‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’: the solo track Paul McCartney called “meaningless”
Few artists can claim to have had the same impact on pop music as Paul McCartney. As one half of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership within The Beatles, the musician completely redefined expectations of pop music, moving from pithy teenage love songs to something much more profound and meaningful during his tenure with the Fab Four. Nevertheless, McCartney was also responsible for some of the band’s most bizarre and seemingly meaningless compositions, and those themes certainly carried through into his solo career.
When The Beatles finally parted ways in 1970, after years of rising tensions and warring egos, their respective solo careers allowed the four to explore influences that might not have suited the repertoire of the Fab Four. For McCartney, going solo meant he had full creative control without needing to justify his artistic choices to John Lennon or any of the others. Although he kicked off his solo career with McCartney in 1970, he really hit his creative groove with the release of Ram in 1971, created alongside his wife, Linda McCartney.
Featuring some of his strongest post-Beatles compositions, the endlessly diverse album perfectly blended meaningful pop with elements of psychedelia and even hints at the kind of sound that would, years later, define indie pop. The track listing stretched from timeless love songs between the husband and wife, to Macca’s take on The Beatles’ split in ‘Too Many People’, to the absurd track ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’. Stitching together various unfinished songs and ideas, the track is among the most inventive and captivating efforts on Ram, even if it makes little sense upon initial listening.
With lyrics concerning “hands across the water” and profusely apologising to this mysterious Uncle Albert character – reportedly based on McCartney’s uncle rather than the sitcom character that appeared on screens a decade later – it can often be difficult to figure out what McCartney meant by the song. Seemingly, though, the song is meaningless by design. “There’s no meaning behind it,” the songwriter once confirmed.
The inspiration behind the song came from Macca’s interest in surrealism, which likely explains its odd composition style. “Because I like surrealist art, I also like surrealist words,” he shared. “I’d always liked writing love songs, ballads, and rock ‘n’ roll songs, but then one of my other little side interests was to invent surrealist stuff.” However, not every aspect of the song is completely invented by the former Beatle.
For instance, the titular Admiral Halsey was a real person: Admiral William ‘Bull’ Halsey, who served in the US Navy during World War II. “Admiral Halsey was someone I’d read about — he’s a character from American history,” McCartney revealed, adding: “I just liked the name.” His inclusion is likely to blame for all the talk of “hands across the water,” but the inclusion of “butter pie” cannot be pinned either to Halsey or Uncle Albert.
“I was playing around with that and making up a fictional story,” McCartney explained. “And I just ran into the words ‘and butter pie, well, there’s no such thing as a butter pie, that I’ve ever heard of anyway. So, it was a surrealist image.”
While the line might provide a nicely surreal image for McCartney’s pioneering composition, butter pies are absolutely a real thing, and from the songwriter’s old stomping ground in the North of England, no less. Predominantly consumed in Wigan and wider areas of Lancashire, butter pies usually consist of mashed potatoes and onions encased in pastry, with the filling cooked in copious amounts of butter.
You could easily assume, therefore, that the mention of butter pie sees McCartney return to his humble roots in the North, which would certainly be bolstered by name-dropping his relative, Uncle Albert. Seemingly, though, any lyrical importance or meaning attached is superfluous, as the song was only ever created to be a meaningless exploration of surrealism through the medium of songwriting.
