Fred Wemyss

I'm going to make this a New Year's Eve tradition. Starting tonight, I'll post this little record review from March, 2000. I had it on my Geocities page. I still believe what I wrote in this review. This record is the best thing Macca has ever done.

March 12, 2000

RUN DEVIL RUN-Paul McCartney

This disc was recorded in the first few months of 1999 in a few quick sessions.

The personnel are, of course, McCartney (bass, guitar, vocals), David Gilmour (guitar), Mick Green (guitar), Ian Paice (drums), Pete Wingfield (keyboards), Dave Mattacks (drums) and Geraint Watkins (keyboard.) The booklet says these musicians "recreated that golden age of rock 'n' roll" which inspired the Beatles.

Two things are notable about the booklet: First, it actually refers to the Beatles, which no other McCartney release has done (with the exception of the first pressing of the McCARTNEY album, which came with a piece of paper on which McCartney explained, bitterly, why he was leaving the group.) The second thing is that I find its boast about the recreation of the early rock sound not at all far-fetched.

Geoff Emerick, one of the engineers who worked with the Beatles, co-engineered this CD. He's worked on several of McCartney's solo albums, so his presence here doesn't necessarily mean he helped make this one sound the way it does. Nevertheless, this effort is so focused that I suspect McCartney made sure he worked with people understood him.

Proof that he respected the thinking of the people he was working with is in his description of his recording of COQUETTE: "It's just me singing Fats. We tried fixing little bits of it because I thought 'God, this is too much like a pub singer'...but we ended up going back to the earliest mix, it just has a feeling." After working with McCartney in 1989, Elvis Costello said, in an interview, that he couldn't prevent McCartney from adding layers and layers to some of their songs. He essentially said McCartney didn't know when to stop. Steve Miller worked with him on the FLAMING PIE CD and said McCartney would work on a song of some originality and then record three or four in a tried-and-true McCartney style. Steve Miller said something like, "I said to him, 'You don't need to prove to anybody you can do a pop song. Why do you keep trying to prove that?'"

The impression I get is that successful recording artists who have worked with McCartney have indeed tried to get across to him that they're disappointed with him. But, Elvis Costello owes too much to the Beatles, if only because he is a post-Beatles hit-maker. Steve Miller is, when he wants to be, a blues man, and when he wants a hit, a pop artist. There is no compelling reason for Paul McCartney to listen to what Elvis Costello and Steve Miller say to him. He doesn't have to listen to their music, either.

But David Gilmour, who is on every cut on RUN DEVIL RUN, is just the guy to get McCartney's ear. His sound is his own. He's not blues, he's not pop and he's never been studio. When he's on somebody's record, even if you don't quite know it's him, you don't picture some slick jack-of-all trades walking into the studio, doing his bit and hopping back out. He takes a song to a personal level. "No More Lonely Nights" would have been a commercial jingle if Gilmour hadn't done deep-sea-diving. He knew he could find something and knew how to bring it out. On the RUN DEVIL RUN disc, however, McCartney does something he almost, but didn't quite, do on "No More Lonely Nights." He works with Gilmour.

The whole CD features a band which is paying attention. One of the drummers was in DEEP PURPLE, which was a sixties band. He can do those sounds which fifties and sixties rock requires. The keyboard work is to the point, which is absolutely necessary with songs which must make an impact quickly. While the only two musicians I'm at all familiar with here are McCartney and Gilmour, it's clear that what the entire band is going for is a British rock sound circa 1962. The American influence is heavy. But the early-sixties English abilility to remove the commercialism from such tunes is in evidence. England took rock more seriously in 1962 than America did. This CD takes American music from that era more seriously than Americans do now. This band does Elvis Presley's, "I Got Stung," a song virtually created for the further humiliation of its original singer, and turns it into an urgent, living thing.

With humor and drive, McCartney's vocals call the listener's attention to these songs. "Lonesome Town" ends with the words, "Maybe down in Lonesome town/ I can learn to forget." Not having heard the original version by Ricky Nelson, I can't say if he managed the pathos McCartney does with those lyrics, but I'll say this: McCartney's never sounded so much as if he meant what he sang.

