Paul McCartney’s attempt to revitalize Wings with Back to the Egg fell just short
It’s time to go back and reevaluate Paul McCartney and Wings’ flawed but nevertheless exciting, and always unjustly ignored Back to the Egg. Released on June 8, 1979, the album showcased a rebuilt Wings lineup, with lead guitarist Laurence Juber working in sharp counterpoint to Denny Laine. Also on board was co-producer Chris Thomas, a former assistant to George Martin for the Beatles’ White Album who brought an edgier style to much of the project — in keeping with his concurrent work with the Sex Pistols and the Pretenders. Paul McCartney’s stated goal, back then, was to make a raw-boned rock record. And he largely succeeded, putting a bright charge into his sound after the soft-rock fluff of 1978’s London Town. Yet, Back to the Egg wasn’t the hit that McCartney’s new label bosses at Columbia had hoped, having “only” gone platinum in the U.S. The album ended up as a million-selling yet somehow overlooked swansong for Wings. Fast forward more than 35 years, and retro-passion surrounds Paul McCartney projects from the same era, powered in no small way by the former Beatle’s own lavish reissues of Band on the Run and McCartney II. Yet, and we have no idea just why, Back to the Egg remains comparably obscure.
That started us on a track-by-track conversation around the Something Else! Towers watercooler …
S. VICTOR AARON: Back to the Egg was a vast improvement over 1978’s London Town, but kept intact the Wings hallmarks of Beatlesque hook-filled songcraft and above average harmonies from Denny and Linda. While it might not be Wings’ best, it suggested the way forward into the 1980s. Instead, Paul shut down the enterprise in the wake of Lennon’s assassination, the infamous Japan pot bust and a desire to get off the road and raise his kids at home. That made Egg an idiosyncratic, unintended coda for one of the most successful rock bands of the 1970s.
NICK DeRISO: Unfortunately, Paul McCartney tries, in some respects, to have it both ways. Back to the Egg was simultaneously a bold move into the then-current sounds of punk and new wave but also, on its second side, a bit of a retrenchment into some of his more recognizable indulgences — including song medleys, silly love songs, even mid-century parlor pop. (“Baby’s Request” would eventually find its way, far more appropriately, onto McCartney’s 2012 standards album Kisses on the Bottom.) The album starts a lot better than it finishes.
BEVERLY PATERSON: Not only is Back to the Egg my favorite Paul McCartney and Wings album, but it also gets a gold trophy for being one of my favorite albums altogether. And the reason why rests in the simple and plain fact that every song here is so utterly catchy. These are the kind of tunes that stick hard and fast in your mind after a single listen, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Especially when the music is conceived by somebody as insanely talented as Sir Paul, and the band accompanying him.
Source: Something Else Reviews
