BEATLES WEEK: Respecting Our Elders

When Paul McCartney released Memory Almost Full, his 21st solo album, last week, dozens of reviewers, including our own Chris Ave, said it was one of his best in 20 years. I haven't heard the album in full, but I sure wasn't surprised by the universal praise. Two years ago, when the Cute One released his 20th solo album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, dozens of reviewers, including myself, said it was some of his best post-Beatles output as well.

Chris Ave wrote a helluva review, but here's the truth about me: I haven't listened to that album since, although McCartney songs such as Take It Away and Singalong Junk, stuff he wrote decades ago, are among the most-played on my iPod.

I meant what I said at the time -- I was caught up in Chaos and Creation, it had a chilly sound, and Macca sure didn't sound too keen about love, which I thought was gutsy. In retrospect, he might have been singing about the imminent implosion of his marriage. It's certainly a good album. But is it great? I'm not so sure. If you ask me today what his best post-Beatles output is, I'd probably reel off myriad songs -- Live and Let Die, Band on the Run, Put It There, The World Tonight -- before I got to anything from Chaos.

So what's the deal? Was I telling the truth? Absolutely. In fact, we critics were probably being more honest (and human) than usual. Nobody wants to see a rock god get all gray and wrinkly, phoning it in until death. Because if Paul's getting older, that means we're getting older, too. And then when he releases a good album -- well, we go bonkers for it, we go overboard, a triple becomes a home run. The truth is that McCartney, like many musical geniuses, just doesn't get reviewed on the same scale.

Rolling Stone is almost comical when it comes to gushing about new product from Dylan, U2, the Stones or any of the Beatles. But that's the magazine's essential job, whether it admits to it or not. As far as RS is concerned, the Old Guard must remain dipped in gold; any new album is almost always a classic. Unfortunately, the last Rolling Stones album was, in fact, a turd in the punchbowl, and I was one of the few critics to openly admit its crappiness. One reviewer called it the Stones "most honest album ever." That's laughable. But I'll tell you, it wasn't easy telling Mick Jagger that he fired out a dud.

Comments

[bassnote]

I got the new McCartney album last weekend, and I am impressed. Let tell you that I have not bought a McCartney album since Run Devil Run, and that was the first since Flowers In The Dirt. This album (Memory Almost Full) is one of his first in years where the songs have coherent narrative. In fact This is a really good batch of pop songs. Paul seems to have found his song writing groove again.

[Guy]

There is nothing more fascinating than watching one of the dinosaurs (Stones, Dylan, Springsteen, McCartney, etc.) release a new CD and seeing the critics and fans fawn all over it as if it was the best thing since ...

Let's call a spade a spade; of the aforementioned (U2 included), only Springsteen's Seeger Sessions experiment and Dylan's recent output are remotely worthy of the accolades they have received.

Regardless, each will undoubtedly garner at least four stars from Rolling Stone.

Thanks for taking the blinders off and calling you like you see it, Daly.