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Wings: Venus and Mars

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Dave Amitri on Venus and Mars

Here we are then. 6 months in already. Venus and Mars. This is part review, part duty and part admission of defeat. McCartney / Macca has broken me. When I did Bowie whether I liked the album or not I felt inspired, engaged, interested. A pub rock night out, an early 70s episode of Top Of The Pops, or a late night radio show in 1979. The responses were fascinating, educational and enthusiastic. Not here.

I have a new appreciation of Paul McCartney but I find his story far more interesting than his music. Maybe it’s telling that I found Wild Life so good yet the rest peaked at nice. One listen to Venus and Mars and I knew the game was up. I’ve listened again half a dozen times out of a sense of duty and any review that did form itself in my head was boring me so I didn’t want to inflict it on you all.

The title track was promising but too short why the reprise? Just do the bloody song man. Then there was a collection of songs that melded into one. Love In Song has moments. You Gave Me The Answer just made me angry. Listen To What The Man Said was a welcome familiar distraction. The Crossroads theme? Really?

So that’s all I can muster. Feel free to discuss among yourselves.

When I began this I referred to one of my original Word Blog disaster posts. Sir Paul McCartney: What Is My Problem? I’m a million miles away from that now properly informed and more Internet savvy. However I do wonder if any artist has or had stretched his fans credit or patience as far as Macca did post Beatles? Listening to his solo stuff without the full context of his work with The Beatles has left me scratching my head at times. I’m delighted to have discovered Wild Life, I’ve a new appreciation for him and have discovered some lovely songs. Where my musical heroes were inspired by McCartney I suspect has more to do with The Beatles than his solo work. One who’s name I won’t mention I contacted through Twitter regarding Dear Friend replied that he’d never heard the album. So it’s with a touch of disappointment that I bow out early but I really don’t want to waste any more of my time or yours.

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Comments

  1. Wow, that’ s a bad review. If it’s any consolation if you didn’t get anything out of Band on the Run you won’t get anything more out PMcC’s solo work and you should probably cut your losses with the Beatles as well. Consider yourself liberated – use the time on music you actually like rather than feel you have to. I spaek as someone who’s had exactly this experience with The Sainted Taylor.

  2. Fair enough, glad you gave it a go. V & M is a fairly average album by his standards, but like all McCartney albums has 3 or 4 crackers on it. Probably the start of a fairly mediocre run that lasted for quite some time. Generally the hits were great though. On this album I love LTWTMS (total banger), Magneto and Titanium Man, Love in Song and I have a soft spot for You Gave Me the Answer but I appreciate not all like his “Granny Music”.

    I find the next two to be weaker (Speed of Sound and London Town), but I love Back to the Egg and then we start the properly solo years after a short spell in a Japanese jail cell

  3. Fair play, Dave. That’s a cracking review. You can only call it how you hear it.

    I did worry for you when you took this on. Then I remembered Haircut 100 😉.

    It’s dispiriting when there is little interest. Bowie’s seventies are a different kettle of fish entirely. Stan Deely is doing a stirling job with his post seventies work. Maybe, Bob Marley studio albums in his lifetime or Miles Davis recorded 1956-61 or the first twelve UK Rolling Stones?

    I like Love In Song and Letting Go, which could have been on a mid seventies LP with Lennon’s Bless You and #9 Dream.

  4. I’m not going to argue…well, maybe just a little…but you clearly aren’t enjoying the experience, and that is only going to colour your approach from here on in. I actually only obtained this in the last couple of years (I had several of the singles and later compilations that covered a lot of it), and I actually found the album surprisingly good. But then we disagree over Wild Life too!

    Thanks for trying Dave!

  5. Being brought up on the inkies, there is so much more giving in a bad review. I was enjoying these pieces, as they were fun to read and spared me having to ever listen to the actual records. A phrase like “Uncle Albert levels of dreadful” paints all the aural picture I will ever need.

      • (Eric Morecambe voice) Not necessarily.

        Some of the worst reviews, actually to the sense of being unreadable, also appeared in Melody Maker – I hope whoever wrote their ‘review’ of the second Cranberries album has had a few sleepless nights in recent years. Just…. vile.

        Anybody who really doesn’t like David Bowie should check out their “review” of Tin Machine II – more an outpouring of about twenty years of accumulated resentment than anything to do with the actual record.

  6. Am I the only one who likes the version of the Crossroads theme?
    (Apparently included as a joke to “celebrate” the naff TV show).
    It’s not a bad album, but also not a great one either
    After Band On The Run, the best Wings album is Greatest Hits.
    I think it’s not until 1989 – Flowers In The Dirt – until we get the next properly decent Macca album
    (many have some great moments, but only moments not enough consistency)

    Despite my opinion above, please keep it going Dave – always enjoy reading your thoughts. Would like to know what you think of McCartney II and Tug Of War (if you’re going that far) – 2 venerated albums, that I can only see momentary greatness in.

  7. I totally love about a third of this album, and the rest leaves me cold. Which is pretty standard for me for any McCartney album.

    Love: Venus and Mars (both parts), Rock show (dig that piano outro), Listen To What The Man Said (killer single), and that’s about it.

  8. I only have one Macca solo album Flowers in the Dirt – you know the one where he employed Costello to show him how to write proper songs.
    A compilation and Band on the Run are the only other Macca that I need post Beatles.

