Paul McCartney post-Beatles - Part 1

When I think of Paul McCartney's post-Beatles oeuvre in the 70s, I think of four songs in particular.  Yes, I know he had more than four hits, and I know that these weren't even necessarily his biggest four hits.  And none of them are any less than 30 years old!  But they're the ones that jump to mind for me immediately.  I was going to cram these all into one post, but this is my blog, dammit, so let's start a four part series!

First up: "Band on the Run" (Band on the Run, 1974)

(I intentionally chose this version instead of the album version because when I think of this song, I specifically think of this live concert performance.  My mom used to have a VHS tape, which I can't remember the name of now and am Googling to no avail, but it was some sort of possibly-unauthorized Paul McCartney biography released around the time Flowers in the Dirt came out.  Since that was my earliest, most prominent exposure to McCartney's post-Beatles work, it figures pretty prominently in my imaginings of 1970s Paul even to this day, even though I haven't seen that VHS tape in at least twenty years.)

"Band on the Run" is a three part song, joined together cleanly at one part, and not so cleanly at the other.  Let's take a look:

Stuck inside these four walls | Sent inside forever
D7                            | G6
Never seeing       no   one   | Nice again, like
D7                            | G6
You                Ma   ma    | You         ma ma
D                  Gm6        | D           Gm6
You     
D7                 Gm6

Not the greatest lyrical construction ("locked" makes more sense than "sent", and "never seeing no one nice again like you" is conjuring Lennie Small in my head), and a fairly bland chord construction (this would not make a song on its own) but fine.

With a brief drum riff, we move into part two.  This is the good join.  These two parts connect and make sense musically together.

If I ever get out of here     | Thought of giving it all away
Am                            | D6
To a registered charity       | All I need is a pint a day
Am                            | D6
If I ever get out of here     | If I ever get out of here
Am                            | Am

Note this is not just the same tempo, but it's the same chord pattern as the "You, mama" section, just with reversed mode.  Instead of D major and G minor 6, it's A minor and D major 6.  I - iv, and i - IV.  Clever.  So far so good, and thematically goes with the lyrics from part one as well.  In fact, even though everybody and his brother calls this a three part song I'm almost sort of inclined to call it a two part song, and call "Stuck inside these four walls" and "If I ever get out of here" part of the same section, even though the general tone of the music varies between the two parts.  Makes sense with the lyrics!

And now, all of a sudden (this really reminds me of the clean-for-its-time-but-quite-jarring-if-you-listen-to-it cut where the orchestra comes in in "Strawberry Fields Forever"), we go into the main section.  This is so jarring for a couple of reasons.  One, the obvious reason - the trumpets come in and the rhythmic pattern and tempo change.  Two - A WHOLE BEAT IS CUT.  Listen.  The last "if I ever get out of here" is a full four-beat bar and then we suddenly jump to beat 2 of the next bar. (and I will insert a screenshot of the music here in a bit when I can get home).

And the music pattern used to transition between the two sections (G-A-C-D-E-G' Dmaj Dmaj Cmaj) does not appear thematically in ANY of the song, aside from this part.  It really sounds like something thrown together to sound epic and complete the chord transition to Cmaj, but it sounds like it SHOULD have been the hook of the song, or something like that.

And now we're in the main meat of the song, which is acoustic and the famous part of the song.  The chord progression isn't really anything interesting here worth talking about, and there aren't really any interesting rhythmic patterns or anything aside from a brief change to 6/4 in the middle.

But this is where the main lyrical problems in the song are.  He doesn't conventionally SPEAK like this, and I don't think this was a forced lyric to fit the rhythm, because he plays fast-and-loose with the rhythm while singing... so what is the deal?  Was he just trying to be poetic and failing miserably?

Well the rain exploded with a heavy crash
As we fell into the sun
And the first one said to the second one there
"I hope you're having fun!"

