is a raucous headbanger of an introduction to an otherwise fairly tender album, with peculiarly fuzzed out guitars and group vocals inviting us into the world this album creates. Seaside Woman continues the bubbly atmosphere that parts of the final album kept, with lead vocals by Linda McCartney. Much like this album, Linda has always caught flak for her voice, and I’ve never seen why. She compliments Paul perfectly on albums like Ram, and her voice along with Denny Laine is a key component of the Wings sound. Speaking of, Denny Laine takes lead vocals on tracks like I Lie Around and I Would Only Smile, and brings a welcome change of sound in contrast to Paul’s iconic yet versatile vocals.

    Even beyond the double album tracklist, there are cut songs that to me are some of the best of the sessions. Thank You Darling is perhaps the last of the sweet Paul/Linda duets that would make up a significant part of Ram, and shows the fun atmosphere that to me defines this first era of Wings. Soily, best known to diehard Paul McCartney fans as a live only track and to more casual fans as “the one song at the end of Wings Over America that I can’t place what album it’s on”, had a studio attempt during this sessions and while I don’t think it entirely fits the vibe of the album, could have been a strong B-side or even a non album single. Lead guitarist Henry McCullough gets to show off his chops here and the band is in top form in general. Last but nowhere remotely close to least is 1882. This 7 minute masterpiece has grown to be one of my favorite McCartney tracks of all time, and is virtually unknown otherwise. Played occasionally during the 1972 and 1973 tour, sonically the song feels a bit like the older brother to the song Wild Life, with plodding piano and outright malicious drumming by Denny Seiwell aiding in painting a flawless image of Victorian England, with unusual lyrics for Paul illustrating the arrest of a child for stealing bread for his impoverished family. There is no way this would have fit on the same album as tracks like Seaside Woman and Little Lamb Dragonfly, but damn is it good and it would be a shame to not have an opportunity to talk about it.

    As with every album I’m going to talk about here, Red Rose Speedway has a history leading up to why it’s one of my favorite McCartney releases, despite being seen as fairly mediocre by many fans and critics. Back when I was around 12 or so, I’d finally branched out of my Beatles phase into far broader and more adventurous territory - solo Beatles albums. Nearly everything was available on iTunes and etc., but upon reading about Red Rose Speedway I learned about the cut double album, and had to get my hands on it. Ripping the extra tracks off of Youtube, I assembled my own version of the album and burnt it to CD, trimming bits of silence to get it to fit cleanly on the format. Playing it for my dad, possibly the one person I know who is a bigger Beatles fan than I am, I’d stumped him! Of course, he didn’t recognize the tracks not from the original release, but it was at the time the one Beatles adjacent thing I knew and he didn’t. In a sense, the apprentice had become the master. Over the summer of 2012, that homemade CD became the soundtrack of moving houses, making roundtrips moving fragile things and a room full of 10 millimeter tall legions of metal armies with my dad. Eventually, of course, I told him the story of the double album, and a few years back when the Archive Collection released, we were able to sit down when I was home from university and listen to the proper double album in a quality better than a Youtube rip.

    Overall, would I recommend Red Rose Speedway to the average friend reading this? Maybe. As with every album I’ll be talking about, a large portion of my love for the album comes from the associations and memories I have with it. Objectively, Red Rose Speedway is a decent album, and while I still think it’s been maligned by history, unless you’re a Beatles/McCartney fan that hasn’t heard this album I wouldn’t say it’s an essential listen. If you do give it a shot, don’t expect a Band On The Run - put it in the mental pile of a good, easygoing, fun record, and I’m sure your expectations will properly temper to enjoying this album.