The best track on RUN DEVIL RUN is a true example of the Liverpool sound. It's called "No Other Baby." The booklet says it was done in 1958 by the Vipers, "a British Skiffle Group." Apparently, only McCartney had heard the song. He couldn't find the record. He sang it to the rest of his band and they recorded the track. When he sings the words, "Got a little woman/Lives across the hall," Gilmour plays a note for each syllable. This harmony is blues to the core, but something more. I hear it and I picture a dimly lit hallway and a door being opened. Here's a song about adult pain and pleasure. The bass-line is brooding and sweeping. The keyboard is somewhere between revery and hangover.

Add to this all a cajun sound on "Brown-Eyed Handsome Man," such as Dave Edmunds might do, a version of Carl Perkins' "Movie Magg" which sounds as if it was part of a Gene Autry one-reeler, and a positively thrashing "Honey Hush" (McCartney is a riot when he belts the words, "Don't make me nervous/I'm holdin' a baseball bat.")

You won't hear this on the radio. The age of hit singles, while not exactly gone, was an age for McCartney's generation. He's put together, with a tight band, a CD of songs that should be hits. If they do this well musically with songs they know very few people will hear, they put themselves in good company. How many people have Bob Dylan's GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU? Only as many people as know that that's one of Dylan's most well-realized projects. McCartney's done something similar here. He's interpreted other singer's songs (as Dylan was doing with GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU) and let us hear that they mean something to him.

At 12:30 a.m. today, I was at a friend's house watching a DVD. We got bored of it. My friend shut it off and put on the TV. There were clips of Gerald Ford on many channels. So, after a few minutes of thinking about my first memories of Ford (Nixon's announcement that Ford would be Agnew's replacement as Vice-president pre-empted a showing of a much ballyhooed TV movie of DRACULA, which was going to have Jack Palance in the comeback of a lifetime, and I was one outraged thirteen year old movie buff), another thought came to mind: "In a few minutes," I said to myself, "Chevy Chase is going to be shown bumping his head." I mentioned this to my friend. A minute later, Chevy Chase was shown stumbling from a presidential podium. They say Chevy Chase's running gag involving himself as Gerald Ford tripping over every object that got in his way helped Ford lose the '76 election. This is an amazing idea. It was not even an imitation of Ford. No mimics ever did Ford. Richard Nixon, who'd stepped aside to allow Ford to take his place as president, had been the most mimicked president in history. David Frye, Rich Little, and one Richard M. Dixon owed their livings to Nixon's hangdog expressions and lugubrious vocalizations. Rich Little tried to imitate Ford a few times, but, ace impressionist that he was, he always prefaced his effort with, "This is a hard one," and he'd move to the Jimmy Stewart impression after a phrase or two. Chevy Chase, tall, dar-haired, skinny, handsome, tan and, indeed, obviously graceful, would have to stand behind a podium with the presidential seal on it in order to make the audience realize he was doing a Ford routine. Ford, often shown on the news banging his head on his way out the door of a plane, or hitting someone with a golf ball, was gray (or blond turning gray) muscular going chunky, relatively tall but made to seem shorter by his ill-fitting suits. He was, clearly, a man's man, which is about the best thing a man can hope to be. Chevy Chase played him as a sort of prep-school Inspector Closseau. But the image stuck. Chevy Chase, the least idealogical of comedians, helped push a moderate out of the White House merely by doing shtick having nothing to do with the faintest human observation. Chevy Chase became fairly close to Gerld Ford after Ford's presidency. He has said, a few times, that he regrets the negative effect his comedy had on Ford's fate. But Ford has an odd effect on Chevy Chase's fate. Chevy Chase is now being shown in primetime, whenever a Ford report runs. In history books, people will find more references to Chevy Chase in chapters about Gerald Ford than in chapters about comedy. He left SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE about the time Ford left the White House. Both Ford and Chevy Chase are symbols of 1976. They actually got along with each other. But Ford will always be characterized as a President who was never elected and Chevy Chase will always be the guy who went downhill after SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE. Ford lived a long time after trying for the brass ring. Chevy Chase has spent a lot of time hearing himself called a has-been. Someday Chevy Chase will join Ford in that great golf course in the sky. He doesn't want to be with Belushi. And Ford, I'm sure, isn't currently hanging with Nixon.