OK.  I can sort of see "the rain exploded with a heavy crash."  Rain doesn't usually explode or crash, but let's pretend it's a sudden heavy downpour.  A really sudden one.  "As we fell into the sun" though... what? If you're falling into the sun there is no rain.  Also, if you fall into the sun you're dead.  Probably dead long before you actually hit the sun proper.  I honestly have no idea what that line means.  Maybe sun = desert?  But there's no rain in the desert.  Maybe it's supposed to be creatively oxymoronical?

Also - no explanation about who "the first one" and "the second one" are, or why we have switched suddenly from 1st person to 3rd person, and also "there" was thrown in as an extra word to fill in a beat because it's a weird grammatical construction.  Where is "there"?

Band on the run, band on the run
And the jailer man and Sailor Sam were searching everyone
For the band on the run, band on the run

Who is Sailor Sam?  Why would Sailor Sam be helping the jailer man look for anyone?  Why were they searching "everyone" instead of the more logical "everywhere" (aside from the rhyme)?  Did people have the band in their pockets or something?  Or is this some sort of secret joke and it's actually "banned" on the run or "(contra)band on the run."  He was busted several times for pot possession in the early 70s.  Let's see if the pot idea holds up.

Well, the undertaker drew a heavy sigh
Seeing no one else had come
And a bell was ringing in the village square
For the rabbits on the run

This verse doesn't really have anything to do with what the band/banned/pot did, but it does make much more contextual sense than the first verse ("rain exploded") did.  It sounds like an execution, actually.  (And for some reason I am mentally picturing this in the same scene as The Persistence of Memory.)

Chorus again, and then third verse:

Well, the night was falling as the desert world
Began to settle down
In the town they're searching for us everywhere
But we never will be found

More nothing.  We sure are a band, on the run.  The last chorus substitutes the Sailor Sam lyric for the county judge who held a grudge but that doesn't matter much.

This is a song in need of a plot.  What did the band do to get themselves locked up in the first place?  Who is Sailor Sam?  I am thinking that considering the first two sections are about how it sucks to be locked up and they want to escape, the exploding rain and falling into the sun is some sort of weird metaphor for breaking out of jail.  But shouldn't that have been more clear?  This could have been a great Rocky Racoon kind of song, and he KNOWS how to write those!

Now, considering the previous analysis post I did, you, my hypothetical reader, are probably thinking "Boy, Cassy sure is a stickler for logical lyric writing."  And that's totally not true.  "Poker Face" for example, has just as awkward lyrics as some of Gaga's other stuff, but that's a good song musically and I sing along every time I hear it.  And you'll see an example of a McCartney song in my next post that's even stupider lyrically but a much more successful song in my opinion.  Even completely ignoring the lyrics to "Band on the Run", it's just not a very interesting song.  The only interesting part of it, for me, is the "if I ever get out of here" section, and that's sandwiched between two big piles of blah.

"If I Ever Get Out Of Here" at least has some musical drive to it, with the snappy snare sound on the 4th beat of each bar, and the smart conversational rhythm to the key phrase.  But "Stuck Inside These Four Walls" is... dreamy? almost wistful-sounding?  If you're locked up in jail missing your girlfriend, you don't feel dreamy and wistful and nostalgic, you feel pissed and sad.  (Thus, "if I ever get out of here".)

And then we get into the campfire story part of the song that doesn't actually have a story, because nobody finds the band on the run, we don't know what they did or whether we should root for them to successfully escape, and there's no context to any of it!

"Band on the Run" was a hugely popular song; it sold over a million copies and is a permanent fixture in all of McCartney's best-of compilations and tours.  But if this had NOT been a McCartney song? If it had just been random schmo?  Let's say... Steve Miller, whose "The Joker" was #1 a few months before "Band on the Run" was?  I kind of doubt it.  If nothing else it would not have attained the pop cultural ubiquity that "Band on the Run" did.

Up next - one of Paul McCartney's most HATED songs (and one of my biggest guilty pleasures)!