Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
“Most of my life has been spent/ Painting pictures in song,” muses Paul McCartney in one of the poems collected in “Blackbird Singing.” Now, at 58, he presents himself as a literary artist who sometimes paints pictures with words alone.
McCartney posing as poet will strike some as a ludicrous conceit; does the world really need more verse from a man who penned such piffle as “Silly Love Songs,” ’Mull of Kintyre” and “Morse Moose and the Grey Goose’? But a closer reading of his career cautions against dismissing McCartney’s word-smithing out of hand; after all, he also wrote the lyrics to “Yesterday,” ’Let It Be” and (most of) “Eleanor Rigby.” No less fierce a critic than John Lennon pointed out (10 years after the Beatles broke up) that his old songwriting partner could actually write quite effective lyrics when he put his mind to it. Lennon especially admired what he called the “nice, cosmic line” McCartney offered near the end of the Beatles’ last album, “Abbey Road’: “And in the end the love you take/Is equal to the love you make’--a nifty restating of the Golden Rule.
McCartney’s work with the Beatles is filled with such winning touches. In “Penny Lane,” his most complete song lyrically and musically, he offers an affectionate, enduringly insightful portrait of postwar British life. His character sketches are specific enough that the individuals instantly spring to life in our mind’s eye yet archetypal enough to summon up an entire social reality: “The little children laugh at him behind his back,” he sings, referring to a banker too concerned with appearances to wear a raincoat, even in a downpour; “In his pocket is a portrait of the Queen,” nine words that say all we need to know about a sturdy fireman while also alluding to a key aspect of the British identity during the years of imperial decline; and, best of all, the existential curveball about a “pretty nurse ... selling poppies from a tray/And though she feels as if she’s in a play/She is anyway.”
Vivid, compact, witty and wise, these lines would work as poetry even if they weren’t backed by an irresistible melody. McCartney was plainly not as lyrically accomplished or consistent as Lennon, but he was hardly without sophistication or social sensibility. Lennon, the self-proclaimed working-class hero, tended toward grand philosophical statements, as in “All You Need Is Love” and “Revolution,” but McCartney was better at portraying the lives and outlooks of actual working-class people, as in “Lady Madonna” and “She’s Leaving Home.” Of course, the greatest effects were achieved when the two men melded their respective inclinations. In “A Day in the Life,” the masterpiece that concludes “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” Lennon’s gently ominous commentary on the hollowness of status and worldly attachments--’Nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords’--is grounded by McCartney’s peppy depiction of rushing off to work in the morning--’Woke up, fell out of bed’--before they beckon listeners to join them on the path to enlightenment: “I’d love to turn you on.”
Making the world a better place was an ambition embraced by all four Beatles. But unlike Lennon and George Harrison, McCartney never preached; indeed, he sometimes conveyed his meanings so obliquely that they could be missed altogether. The introduction to “Blackbird Singing” contains a fascinating passage (reprinted from McCartney’s authorized biography, “Many Years From Now,” by Barry Miles) that reveals how McCartney came to write the lovely ballad that gives this book its title. The melody was developed first, McCartney explains, inspired by a Bach piece. The lyrics came later and--who knew?--were directed to civil rights activists in the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. “I had in mind a black woman, rather than a bird,” McCartney says, adding that his message to her was, “Let me encourage you to keep trying, to keep your faith, there is hope.” This message was veiled, however, so that the original opening line, “Black woman living in Little Rock” became “Blackbird singing in the dead of night,” followed by “Take these broken wings and learn to fly/All your life/You were only waiting for this moment to arise.” McCartney says he chose this more symbolic approach so his song would apply to any listener’s situation. That may have given the work broader, more lasting appeal, but it also muted its political impact.
‘Blackbird Singing” contains 52 song lyrics (22 from the Beatles era and 30 from McCartney’s solo years) and 45 poems proper. In his very brief foreword, McCartney explains that he took up poetry seriously upon hearing of the death (in 1993) of his lifelong friend Ivan Vaughan, famous to Beatles trivia experts as the guy who invited McCartney to the 1957 summer garden fte where he and Lennon first met as teenagers. More poems followed, and eventually McCartney came to believe that poems and song lyrics “have equal capacity to convey great depth of feeling.”
Which is not to say that poetry and lyrics are interchangeable. Because words in a lyric acquire extra force from the music surrounding them, while the words of a poem must succeed entirely on their own, one can argue that poetry is a more difficult form to master. On the other hand, writing a melody is no easy matter, so perhaps the greatest artists of all are the songwriters who write both music and lyrics. In any case, poems deserve to be judged on their own terms, and McCartney’s are no exception.
