Paul McCartney - McCartney (1970) - Part Five

ALBUM 1 - Paul McCartney - McCartney (1970)

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1. The Lovely Linda
2. That Would Be Something
3. Valentine Day
4. Every Night
5. Hot As Sun / Glasses
6. Junk
7. Man We Was Lonely
8. Oo You
9. Momma Miss America
10. Teddy Boy
11. Singalong Junk
12. Maybe I'm Amazed
13. Kreen-Akrore

The next song on the album is the country tinged Man We Was Lonely, another song which speaks of the troubles that Paul McCartney was going through at the time.  Actually in truth it’s about the McCartney’s a family.

Paul in particular was used to the bubble that surrounded The Beatles, as were the other members.  Now though the bubble had burst.  They were all affected by it to some point, but Paul even more so.  He had recorded as a sessionist and producer for other artists (Steve Miller, Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Donovan, etc), but he was for all intents and purpose, not sure what to do because he only knew The Beatles and had taken charge almost.  Lennon had even given him the snide nickname of “Beatle Head” as evidenced in the Imagine film when John & George are chatting at John’s dinner table.

All three of the others had also already released their own solo material, which Paul hadn’t.  The other three were still very much in touch, and even worked on Lennon’s material.  Paul and Linda were very much left to themselves by everyone, including Apple Records (The Beatles’ own record company).

As per usual, he has come up with a veiled lyric which speaks of someone who lived on the “fast city line”, which he did, and of singing songs he thought were his alone.  Perhaps I’m going somewhere unintended, but maybe that is to do with the fact that almost all of Lennon and McCartney’s songs were now the property of somebody else after the publishing company who owned them was sold to Lew Grade of ATV, and then, in a cruel twist, were bought by Michael Jackson in 1984.  I do actually feel for them with because I would hate it if I were in their shoes.  It’s rather like you making a child and then someone coming to say “thank you, but we’ll take that now.”  I know, but it’s the only example I could think

The chorus is not veiled though, because it admits that they were “hard pressed to find a smile”.  It wasn’t a downbeat chorus though, because the upshot was that now they were “fine all the while.”  They had got through it all and, Macca admitted, that it was the last song recorded for the album.  Perhaps working on the album was like catharsis and sorted him out?

The lyrics are perhaps a little lazy considering that he has effective written a single verse, but all in all the song does work and I enjoyed recording my own version of it.

It is in the key of A major technically, although again the chords he uses are very clever with their out of key notes.  By now that has become de rigueur.

The opening of the song is basically only there, with a variation of the same for the ending.  Otherwise this part is nowhere else in the song – we can call that the “Special Introduction”.  Again as mentioned before, it is a trick that he uses time and again.  Rather than just starting the song immediately, he is giving the listener an experience.  Here it is an opening phrase of A13, D/A, Dmadd9/A, and A, then repeated except for the fourth chord being the A6 for the song’s chorus.  The intro alone features a Dm9 which has an F (flattened 6th in A major).

The chorus then is straight A major fare with A6 and E, plus the note run of E, F# and G#, with the surprises being in the verse music.  That starts with Am7, which is obviously A minor and not major, then B which features a D# note (sharpened 4th in A major scale), then E, then Am7, D, Em (which features a G note that is the flattened 7th in A major scale), and finally Am7, D, Em, Am7, B7, and a version of E played at the ninth fret (bar strings 2, 3 and 4 at 9th, string one at the 12th fret, and just play those four strings), and then the run.

To end the song he does a variation of the opening, but this time with A13, D/A, Dmadd9, A7 (the seventh being a G – flattened seventh note), and then A13, D/A, Dmadd9, and A.  To get the right feel for intro and ending you could use two guitars – one plays the chord letting it ring out while the other plays an arpeggio of the chords basically.

As I said I enjoyed performing this song and it has a nice feel good factor to it.  Maybe it could have done with a proper second verse, but that’s being picky.  It is a decent album track.

The next song on the album is the bluesy number Oo You. 

Links -
My version of 'Man We Was Lonely'Paul McCartney Chord songbook at Amazon UK