Paul McCartney and his solo album »III«: This deep, deep feeling

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Pop veteran Paul McCartney: Traces of House Music

Photo: Ian West / PA Wire / picture alliance / dpa

Being a living legend doesn’t protect you from making a fool of yourself.

Van Morrison and Eric Clapton, for example, both 75 years old, could think of nothing better in the crisis year 2020 than to publish bitter and ultimately inedible songs about the inconvenient, but of course necessary, if not inadequate, corona measures taken by the British government.

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Paul McCartney

McCartney III

Label: UNIVERSAL INT.

MUSIC

Label: UNIVERSAL INT.

MUSIC

approx € 17.54

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December 18, 2020 3:36 p.m.

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Paul McCartney, on the other hand, at 78 years even older than the two grumblers, used the lockdown to work on some song sketches in his home studio in Sussex.

"I had a bit of time on hand, so I started finishing parts of songs and other stuff - and thought, I was just doing this for my own pleasure," said the eternal ex-Beatle with British understatement Interview.

In the end there were eleven complete songs, enough material for a new album.

It's called »III«, was recorded by McCartney, the multi-instrumentalist, single-handedly and now forms the end of a solo album trilogy that began in 1970.

But unlike on "McCartney", which at the time served as a certificate of separation from the long-dysfunctional Beatles, and quite differently than on "II", with which McCartney broke away from his band Wings in 1980 by experimenting with synths, "III" does not mark a musical one Reinvention.

Luckily.

Because one could argue that McCartney has in the course of his - short breath - 50-year solo career already abundantly served the respective pop zeitgeist, sometimes unnecessarily, as on his last album "Egypt Station", designed by Adele producer, sometimes avant-garde like on the Fireman albums with electronics producer Youth.

What is beautiful and ultimately also immediately moving about »III« is the relaxed ease with which McCartney plays through the numerous facets of his songwriting and composing art;

And playing here is not only to be understood in terms of craftsmanship, but as playful in the best sense of the word.

Suddenly brittle like Johnny Cash

Of course, the man no longer has to prove anything to himself or the world, he is one of two Beatles who survived, a pop giant, the "Hey Jude", "Yesterday", "Blackbird" and "Here, There and Everywhere" wrote.

It is all the more stunning to listen to him doing finger exercises, "just for fun", for the results of which other, less talented musicians would sell their souls.

Come on, it's Paul McCartney, people!

Even Taylor Swift postponed the release of her album "Evermore" so as not to get in the way of the monument.

It is astonishing when McCartney starts an initially sparse, then electronically atmospheric gospel R&B in the central piece "Deep Deep Feeling", which contains traces of house music and is reminiscent of contemporary pop representatives such as James Blake.

At the end of a good eight minutes, McCartney breaks down all of the casually designed modernity to a classic song on the acoustic guitar, as raw as such melodies, chords and harmonies have been flowing from his wrist for decades.

"Here in my heart," he sings, "I feel a deep devotion, it almost hurts, it's such a deep emotion" - it's about surrendering to a deeply felt love, in this case you think you suspect: He means that Music.

"Slidin '", immediately after, contains very loud and brute echoes from "Helter Skelter", with which McCartney brought heavy metal to the Beatles in 1968, even if Lennon is always mentioned as a songwriter.

“Seize The Day”, the only song on the album that specifically (and very self-deprecatingly) relates to the Corona circumstances (“Dinosaurs and Santa Claus will stay indoors tonight”), combines “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La "Da" nonsense with seventies guitar epics and that familiar, rowdy, good-natured blues rumble on which Jack White later based his entire career.

The same goes for the outrageously cool boogie "Lavatory Lil".

Only once on this reassuringly vital album can you feel the years that the young professional Paul McCartney is already carrying around with him.

In “Women and Wives”, a mid-tempo piano ballad, he sings about the burden and hardship of previous life decisions: “Every path that we take makes it harder to travel”.

His voice suddenly sounds so tired, deep and brittle, but at least as dignified as Johnny Cash once did in his "American Recordings" phase, in which he put his last things in order.

With Rick Rubin, who produced Cash's old work at the time, McCartney now apparently wants to film his career for a documentary television series.

“Chasing tomorrow, getting ready to run”, as it says at one point on “III”.

One looks forward to it.

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