As we suffer through the fucking diabolical Kisses On the Bottom, it might be time to turn our eyes backwards, thirteen years actually, to the similarly conceived but to much better effect, Run Devil Run.
The albums are uxorious bookends, Devil is an early rock and roll covers album, and a subconscious fare well to his wife, who died a year earlier. Bottom is a covers album that precedes rock and roll, and a conscious wedding album to his third wife. In his review, Robert Christgau claimed it was so light it was nearly airborne. I see what he means but something seems to weigh it down, and not solely the devastating and destitute "Lonely Town". Bill Holdship told me it was Linda McCartney's favorite song, if so its sadness makes even more sense. Can something be light and paralyzed at the same time?
The three McCartney numbers are formal exercises in form, especially "Try not To Cry" -a re-write of Lennon's "I Found Out", which is as bare faced an expression of loss, it wears its sorrow right in your face: "I try not to cry over you"? McCartney would claim it was just a little blues number, in reality it was a cry from the heart.
Once you are past the three new ones, and "Lonesome Town" you can just about pick your poison. With Dave Gilmore on guitar and Macca on bass, it is at least half a supergroup. And the band, recorded live over a period of a month in Spring 1999, get it all right. Especially a "She Said Yeah" as good as the Stones if not Larry Williams (and maybe a nod to late Larry fan Lennon). "I Got Stung" might have none of Presley sexuality, but it has all of his rhymic jive. Same for "All Shook Up". Fats Domino's "Coquette" is one of the great covers, less than a tribute, but more than that: i dates back to the Guy Lombardo and points to what Kisses could have been.
The Chuck Berry zydeco cover is not such a great idea, but really, everything else works for me. as for being light, "Honey Hush" plain flies!
But his best? Not my fave. I am a sucker for old Macca, just because I loved it so much as a kid.
1. Venus And Mars
2. McCartney
3. Wild Life
4. Run Devil Run
5. Band On the Run
Aesthetically, I'd find it very hard to justify this least, but emotionally that's where it stands.
Grade: A