  9. I don’t disagree with any of the criticism of this album, but context is everything: he was releasing albums at an insanely prolific rate. From 1970-1973, he released five albums. Five. And the fifth one – Band on the Run – was the best.

    Adele has released four albums in fourteen years; George Michael managed five solo albums in his entire post-Wham career.

    Even in the Beatles, McCartney probably wrote enough solo songs to fill several albums.

    • Prolific times for many in the 70s. Was it because there was so much new to explore after the developments of the 60s? Or maybe it was the drugs or the sense that it might not last or…?

    • They wouldn’t be that good, though.

      This is the magic of The Beatles. An album full of Paul songs would get wearing but so would an album full of just John’s, George’s or Ringo’s. But, blended together, they are bloody marvellous.

      I suspect Dave would struggle with Lennon solo just as much. (I’d love to know what he makes of Plastic Ono Band.) Walls And Bridges is his equivalent of Venus And Mars. Do you think it a coincidence the titles reflect each other? Play one after the other and see how far you get. Add in George’s Extra Texture for good measure. Ringo’s Goodnight Vienna is probably the best of the lot!

      • Unheard of that all the members of a band would all produce at least one gŕeat album each as a solo act plus some other goodish ones. That’s unbelievable really. I enjoy McCartney, Ram and Band On The Run pretty much all the way through. ATMP is the best solo Beatle album though.

      • Good points, young Tigger. I’m not a Lennon v McCartney kind of chap: they both did great – and very dodgy – stuff. It’s interesting that the Plastic Ono Band album is so highly rated. It received mixed reviews at the time, but it’s raved over now. To me, It sounds like the solipsistic ramblings of a very depressed guy. Name-checking yourself and the missus in song has to be wrong.

        Perhaps an album-by-album review of Lennon’s solo career might be a good thread?

        • A Paul only 1967 album:

          Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
          Getting Better
          Fixing A Hole
          Penny Lane
          When I’m 64
          Lovely Rita
          The Magical Mystery Tour
          The Fool On The Hill
          Your Mother Should Know
          Hello Goodbye
          Altogether Now

          A John only 1968 album:

          Hey Bulldog
          Dear Prudence
          Glass Onion
          The Continuing Story Of Bungalow Bill
          Happiness Is A Warm Gun
          I’m So Tired
          Julia
          Yer Blues
          Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey
          Sexy Sadie
          Revolution
          Cry Baby Cry

          Not bad at all actually. 🙄

      • “This is the magic of The Beatles. An album full of Paul songs would get wearing but so would an album full of just John’s, George’s or Ringo’s. But, blended together, they are bloody marvellous.”

        Fleetwood Mac are like that for me (though there are only two really great studio albums, imo). What makes them so great is the mix of the three distinct songwriters that really gels brilliantly. I guess fans of Queen or other bands with three or more songwriters might say same.

  11. Well you’ve given it a good go before admitting defeat. When I heard bits of it played in record shops at the time, I thought it sounded really good, and I liked the singles,; but listening to the album more recently, it’s not that good – too much filler & a sense of “that’ll do”
    Macca said that the Crossroads theme was to tie in with the previous song as that was what “Lonely Old People” would watch – this version was sometimes used in the programme.

    Incidentally: on a general Paul McCartney theme. Have you noticed how many of his singles don’t have introductions – Just straight into the vocals. I don’t know whether this was to avoid DJs talking over the start, but even with the Beatles (eg. Hey Jude, The Long & Winding Road, All My Loving, Can’t Buy Me Love) this was one of his standard tricks.

  12. As they say, there is no accounting for taste. The first time I heard You Gave Me The Answer I was so touched, I cried. I was driving and almost had to pull over. His ability to infuse a sense of goodwill into a song (don’t ask me to explain what I mean by that) gets me every time.

  13. Bit weird… but someone up above got SERIOUSLY fractious.
    Couldn’t register it up there, so here it is.

    It’s cool, it wasn’t Dave, and I think you should try to carry on with this series if you wish to.

  14. I listened to Venus and Mars a lot as a kid; my next door neighbour had a bunch of older sisters so had a record collection full of Carley Simon, Wings, Dr Hook etc.. Even back then as 8-year olds we would cringe when it got to the spoken word bit in Rock Show, skip over Answer, cringe our way through Magneto etc. I was an obsessive Beatles fan so I always felt it was on me to defend the honour of the album, which was hard work. We’d usually end up going back to Dr Hook.

    After I saw McCartney live in about 2019 I thought I’d give his back catalogue another go. So I listened to about 10 of the best rated albums and made a playlist of my favourite songs as I went. By the end it had one song on it: Maybe I’m Amazed. I put Band on the Run on there as well just to keep it company. Completing the exercise reaffirmed for me that McCartney, right to the end of the Beatles, was still trying to impress Lennon. Once this critical filter was gone, he succumbed to his suppressed urges of making hokey music. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Maybe I’m Amazed was written while he was still a Beatle.

    • I like to post links to these on Twitter. Some vanish without a trace. Steven C commented on this and its taking off. Even David Quantick deciding to share his view… Some lovely responses too all for a non review.

      • Real Macca fans find delight in most of his stuff. You aren’t one of them. I would think most artists infuriate their fan bases at least some of the time

        • Of course you’re right Dai. As with all these things my opinion of an artist is fairly irrelevant. Whether here or the Twitter thread the real gold is always in the responses. And yes, all artists frustrate their fans at times.

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