Label: Parlophone (UK), 1652301
Style: Rock, Soft Rock, Pop Rock
Country: Liverpool, England (18 June 1942)
Time: 38:48
Format: Flac Tracks 16/96 kHz
Size: 441 Mb
Rip by Pikolo.
After
Tug of War. logically enough, come the Pipes of Peace. Carried, as it
is, over two consecutive Paul McCartney records, the war-and-peace
metaphor is not hard to miss. The message, too, is as simple and
inarguable as the line of Indian wisdom inscribed inside the foldout
jacket of the new LP: “In love all of life’s contradictions disappear.”
Pipes of Peace is awash in love. Love of all the little children. Love
between a man and a woman. Love of music. Love for all humankind.
McCartney’s love boat all but capsizes in the waves of almost opiated
good feeling that swell over it from all sides.
In truth, “Pipes of
Peace,” the title tune and first track up, commences quite promisingly. A
fanfare of orchestral dissonance gives way to a closely miked McCartney
singing a luscious four-line melody over spare, ascending piano chords.
It is a rare and breathtaking moment, an instance of McCartney at his
soulful, hopeful best. But then it abruptly turns into a frivolous,
jerky oompah tune with unison voices echoing each clumsily phrased line
of baby talk that follows. Sadly, an enticing snatch of songcraft
becomes, in the end, just another silly love song.
There is no dearth
of silly love songs on this record. A top contender for silliest honors
would have to be “The Other Me,” a goofy, quasi-C&W tune sung in an
annoyingly Donald Fagen-like slur: “I know I was a crazy fool/For
treating you the way I did. But something took hold of me And I acted
like a dustbin lid.” But my vote would have to go to “Sweetest Little
Show,” a plea for critical magnanimity amid unforgivable doses of
saccharine. One needn’t read too deeply to apprehend that McCartney is,
in all likelihood, singing to himself here: “You’ve been around a long
time But you’re still good for a while And if they try to criticize you
Make them smile, make them smile.”
This put-on-a-happy-face
minstrelsy carries over into Paul’s several funk excursions. He’s teamed
up with Michael Jackson to assay the amiable though vapid dance groove
of “Say Say Say” (instantly hit-bound froth-funk that tends, after all,
toward banality). Their other collaboration. “The Man,” is more off the
wall, pairing, as it does, a heavily fuzz-toned lead guitar (shades of
Ernie Isley) with a full-tilt stab at pure Broadway schmaltz: soaring
choruses, orchestral swoops and swoons, and vaguely meaningful though
ultimately indecipherable lyrics (e.g., “And it’s just the way he
thought it would be Cause the day has come for him to be free”).
McCartney’s
collaboration with jazz-fusion bassist Stanley Clarke (“Hey Hey”) is,
on the other hand, a throwaway instrumental that leaves virtually no
impression at all. Oddly enough, the same is true of both “So Bad” and
“Through Our Love,” which close sides one and two, respectively. Both
are big ballads in the grand McCartney tradition; the latter, in
particular, would seem to want to tie together the various themes of the
record into a stirring finale but is, again, lyrically ineffectual,
mounting a host of cliches and vagaries into a heap of well-meaning
nonsense.
Now, Paul McCartney is, after all, Paul McCartney, so these
are not the gaffes of some mere novice or of an easy-listening hack
like Christopher Cross. It seems that in some fractured sense, he fully
intends to be unexceptional. Think back to the modestly scaled,
hearth-and-home vignettes of the first several solo albums, or of his
heroic, determined submergence in the group identity of Wings.
Underneath all the elaborate arrangements and high-sheen production on
Pipes of Peace (provided by George Martin, who also worked on Tug of
War) is a humble man who retains affection - fascination, even - with
the lot of the common folk. This is manifested most blatantly in
“Average Person”: “Look at the average person/Speak to the man in the
street/Can you imagine the first one you’d meet?” He thereupon
“imagines” the lives of three such people - a truck driver, a waitress
and an ex-boxer. The obvious relish with which he ponders these lives is
fairly heartwarming. He is, in the end, hard to dislike. He does “make
them smile.” But most of the time, he tries so hard to be an average man
that he winds up making below-average music. Confusing slightness and
simplicity, Pipes of Peace is, by and large, mediocre McCartney.
(rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/pipes-of-peace-99878/) Review by Parke Puterbaugh. January 19, 1984
01. A1 Pipes Of Peace (03:51)
02. A2 Say Say Say (03:54)
03. A3 The Other Me (03:56)
04. A4 Keep Under Cover (03:07)
05. A5 So Bad (03:18)
06. B1 The Man (03:56)
07. B2 Sweetest Little Show (02:53)
08. B3 Average Person (04:32)
09. B4 Hey Hey (02:56)
10. B5 Tug Of Peace (02:53)
11. B6 Through Our Love (03:27)
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