Venus and Mars

by

Paul McCartney and Wings

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What a laugh suckerfly's lame "review" of this album gave me. To correct some of his many errors:

1) McCartney DIDN'T break up the Beatles, he was the one who kept them together until John finally decided he didn't want to play anymore.

2) Beats me how you can accuse McCartney of showing only one character trait in his musical career. I doubt any other artist has ever put out such a variety of styles. Certainly no artist of his stature ever took more risks with his music.

3) You Gave Me The Answer is 20's pastiche, not 30's.

4) The line in Letting Go "like a lucifer she'll always shine" does NOT refer to Satan or the Morningstar as you state. In Britain, a lucifer was a match (you know, that sparks into flame and burns brightly), this is what that line means.

5) Possibly the reason McCartney says nothing to you is because you approach him with a closed and biased mind.

Now to the album. I have always regarded V&M as the second of McCartney's 70's triumverate of rock/pop masterpieces, begun with Band On The Run and closed with Speed Of Sound. These are the albums that confirmed Paul McCartney's second dose of megastardom, and possibly made Mr Lennon (who must have regretted singing "pretty soon they'll see what you can do" in his vicious 1971 How Do You Sleep) decide early retirement looked good! A new generation, many only vaguely aware he had been in a 60's band, turned his records into chart-topping multi-platinum discs and his stadium concerts huge sellout events.

Venus & Mars is a wonderful selection of great tunes, though not as cohesive and artistic as Band On The Run - showmanship threatens to replace musicianship. For me the weakest track is the slow "Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People"; sure it's beautiful but somehow spoils the album's "Rock" credentials. In my opinion the album would have been richer had it been left off, perhaps replaced with Juniors Farm, for instance. I do like the song, though, and it would have made a very popular and sought-after B-side.

All the rock songs hit their target: Medicine Jar a fabulous anti-drug song by Wings' own drug addict, Jimmy McCulloch, Magneto & Titanium Man has a wonderful groove and fun lyrics, Rock Show is a statement of intent that Paul was going to reconquer America, Letting Go has sublime vocals and guitar solo, and Call Me Back Again is simply magnificent. The pure pop of Listen To What The Man Said has a jazz flavour and is instantly infectious. Love In Song I always felt was another in the series of Paul to John songs "I can see the places that we used to go to now, happiness in the homeland" bearing in mind that by this time John was firmly ensconced in New York but Paul happily remained in the UK.

Buy this album to hear a rock genius at the top of his game and still enjoying having a band around him!

35 years on from its original release, it would be hard to add anything substantive to the discussion of the merits of Venus and Mars. My first copy of this album was an 8-track tape, which I listened to endlessly. To this day, I still prefer it as a whole to Band on the Run, which I didn't own a copy of until years later.

I think the 1993 series of McCartney remasters was actually done quite well. The trend of excessive amounts of compression and limiting in the (re)mastering process hadn't quite set in yet, so most of the dynamic range is still present even though the average volume has been boosted slightly.

Unfortunately, this particular remaster exacerbates a flaw, that being the segue from "Venus and Mars" to "Rock Show". "Venus and Mars", the quieter song of the two, while technically at a decent volume level, is actually too loud in comparison (and not just in comparison to "Rock Show", but to the rest of the album). So, when the opening chords of "Rock Show" come in, instead of bursting forth with a fury from the speakers, it sounds like somebody turned down the volume. (Of course, one could simply crank up the volume on "Rock Show", but, had the levels of the two tracks been appropriately set in the first place, this would not be necessary.) This bothered me enough that I eventually tracked down the previous Capitol/EMI edition, where the transition is not quite as jarring.

Not long ago (2010), it was announced that Paul McCartney had again severed his ties with EMI, and has plans to remaster and reissue his back catalog again. Let's hope that it is done right this time - though, after the sonic disaster that was Memory Almost Full, it is difficult to remain hopeful...