"Wild Life" was released at the tail end of 1971, just months after John Lennon's "Imagine." As you might know, "Imagine" begins with a stirring and beautiful call for human community, in which a plaintive John urges us to "imagine all the people living life in peace." Similarly, "Wild Life"-- Paul's first effort with his new "band" Wings-- commences with a call for, uhh...
TAKE IT TONY
WELLLLLLLLL
(gibberish)
That song is called "Mumbo," and it's followed by a song called "Bip Bop."
So yeah, Paul McCartney is a drug-addled, fluffy-wuffy, insincere buffoon, and of course everyone hated "Wild Life" when it came out, and wondered why Paul wasn't trying to kind of stuff he tried just a few years earlier on "Abbey Road." I don't care who you are: if you begin your new project with two songs called "Mumbo" and "Bip Bop," you're probably gonna look like a bit of a child when your former partner, the man who's been known as the "serious" and "smart" one for years now, simultaneously releases a new album with songs called "Imagine," "Crippled Inside," "Jealous Guy," and "Gimme Some Truth."
The dichotomy is familiar, the perfect yin and yang. John is rational, Paul is emotional. John is a lyric man, while Paul goes for melody. John writes about politics, and Paul writes about love. John is masculine, Paul is feminine. John is a hard rocker, and Paul is a big softy.
These binaries are fun, but more fun still is smashing them to pieces, which isn't hard to do when you actually listen to the stuff John and Paul recorded in the 70's. A unsuspecting youngster weaned on "I'm So Tired" and "I Want You" might be surprised to find an appalling dearth of "rocking" songs in John's post-Beatles discography. Indeed, John's heaviest post-Beatles recording, excluding the raw, brilliant, stereotypically John performance of "Plastic Ono Band," is a covers album called "Rock and Roll," which features some of the corniest horn arrangements in pop music history (it rules, though... we'll discuss some other day). Meanwhile, Paul, the human stuffed animal, litters his solo and Wings records with an impressive amount of fast, groovy, windows-down electric guitar anthems (see: "Jet," "Junior's Farm," "Girls' School," "Spin it On," "Rock Show," etc). Both men naturally reserve a major portion of their work to silly love songs about their partners... Though only one of them appears to have had the self-awareness and sense of humor to recognize it as so (and that would be the man who released a ridiculous single called "Silly Love Songs").
So let's go back to "Mumbo," shall we? It's a dumb song. I know it. You know it. And Paul surely knows it. But doesn't it kind of rock, too? I count two or three major guitar hooks. The rhythm rolls nicely with bass and piano and drums. And Paul sings the ever loving fuck out of it. In its loud, aggressively stupid, hugely enjoyable way, "Mumbo" is kind of the perfect counterpoint to "Imagine." In place of plodding piano and goopy Phil Spector strings, Paul gives us something raw, clearly made in just a couple of hours by a few goons dicking around in the studio. In place of almost unbearable earnestness, Paul gives us irony, humor, self-awareness. In place of big pretentious lyrics, Paul gives us, well, mumbo jumbo.
I'm not saying "Mumbo" rises to the level of achievement that "Imagine" does. But knowing how intelligent Paul is, and how super conscious he must've been on his former cohorts' efforts in the early 70's, I think it's fair to call it a purposeful, even meaningful song. It's a crack at Lennon, and at George Harrison, and at all efforts to take pop music out of the realm of "fun" and into the realm of "deadly serious." Because Paul, more than John, George, Ringo, and more than most people realize, really is a true rocker, as committed as Mick Jagger or Keith Richards to the gritty, soulful, often sarcastic traditions of 50s and 60s rock and roll. He just also happens to be a prodigiously gifted songwriter with a bit of fruity streak.
All of this is apparent on "Wild Life's" third track, a cover of the old Mickey and Sylvia nugget "Love is Strange." Attempting "Love is Strange" in 1971 has to count as weird, even more out of time than, say, the MC5's "Tutti Frutti" which opens "Back in the USA." What Paul (and Linda) do to it is even weirder: they drag it out into a funky reggae jam. Which, to some listeners, presents ample opportunities to make "Paul McCartney really likes drugs" jokes. Me... I'm just wrapped up in the hooks. When Paul screams "MY SWEET BABY" and Linda reaches up with the harmony, and then both voices collide during an epic "LA LA LA LA LA" session, I'm fully onboard with whatever level of excess such a cover in the early 70's might entail.
"Love is Strange," like so much 70's Macca music, is a secret success. From inauspicious materials, Paul crafts something striking, hooky, and far more thought-out than is usually credited. "Wild Life's" title track works the same way. It's long. It has fewer ideas per minute than the average McCartney track, I'll grant you. You could call it really goofy... But for the fact that Paul belts it like "the animals in the zoo" are his best mates. The "Paul scream" has never been as heralded as the "John scream" (see: the end of "Twist and Shout"), but here, it's truly, well, wild. In fact, the first side of "Wild Life," the record, might be the wildest in the history of the solo Beatles.
The second side is more "predictably" McCartney, a full three quarters of it devoted to love ballads. That you don't know any of them is an ASSET, people: listen and you'll hear the mark of quality. The slackness of side one has tightened up considerably for "Some People Never Know," which pairs a delicate acoustic guitar figure with some soaring (Harrisonesque?) slide leads. It's in the same vein as "Long Haired Lady" from Ram (maybe less cloying though) and "Little Lamb Dragonfly" from Rose Speedway, the sort of multi-part suite Paul does with too much ease for his own good (how many people have even once heard "Some People Never Know"?). People who hate Linda's voice will hate "I Am Your Singer" and maybe "Tomorrow," but I hate those people, so it's okay.
And then there's "Dear Friend," the ominous minor-key closer that, once again, goes after Lennon. This song, long and lyrically baffling as it is, is more obviously "cool McCartney" than the rest of the record. It announces itself as a serious song, and moves along at a dirge-like pace... And then ends withs something the CD refers to as the "Mumbo Link," putting us right back in the goofy, rocking place where we started. An example of whimsy sabotaging a serious artistic effort? Perhaps. To me, it shows you just how unhinged the genius of Paul McCartney can be. When Brian Wilson does stuff like this, its an indicator of a shattered mental state. But when Paul does it... It's just Paul being Paul, being odd.
The title of this record offers a hint as to how to experience, and finally enjoy, Paul McCartney in the 70's. His solo and Wings albums are littered with references to domestic joys, the pleasures of "life" itself-- from the rustic charms of "Ram" to the simple act of sitting around (see: "Let Em In," "I Lie Around," uh... a whole lotta stuff). They are rarely interested in the universal and the cosmic, like his work in the Beatles. At the same time, they make space for the "wild," the weird and the uncanny and the ceaselessly inventive, to butt in, whether its via freaky nightmare like "Old Siam, Sir" or the screams that punctuate so much of "Wild Life." That's the tension of Wings, and the tension of Paul-- between the laid-back nice guy and the scatterbrained musical genius. Put on "Wild Life," the record, and soak it in.
