#mcgear

Oh, that's an excellent question!

As usual, I tried to keep it short, and as usual, I failed, so: the rest (a lot of it) is under the cut.

(Leave It, 1973)

from Skywriting

Thank you, @barelyaveragebarley, a lot!

Memories oh memories Release me from your spell Today is all I need to know Why do you have to haunt me When I thought I let you go? I'm hearing your whispering Through the cold and lonely hall Sometimes I get the feeling Daylight has come too soon Hoping for something is better Than howling at the moon Memories oh memories Release me from your spell Today is all I really know… Sometimes I think the daylight Daylight has come too soon Whishing for something is better Than howling at the moon Memories oh memories What you do to me Today is all I really know …to haunt me When I thought I let you go?

(Memories, between 1975-1980)

Mike McGear – ‘McGear’ LP

Look what has just arrived from the UK:It’s the long-awaited 2019 re-issue of Mike McGear’s McGear LP.McGear is produced by Paul McCartney, and features him playing on various tracks too, along with the other members of Wings. It features songs co-written by McCartney and his brother MIke McGear, and was originally recorded in 1974.  This 180 gram re-issue LP comes in a replica of the original UK…

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Jan-Feb 1974. While awaiting the dissolution of the Beatles partnership, Paul, along with Denny Laine and Linda, is helping Mike to write and record an album under Mike's artist's name: McGear.

The album is many things: an audition for possible new members of Wings, a distraction for Paul, a family reunion. Paul and Linda are staying with Jim and Angie McCartney, who live the strict life of pensioners despite having a teen in the house (Angie's daughter Ruth). There is tension.

Paul and Linda are picking up Mike in the mornings. In the car on the way to Strawberry Studio, near Manchester (yes, named after the song), the brothers write songs together.

One day, they get a visitor: Roger McGough, a poet. Roger is a friend of Mike's from The Scaffold days, and the husband of Thelma Monaghan, née Pickles: John Lennon's ex-girlfriend, who also briefly dated Paul in 1962.

Roger McGough stopped in at Strawberry to watch the sessions in progress, and he brought with him a new poem, The Casket. The title refers to a jewelry box, rather than a coffin, and describes the contents of such a box. [...] Paul was taken with the song's imagery and set it to music, giving it a simple but attractive melody [...]. The melody tested Mike's vocal range at times, but Paul joined him with a harmony vocal at the final lines. "And there's Our Kid and I, going back to being young men, 15-, 16-, 17-year-old lads, after Mum died, singing harmonies. On The Casket in the end, where he and I sing together in harmony—it's very simple, and it's just the two brothers. There are some great feelings there." (The McCartney Legacy Vol 2, Sinclair & Kozinn)

The Casket

There is a broken casket washed up by the morning tide With a young girl's magic mementos and secondhand jewelry inside Letters from long dead lovers tied now with a seaweed bow A first world war photograph of a German matelot

A first world war photograph of a German matelot

Attracted by the glittering A hermit crab approaches The caskets gaudy entrails Of necklaces and broaches

Two ticket for Hohenlinden lie half buried in the sand And a poem by Christian Morgenstern copied carefully by hand As the sun climbs high in the heavens, and fisherman return from the kill The hermit crab scuttles for safety, as children swoop down from the hill

There is a broken casket washed up by the morning tide With a young girl's magic mementos and secondhand jewelry inside Letters from long dead lovers tied now with a seaweed bow A first world war photograph of a German matelot

(from this website with more high quality photographs from McGear)

SDE: ‘Simply Love You’ is  a beautiful little ballad. MM: What I love, certain of these things our kid and I used to sing together as brothers in Forthlin Road, before either of us went into show business. And, because our mum died so young, and she would have never… she would have insisted there would be no music in the house. There would have been music, but not to that extent; she would have wanted us to go into the professions. I would have been in front of you, you’d have been talking to Dr McCartney, or Father McCartney. SDE: And, that song, you can hear the backing vocals really well; Paul and Linda and the harmonies. It’s really quite sweet, isn’t it?

