“They went spare”: The Paul McCartney song that divided an entire country
Rock and roll is not necessarily a genre meant for everyone. As much as bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones have gone down in history as some of the greatest living musicians, there’s a slim chance that all of their songs are going to get the universal praise that they expect. And even with someone who was as likeable as Paul McCartney, he wasn’t safe from one song being enough to turn an entire country on their heads.
Then again, dealing with massive public scrutiny isn’t necessarily new for any of The Beatles. By the time they came to America following John Lennon’s quotes about them being bigger than Jesus, the ‘Bible Belt’ turned into a living nightmare half the time, complete with people setting off firecrackers during their performances and every member looking around to make sure one of them hadn’t been shot.
By the time the group struck out on their own, McCartney still wasn’t safe from a bit of controversy. He was already getting unwarranted backlash for daring to try something new on RAM, and even when he did see success on later projects like Band on the Run, he ended up going through hell to make it, eventually completing the record after being mugged, collapsing in the studio, and having half the band quit in protest before even getting on the plane.
Once the 1970s wrapped up, though, Macca’s time with Wings seemed to have run its course. There was still a lot of great music to be made, but coming out of his drug bust in Japan, he wanted to take things back to basics and make the kind of record where he could do anything he wanted.
And while McCartney II is far from the most hook-driven record in McCartney’s catalogue, it’s definitely the most authentic thing he has ever put to tape. His original debut had been slightly ramshackle, but this was his first deliberate attempt to make things sound slightly off, like the strange chorus of ‘Temporary Secretary’ or the different instrumental passages like ‘Front Parlour’.
When working out the instrumentals, though, one of the jams featured a Japanese slur, which was enough for the former Beatle to get into hot water with the country, saying, “We decided to change the title to ‘Frozen Japanese’ for the album release in Japan, since we didn’t want to offend anyone over there. But when the Japanese were told of the album’s track listing, they went spare. They thought it was connected with the fact that I had been busted there. They regard it as an incredible slur.”
While McCartney certainly didn’t mean any harm by the title, it’s a shame that such controversy was centred around this tune. As uncomfortable as its moniker is, hearing him work out different electronic sounds put him at the forefront of the new wave and art-rock movement alongside bands like Talking Heads.
Still, the fact that McCartney got blacklisted by the Japanese people for a while is a good lesson in what can happen when finding the wrong words for a song. The tune itself might be catchy, but if there’s something that divisive tying everything together, it’s hard to take the rest of it seriously.