Given the standard that McCartney has set for himself--that a poem convey great depth of feeling--it is safe to say that that standard is rarely reached in these pages. McCartney once said that he liked writing songs with Lennon partly because both of them worked quickly; they were great believers in trusting their creative instincts. That’s fine if you are staggeringly talented and the muse is with you that day, but otherwise it can spell trouble.
And so it does here. Many of the poems in “Blackbird Singing” read as if they were dashed off in a single go and never revised; they’re not so much bad as unfinished and inconsequential. “Anti-Alarm Call,” for example, is about staying in bed on a cold, wet morning, a promising enough subject, but after seven lines of such rhymes as “Fifteen minutes more/What are you waiting for?” it fizzles out with the limp conclusion, “Better stay inside/Hibernate and hide.” An even shorter poem is “Moon’s a Mandarin,” a title that doubles as opening line and is followed by “Orange segment/Stars as clear as you like. Smelling of pines/And eucalyptus/Quite a night.” There’s nothing wrong with haiku but this is not haiku. This writing smacks instead of laziness, long a weakness of McCartney’s, as Lennon and others have pointed out.
Another problem that has afflicted McCartney in his solo career is that no one seems able to edit him. Who dares tell the composer of some of the most beloved, accomplished songs of the 20th century that his latest creation needs work? There are only three guys who can speak to Paul with that level of familiarity and equality; one of them died more than 20 years ago, and the other two don’t often work with him any more. Part of what gave Beatles albums their consistently high quality--song after song was good if not great; precious few were duds--was the ferocious criticism and competition within the band; only the very best work survived. McCartney still needs that kind of feedback, yet comments from such erstwhile collaborators as Elvis Costello--hardly a shrinking violet--suggest that he simply doesn’t tolerate it.
Adrian Mitchell, the poet and former journalist who edited this volume, touches on this delicate issue in his introduction when he confides, “Sometimes I’ve made suggestions for small cuts or changes and sometimes Paul’s accepted them.” Since Mitchell sycophantically goes on to situate McCartney, in all seriousness, in the same poetic tradition as Homer and Blake, it’s no wonder McCartney felt free to ignore most of Mitchell’s suggestions. More’s the pity. A firm editor could have saved McCartney from such howlers as “Rocking On!,” which begins, “I want to smell your underarm odor/I want to drink your ice cream soda,” then trudges through six equally embarrassing verses before concluding, “When this world is dead and gone/We will still be Rocking On!” The funkiest back beat imaginable couldn’t redeem that lyric. A good editor could also have pushed McCartney harder to improve the numerous poems that do show genuine flair and imagination, such as “Full Moon’s Eve,” with its engaging opening image: “On a full moon’s eve/A tiger sprang/And gnawed on/Who I used to be.”
Nevertheless, just as even the weakest of McCartney’s solo albums invariably contains moments of brilliance, this book boasts a few gems in the rough. “Black Jacket” is a lovely, spare evocation of the dialectics of grief, perhaps inspired by the passing of McCartney’s wife, Linda: “Sadness isn’t sadness/It’s happiness in a black jacket/Death isn’t death/It’s life that’s jumped off a tall cliff.” And “Steel,” at a mere 19 words, demonstrates that even extremely short poems can pack a punch, if they are well constructed.
Would any of these poems have been published if their author wasn’t named Paul McCartney? Probably not, and the same point holds for McCartney’s recent forays into classical compositions. If McCartney gets personal satisfaction from dabbling in related art forms, good for him. But he, and the rest of us, would be better served if he focused his enormous talents on what he does best, writing pop songs. Naysayers will object that, even on this front, McCartney is washed up, that his best work came during the Beatles years and that it’s been one long decline ever since.
But McCartney has, in fact, composed some excellent songs during his solo years, perhaps none more moving than “Here Today,” a song largely overlooked upon its release in 1981 but happily resurrected in this book. Written for Lennon after his untimely death, “Here Today” asks how Lennon would recall his friendship with McCartney if he were here today. “You’d probably laugh and say/That we were worlds apart,” sings his old partner, before replying with his relentless good cheer, “But as for me/I still remember how it was before’--how the two of them first met, laughed and sometimes cried together, and “didn’t understand a thing/But we could always sing.” Then the closer: “And if I say I really loved you/And was glad you came along/Then you were here today/For you were in my song.”
A simple sentiment, but it sends chills down the spine when married to the heartbreakingly wistful, beautiful melody that McCartney wraps around it. Which is why, no matter how uneven a written poet he may be, Paul McCartney’s place in musical history is assured for a very long time.