Who is Paul McCartney’s ‘Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey’?
Paul McCartney’s lyricism has always been bustling with strange characters. He seems fascinated by looking into the windows of other’s lives or imagining weird and wonderful people getting up to kooky stuff. There was ‘Eleanor Rigby’, the various figures in ‘Penny Lane’, ‘Martha My Dear’, ‘Rocky Racoon’ and many more. Then, when his solo career was underway, there was the mysterious ‘Uncle Albert’ and ‘Admiral Halsey’, two figures that ran amuck on his most whimsical track.
After the breakup of The Beatles, Paul McCartney seemed to set about to make the most weird, wonderful and whimsical music possible. Free from the politics of the group, his solo career veered almost immediately into a richly theatrical world. After he got his love songs out of the way on McCartney, the musician and his talented wife, Linda McCartney, turned their relationship into a collaborative one. Together, they’d form Wings and release plenty of music written together. But that all started with RAM, their first co-credited album.
RAM has mixed reception. To some, it’s a delightful little outing, showing Paul McCartney awash with refreshed excitement for music. Packed with love for both his craft and his wife, it’s a jovial record that certainly feels like the product of renewed enthusiasm. But for listeners who aren’t keen on fantasy or nonsense and like their music to be relatable and understandable, it was never going to be a release that quite hit the spot.
Throughout RAM, Paul and Linda play around with melodies, genres and even different voices and accents. With each track, they seem to do whatever felt good and lean fully into maximalism for an album full of spontaneity and silliness. Nowhere is that more obvious than on ‘Uncle Albert / Admiral Halsey’, a strange medley that seems to change up at every second.
If you haven’t heard the track, go and rectify that now. As it started as a slow, bluesy jam, you’re lulled into a dream-like haze. But before you could ever get comfortable, these characters spring to life, dancing across the sheet music as the entire energy shifts from sombre and introspective into a sea shanty-like toe-tapper. It’s a song that feels like it belongs in a fantasy world or a film as the band puts on voices to bring these characters to life across the track.
But who are these figures? The ambiguous and often nonsensical lyrics give little away. But Paul McCartney revealed that this is actually a deeply sentimental song, referring to his own family and his chosen family.
Who are Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey?
“We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert,” the song begins, “We’re so sorry if we caused you any pain.” Apologising to this mysterious figure, the line is born out of McCartney’s own guilt towards his real-life Uncle Albert.
“Uncle Albert would stand on the table and recite the Bible for some reason,” McCartney recalled of the real-life figure. “You know, keep everyone straight and in the way of the light.” Talking straight to the actual person in his life, the start of the song deals with the musician’s sadness as his life takes him further and further from the figures of home.
“[Gatherings with my family] became less and less as time went on. They became less and less, they died,” he said. “They were the older generation, my dad’s generation, and they’re all gone now. So … there was a nostalgic feeling … and also this feeling of ‘I’ve moved myself so far out of what you know, what Uncle Albert knows.’”
But as well as distance, it deals with emotional disconnect. As McCartney puts on a faux-posh British accent, erasing his Liverpudlian one to apologise again, he’s playing up the fact that his life of celebrity is totally different to his family’s. He explained, “I’m saying, ‘You wouldn’t get where I am now, I’m like in the Beatles. I’m like living in a big house in London.’”
There is also a literary connection at play here. In Mary Poppins, the character of Uncle Albert is a sweet older man who hates it when his visitors leave, connecting perfectly to McCartney’s view of his own relative.
As the horns come in and suddenly the tempo picks up, brushing the cloud of the first part away for something more sunshiney, the changing musical landscape and weather represent just that. “[‘Hands across the water’ is] me and Linda,” he explained. “You know, American and British.” As the second part comes in, McCartney moves to consider his own family and the bright and creative life they’d built.
That’s especially reflected in the finale lines, “Get your feet up off the ground, live a little, get around”. After the split from the band, McCartney leaned into his new life and the new adventures that would come with it. Linda was always his second in command. “This is me and Linda at that time, and this is sort of what we did,” he explained. “We wanted to escape the rigid systems we were living in. We were rebellious, rebels with a sense of humour.”
But then, who is Admiral Halsey? While Uncle Albert is a real figure, the admiral is totally made up. “I don’t know where I got Admiral Halsey from,” he revealed, “I would’ve just read it or heard it somewhere. And then, now, I’m this arrogant, upper-class person who’s gotten into the song.” The answer is pretty simple, as the musician said, “I’m just having fun with it.” Not everything has to be that deep.