I never write about Christmas and only once before have I written without trying to create a paragraph. Since I can't get this journal service to allow me to indent, my paragraphs are created by my placing spaces between blocks of prose. But, to my thinking, a paragraph needs indenting if it is to have the look of a literary effort. So, my Christmas gift to the global community of Fred fans is the presentation of another entry in a block form which bears no resemblance to the paragraphs I was taught existed. Allow me to change the subject without indenting first! When I was seven, my brothers and I went downstairs at four in the morning to see if Santa Claus was dropping off our presents. We'd been sitting on the steps for an hour and finally my oldest brother, Frank (who certainly knew Santa was not a person, but an idea, but who also knew not to open the living room door until many hours after my parents had gone to bed) said to my middle brother, Bob and me, "Come on." We tiptoed down to the living room. Frank slowly turned the door knob and we sent to the fireplace. The stockings were hanging there, containing various toys and candy canes. Frank quietly flicked the switch controlling the overhead light. I grabbed my stocking from a hook above the fireplace. The little bells attached to the plastic holly jingled. I removed a little figure which stood on a semi-circular stick and began balancing it on a grooved support designed for the purpose. How Santa had stuffed the thing in the little stocking was a miracle I couldn't absorb. "God damn it to Hell," said a voice. It was not a jovial bass voice, of the sort a fat, flying philanthropist in red felt and ermine might have. It was a high, unjovial voice I knew to be my mother's. This was a voice she reserved especially for holidays. "Do you know what time it is?" my mother said. "Seven?" said Frank. "Take another guess," said my mother. "Six-thirty," said Frank. "It's four o'clock, for crying out loud. Go back to bed." "We didn't know," said Frank. "The Hell you didn't," said my mother, "Do you think your father and I want to stand here at four in the morning while you rip open all your presents when we're half-asleep? We just went to bed." "We could open them while you slept," said Frank. "Goddamn it, get upstairs, all of you. You can sit on the steps for another three hours if you want but you're not going to go through everything we wrapped before we're even downstairs. Go back upstairs now!" "But I want to see Santa Claus," I said. "What did I just say?" said my mother. Frank and Bob and I began running out of the living room and up the steps. "Jesus Christ!" my mother said. My brothers and I sat on the steps for the three ensuing hours. We were on the steps leading to the third floor, one landing up from my parents' room, and this staircase had a door. We were sitting on the bottom step with the tips of our toes touching the back of the door, just as we had been sitting before we went down. At six-fifty-nine a soft voice which I recognized as my mother's relaxed voice said, "Okay, boys! Christmas." Downstairs we went and, somehow, in front of each stocking, a little foam rubber face, one a clown's, one a drunk's and one an indian's, had been placed. I got the drunk's face. It was a little puppet. I put my fingers in the holes in the back of the face and made the face collapse, project and otherwise look as if it were having a grand old time, with its bowler hat and bright red cheeks. I was sure Santa Claus has put the faces there after my mother had made us go back upstairs. Later that morning, when my grandmother and aunt had arrived, I asked them and my parents why the little man on the semicircular stick with the grooved support had "Made In Japan" written on him if Santa had dropped him off. My mother explained that Santa only had enough elves to make so many toys. He had to order the rest from actual toy manufacturers. I admired this capitalism on Santa's part. I said "Oh!" Little did I know that at four o'clock that morning I'd actually heard Santa shouting "God damn it to Hell! Get back upstairs!"

