‘McGear’: The album Paul McCartney wrote with his brother
By 1974, Paul McCartney was finally back on the up. Whatever it was about The Beatles that ensured such a high standard of songwriting, the quality of his work swiftly plummeted in the mere months after closing the Abbey Road sessions and jumping into his first solo effort, McCartney, in 1970.
While ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ was good enough to have been on any Beatles record, a string of utterly underwhelming albums from the insipid Ram to the truly dreadful Wings debut Wild Life stood confoundingly at odds with the dazzling legacy he’d left across the previous decade.
McCartney began to turn critical favour as the fledgling Wings took off. Following Red Rose Speedway‘s commercial gains and the acclaimed James Bond theme for Live and Let Die, 1973’s Band on the Run heralded the return of McCartney as a pop contender long eclipsed by John Lennon and George Harrison’s solo careers, shooting to number one of the UK and American album charts and boasting the eternal concert staples ‘Jet’ and its dramatic title track.
McCartney kept himself busy the following year. Having wrapped up the Wings 1973 UK tour, he collaborated with Rod Stewart, Peggy Lee, James Taylor and Adam Faith on various singles and album sessions, lending his co-writing chops and multi-instrumental virtuosity. Also featured in his roll call of credits that year was his younger brother, Peter.
Operating under the stage name Mike McGear, his Liverpool comedy trio The Scaffold with Roger McGough and John Gorman had enjoyed an uncredited Wings contribution on the ‘Liverpool Lou/Ten Years After on Strawberry Jam’ single, and McGear’s ‘Sweet Baby’ co-written and produced by his former Beatle brother.
Dropped that year, the McGear sophomore LP would stand as the siblings’ most substantial work. Planning the record since the previous July, initially only mooting a single with Wings to revive McGear’s career after unceremoniously departing from the GRIMMS poetry troupe due to an altercation with fellow member Brian Patten. Cutting ‘Leave It’ at EMI Studios, the project expanded to a full-length album, and the pair headed to Stockport’s Strawberry Studios, where McGear had recorded his debut album, Woman. With Wings having been reduced to a trio after Denny Seiwell and Henry McCullough’s departure, McCartney used the sessions to audition possible new members on the sly.
Aside from a cover of Roxy Music‘s ‘Sea Breezes’, all songs were co-composed by McCartney as well as production and contributed a plethora of instruments from the keyboards, bass and guitar. A hodgepodge of an LP that corrals a clutter of disparate stylings from pop numbers, novelty jingles, and ramshackle sing-along stompers from the cheerful solo frontman. While making little impact on the album chart, ‘Leave It’ did peak at a respectable 36 on the UK Singles chart.
The pair would collaborate for the last time on 1975’s ‘Dance the Do’, and McGear would release a few more singles til 1981’s satirical ‘No Lar Di Dar (Is Lady Di)’, a swipe at that year’s royal wedding between Princess Diana and Prince Charles. Dropping the McGear moniker and reverting to the family name, Peter would pursue a photography career, responsible years previously for the snap of Paul in his youth, later serving as the cover of 2005’s Chaos and Creation in the Backyard.
