The solo song Paul McCartney called his first “major” effort since The Beatles
The cracks were clearly beginning to form within The Beatles prior to their split. They were four individuals brought together early in their lives and then projected to stardom at an exponential rate. This level of fame meant the entire world was accessible to them, and subsequently, their perceptions of what was superior creatively began to differ.
The band originally started out as a tight-knit unit that saw band members constantly collaborating, writing songs together, and releasing them as a team. When you listen to their later albums, few of the songs are the by-product of collaboration, as most members were just writing on their own and then hoping it would be one the band would record. It became difficult for them to work together, leading to tremendous friction within the four-piece.
One of the most famous instances of the band not seeing eye to eye on a song was when Paul McCartney wrote ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’. The song is still seen as a divisive one amongst Beatles fans, and this resonated at the time of writing, as Paul McCartney seemed to be the only member who was interested in writing it.
“John Lennon came to the session really stoned, totally out of it on something or other, and he said, ‘All right, we’re gonna do ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’,” recalled Richard Lush, the band’s engineer at the time. “He went straight to the piano and smashed the keys with an almighty amount of volume, twice the speed of how they’d done it before, and said, ‘This is it! Come on! He was really aggravated.”
The Beatles split was inevitable, and it was also inevitable that once that split happened, members of the band would begin working on their own solo projects. Paul McCartney’s first solo offering, aptly titled McCartney, was released in 1970. It’s a good record, but as McCartney puts it, compared to some of the work he was doing with The Beatles prior, it does sound safe.
“When The Beatles had broken up and I was on my own for the first time, I got that four track Studa in my living room,” he said, “And just kind of started making up songs and stuff, and it was a very bare album.”
McCartney still looks back at the record fondly, although conceptually and thematically, it might not come close to Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or The White Album. “I like it actually, I like it as an album,” he said, “But listening to it now, it’s a very basic kind of album […] I think it’s very me, a very basic little thing.”
As is always the case with bodies of music, there is one track on the album that stands out to McCartney, and that marked the beginning of the rest of his career. “’Maybe I’m Amazed’ is probably the first real major song on my own,” he said.
It’s not a surprise that McCartney came out as a straightforward album, as it was the first time the now former Beatle released music not in a band. He was finding his feet with the record; however, by writing a big “major” song like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’, he showed he could make it as a solo artist.
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