Today is December 12th. If you visit Google today you'll see that Google has put Edvard Munch's THE SCREAM into their logo. So, if you're reading this after December 12th, 2006, and you click on http://www.google.com/, you probably won't see THE SCREAM woven into the Google tapestry. It's great, though, and I recommend looking at it if it's still the 12th.
Well, there were no rats in my room last night. The one I trapped the night before seems to have been the only one.
Lately I've had several customers asking for books about feral cats. Without reading the books they want, I can tell you to stay away from them. (The cats, not the customers, although you might do well to steer clear of feral cat fans.) I think my favorite magazine title is CAT FANCIER. I wonder if there's going to be CAT FANCIER, FERAL EDITION.
The lady who asked for a book on feral cats yesterday had darting eyes and kept rubbing her nose. I think she had a real temptation to lick the palms of her hands, but she's still at the point of knowing this would be weird. I give her till after Christmas before she starts jumping in kitty litter. She whispered, "Do you have anything...?"
"What?" I said.
She looked as if she wanted to scratch her ribcage. "Anything on...on...feral."
"Feral?"
"Feral cats. Do you guys...Do you guys have a book on feral cats. Does anybody ask for those?" She looked behind her twice, but obviously couldn't find a tail to bite. She looked at me with big eyes welling with tears.
"I'll look one up," I said.
I found one on the computer and showed her the shelf. She grabbed the book hungrily. I'm sure she's sitting in the woods now, pawing through it.
Of course, I get a hungry look when I shell out sixteen-ninety-five for a CD featuring a Paul McCartney vocal (the new one by Al Jareau and George Benson has Paul at the end) so I'm sort of a feral Beatlemaniac.
I have a friend who had a virtually feral cat. The cat had escaped its owners and had become a survivalist. My friend took it in. In order to play with it he'd put on a thick, industrial glove which went up to his elbow and wave his arm in front of the cat. The cat would sink its claws in the glove and my friend would swing the cat around.
"Ro-o-o-ow," the cat would say.
"Yes, my pet," my friend would say, and you'd hear nothing but "Ro-o-o-ow" and "Yes, my pet," for twenty minutes until one of them got dizzy.

Rats aren't anywhere near as loveable as our fantasies dictate.
Occasionally, walking in New York City, I round a corner and see one of those giant inflatable rats union workers put up outside the headquarters of their tormentors. The first time I saw one it scared me. This is because I'm used to seeing the real thing, and the rat-shape is stamped on my subconcious like a Jungian archetype.
I live acrosss from a stable. They have lambs. They have ponies. I think they have what we have: rats. Every winter, as I'm trying to fall asleep at night. I'm usually woken up at least once by a gnawing sound from inside the walls. For the last ten years or so, there's always been something chewing away at some plaster in the ceiling. It bothered me when it started in the nineties, but the creature never descended. I slept well. In the seventies and eighties we used to have to move the refrigerator every so often, to cull the supply of rats who'd died hiding under it after ingesting the poison we'd put in the basement.
But when I felt a pitter-patter going across my quilt last week, which began a three-night vigil lasting until dawn, involving sleeping with the light on and waking up every time something shifted, I set a trap by the bed. I slept in a different room last night. This morning I got up and went to my room. I looked at a second trap I'd set, wedged between my CDs and 78s, and saw it hadn't been tripped. "Rats," I said. Then I looked by the head of my bed. I have no box spring, by the way, just a mattress on the floor. This is because I have a Victorian tendency toward clutter and can't fit an actual bed with a frame in my collector's nightmare of a sleeping quarters. Books, record players and old TVs surround my mattress. At the head of the bed is a little space. That space is where I set the main trap last night. And looking there this morning I saw a gray creature, the same shape as the giant thing the union workers put on the sidewalk to scare their oppressors, except on a slightly smaller scale.
"Mother of f**cking pearl!" I said as I picked up the trap with the rat intact and put it in a Hefty bag.
A rat in a trap still beats a congress of rats dead beneath the refrigerator. Especially if the rat is a rat which crawled within a foot of the bed you sleep in the night before you found it.