Paul McCartney’s look back on Run Devil Run served as a launching pad
Paul McCartney, still stung by the loss of his wife, was feeling nostalgic as the 1990s drew to a close.
Instead of rehashing the obvious successes he’d had with the Beatles or Wings, however, he traveled further back – all the way to the music that first sparked something inside the hearts of a young John Lennon and Paul McCartney: The records of the 1950s, of Chuck Berry and Larry Williams, of Carl Perkins and Gene Vincent. Each played an important role in shaping the early Beatles sound.
So, while McCartney holed up in Abbey Road (site of so many brilliant Beatles recordings) and with Chris Thomas (who had co-produced Back to the Egg, the 1979 finale of Paul McCartney’s sunsequent band Wings), he went about things in an older old-fashioned way. That meant none of the decades-old studio-craftsmanship so closely associated with McCartney. Instead, the resulting Run Devil Run (released on October 4, 1999) was fast and loose, and — because of its early-rock leanings — almost nothing like the bulk of his other previously issued solo recordings.
McCartney tears through Ricky Nelson’s “Lonesome Town,” and Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up,” and Berry and Perkins and the rest. A number of the songs were obscure favorites from his youth — while three were brand new McCartney compositions. None was perhaps more difficult to place than “No Other Baby,” originally issued in the late 1950s by Bobby Helms (who had a hit with “Jingle Bell Rock”) and then by the now-forgotten British skiffle group called the Vipers. That fit perfectly within the context of these sessions: There is a neat connection here, in that the Vipers were signed with Parlophone, several years before that became the Beatles’ home label, and they were a key local influence on Lennon and McCartney.
By: Nick Deriso
Source: Something Else Reviews