MM: Beautiful. And, what is lovely about it is the harmonies we used to do, equally, the ones on that, our kid and I, in Forthlin Road… we used to be the Everly Brothers. Our kid said the other day about something, “oh, god, you know, are we going to be the Everly Brothers again” because, like the Everly Brothers, we were brothers.  And so, the big thing in the McCartney family was, whenever we got to family parties, New Year’s Eve, weddings, funerals, whatever… it would get to the evening and immediately dad was commissioned to the piano, and they would line up halves of bitter on the piano. Then, Uncle Joe, mainly, was the leader of the singers, and we would all sing and harmonise. The big thing in our family were harmonies, that’s why all those things, the harmonies are so important to us, and if you could get a better harmony than Uncle Joe, my god you were doing well. ‘Simply Love You’ takes me back, that is family, and that is my brother and I, with simple harmonies. Every now and then on the McGear album you will just hear the two brothers going back as brothers.  And, of course, with brothers – like the Everly Brothers – you have a natural common denominator in your voices, they’re very similar. On the phone sometimes people would ring the house and they would think we were each other, they’d say, hello, Mike, and he’d say, hello, Paul, it’s me –  because we were family, we were brothers. So, that to me is the most important thing on the harmonies, is the two brothers, and simple harmonies. And, to me, I love the simplicity, often in life it’s the simplicity that is the answer, it’s the strongest. Mike McCartney Interview about the reissue of McGear, Super Deluxe Edition, Sep. 2019.

@groovybananastarfish, it's your day today :-)

Our kid said the other day about something, “oh, god, you know, are we going to be the Everly Brothers again” <...> Every now and then on the McGear album you will just hear the two brothers going back as brothers.

Mike McCartney: I’d finished with Scaffold and Grimms and our kid [Paul McCartney] said, “what are you doing?” and I said, “bugger all.” He said, “well, shall we do something, get some money into the family coffers to feed your 5,000 children”. And, I said, “yes, smashing.” <…> MM: …When I play it [‘Let’s Turn the Radio On’] now I think of New Orleans. There’s Viv [Stanshall] on ukulele, it was going to be John Bonham on drums. Linda, I think, rang him. I said, “who?” “Oh, John Bonham from Led Zeppelin”. I said, “okay, yes, I’ll go with that. I’ve had Jimi Hendrix play on my stuff…so yes, John Bonham from Led Zeppelin, that will do, good”. And, at the last minute he couldn’t make it so our kid said, “I’ll go on drums”. <…> So I had lots of ideas that I was going to do in the future, but I just couldn’t afford to do them. So I said, yes, I’ve got loads of stuff, it’s not finished. He said, “well, that’s great because we’ll work on it together. So, I’ve got Denny and you’ve got your drummer and we’ve got another guitarist which I’m thinking of, so what we’ll do is go into … down here in London, Abbey Road, is too expensive, and so that place you recorded the Woman thing, Strawberry [Studios, in Stockport], sounds great. So we’ll just go to there from our houses” – which were only three quarters of an hour away in Heswall on the Wirral – “and we’ll see what comes out”.

So, that’s what we did, I had all these ideas, I said, right, here’s the lyrics for this one, and here’s the song for this… and we just worked on them together, with Denny. So, these things started to magically come together, with Gerry Conway and then Jimmy [McCulloch]. It was a labour of love, it wasn’t like a nine-to-five. With our kid, his business was always with love, with his chums, and then going into Wings. You don’t do things for sessions, you do it for the love and the communicate and spread the love. So, to work in an environments like that is so much freer and far more productive. I listened to this after 40 years, this McGear album, and I suddenly realised how important it is in terms of music – how relaxed, how together, how professional, how joyous, how unique it was. <…> Q: I’ve got a theory, you see, because Paul was, obviously, quite busy trying to start again after The Beatles, wasn’t he, building his career again, and Band on the Run was, of course, a massive global success for him…

MM: A lot of hard work…

Q: Yes, but he must have been very satisfied by that success, and felt like he could relax a little bit and maybe have the time to work with you. Do you think that’s correct?

MM: Yes, I’ll buy that. <…> Q: Paul McCartney is one of these people that has musical ideas coming out of every pore. That tap must be quite hard to turn off. I’ve spoken to some people who have worked with Paul and the question I always ask is, how do you say ‘no’ to Paul McCartney. I mean, how did you do that?

MM: It’s interesting you just said things come from, ideas, you’ll love this, it’s a great story, I’ve only just found this out too. Music pours out of him. Because, we came from a musical family with my dad, who was a pianist, he had his own band, Jim Mac’s Band, and played the cornet and the piano, and so we came from musical background. So, the other day a French guy, from a big French magazine, rang me to do an the interview. His name was Jerome something or other. And so, he rang from France and he said [Mike puts on a French accent] “hello, is this Mike?” I knew it was him because he rang on time. So, I didn’t say anything, he just said, “hello, hello, is this Mike?” I sang [the Bo Diddley song] “All you pretty woman, bring it to Jerome…all you pretty woman bring it to Jerome”. He said, “my god, that’s extraordinary”. I said, “yes, and I am extraordinary”. He said, no, no, I only ever had that ever sung to me like you did then once in my life, and you know who sang that to me?” I said, “no”. “Your brother”…