Band On The Run, the 1973 album from Wings (but billed here as a Paul McCartney album), would not only be considered his best post-Beatles solo album, but vies with George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and Imagine albums as the best solo album from any Beatle.
The album was also a defining work of the first half of the 1970s and easily one of the best albums of that decade. It has been reissued many times over the years, including as a McCartney archival release in 2010. This new double-album, vinyl reissue, to mark the 50th anniversary of the album’s release offers a unique package but more importantly may be one of the best sounding Abbey Road Studios vinyl remasters to date.
The album came after two McCartney solo albums and two albums from Wings, the group that centered around McCartney, his wife Linda, and Denny Laine. The tortured history of the album included challenging living and recording experiences in Lagos in Africa and seismic personnel changes in Wings that effectively became the end of the original Wings lineup.
Oddly, the tone of the album is a buoyant, energetic tour-de-force of great playing amid some of McCartney’s best solo songs and a loose thematic structure that ties the album together into a cohesive work, yet which eschews any heavy, grand conceptual statement. Songs like the title track and “Jet” were ubiquitous staples of AM and FM radio at the time.
This new package features two 180-gram vinyl albums in custom sleeves, two posters, and a certificate of authenticity housed in a sturdy bespoke slipcase box with a modified cover from the original that is white instead of black and uses raised lettering and photos to great effect. The original poster of various polaroids of the sessions from the photography of Linda McCartney is included.
The original album included here, reflecting the U.S. release, includes “Helen Wheels” and is billed as Paul McCartney, not Paul McCartney and Wings, was half-speed mastered from digital files by Miles Showell at Abbey Road Studios and was pressed at Optimal in Germany. The second album was cut by Alex Wharton, not Showell.
This is the sixth in the series of McCartney/Wings Abbey Road half-speed masters, which includes the albums McCartney, Ram, Wild Life, Red Rose Speedway, and the post Wings much later release Flaming Pie. This is hands down the best sounding of the lot. As good as the Abbey Road remastered albums are, some sound a little dull and lifeless in spots, no doubt as in the case of the early ’70s albums, they are reflective of the more organic and stripped-down recording approach of the original albums and trying to stay true to the period sound.
Along with the blockbuster title track, “Helen Wheels” and “Jet,” the album is filled with memorable songs, including “Bluebird,” a follow-up of sorts to McCartney’s composition “Blackbird” from the White Album. The rest of the songs are replete with an imaginative whimsy and tunefulness that reflect McCartney at the height of his powers.
The second album includes what’s billed as the “Underdubbed” versions of all the songs from the original album, which is different from the finished album primarily due to the fact that it leaves out Tony Visconti’s orchestrations and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” is presented as an instrumental.
The songs are ordered out of sequence from the original album. Owing to McCartney’s ability to make music in the studio that sounds nearly fully realized almost from the demo stage, these rough mixes sound very near to the finished versions. The package art boasts a smart bootleg-style look with a passport sticker that reflects the various locales where the album was recorded. There is also another poster of various previously unreleased polaroids of the sessions from the photography of Linda McCartney.
While many bemoaned the break-up of The Beatles, the results of the four going solo in the ’70s freed them all up to make music solely on their own individual terms and, in the case of Band On The Run, yielded an album of timeless, sublime musicianship and songwriting nearly unmatched in the 1970s and which still sounds fresh and exciting today.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A+
