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Paul McCartney: Memory almost full

 A l b u m   D e t a i l s


Label: MPL Communications Inc.
Released: 1999.10.05
Time:
 42:07
Category: Pop/Rock
Producer(s): David Kahne
Rating: *****..... (5/10)
Media type: CD
Web address: www.paulmccartney.com
Appears with: The Beatles
Purchase date: 2008.07.27
Price in €: 2,50



 S o n g s ,   T r a c k s


[1] Dance Tonight (P.McCartney) - 2:54
[2] Ever Present Past (P.McCartney) - 2:57
[3] See Your Sunshine (P.McCartney) - 3:20
[4] Only Mama Knows (P.McCartney) - 4:17
[5] You Tell Me (P.McCartney) - 3:15
[6] Mr. Bellamy (P.McCartney) - 3:39
[7] Gratitude (P.McCartney) - 3:19
[8] Vintage Clothes (P.McCartney) - 2:22
[9] That Was Me (P.McCartney) - 2:38
[10] Feet in the Clouds (P.McCartney) - 3:24
[11] House of Wax (P.McCartney) - 4:59
[12] The End of the End (P.McCartney) - 2:57
[13] Nod Your Head (P.McCartney) - 1:58

 A r t i s t s ,   P e r s o n n e l


Paul McCartney - All Instruments, Vocals

Rusty Anderson - Guitar
Brian Ray - Bass Guitar
Paul "Wix" Wickens - Keyboards
Abe Laboriel Jr. - Drums

David Kahne - Programming, Producer, Engineer, Mixing
Adam Noble - Engineer, Assistant Engineer
Steve Orchard - Engineer
Geoff Emerick - Engineer
Paul Hicks - Engineer
Andy Wallace - Mixing
Chris Bolster - Assistant Engineer
Eddie Klein - Assistant Engineer
Kevin Mills - Assistant Engineer
Mirek Stiles - Assistant Engineer
Bob Ludwig - Mastering
Humphrey Ocean - Back Cover, Cover Art
Max Vadukul - Inlay Photography
 

 C o m m e n t s ,   N o t e s

2007 CD MPL Communications 30348
2007 LP Polygram International 7230383
2007 CD Universal Japan 3001
2007 CD Universal 8324059
2008 CD Concord 7230739

The 13 new songs on Memory Almost Full are performed entirely by Paul McCartney (excluding strings) and produced by Grammy Award-winner David Kahne (The Strokes, Sublime, Bruce Springsteen and more).

Memory Almost Full marks the end of Paul McCartney's decades-long relationship with Capitol Records, but is easily one of his most Beatlesque solo outings, a notion particularlyreinforced by the album's 'Abbey Road'-styled closing suite. As with 'Chaos And Creation In The Backyard', McCartney plays almost all the instruments himself, although - instead of working with producer Nigel Godrich - here he drafts in David Kahne for a more muscular, straight-ahead sound.



"Many years from now" must have seemed like an understatement to 16-year-old Paul McCartney, wondering if he'd still be needed or fed at the age of 64. As it turned out, all doubt as to the latter had ceased by his 22nd birthday (though few could have predicted he'd end up washing down those meals with the liquid pride of Seattle). As to the former? Now that McCartney, as of the date of this album's release, has reached that mythic age, his greatest work is 40 years behind him, his solo peak over 30 years gone. Does the world need a new Paul McCartney album? The answer is yes, at least as much as it needs anything else that passes for music these days. With Memory Almost Full, Macca is back. No, it's not Ram or Band on the Run. It might not even be Flowers in the Dirt--in 1989, he had a full band, the support of Linda, and Elvis Costello as a collaborator. Here, he's on his own. Literally: on the majority of the tracks, everything but the strings is multi-instrumentalist Paul. But the surprise is that it's one of his freest, loosest affairs in years, sonically reminiscent of the Tug of War/Pipes of Peace era with nods to Abbey Road in the album-closing medley, McCartney's gravelly tones on "Gratitude," and 2007's version of "Her Majesty," the palate-cleansing "Nod Your Head." It's a surprise because of the album's inescapable sense of retrospection ("Ever Present Past," "Vintage Clothes," "That Was Me") and even a bit of weariness. The next-to-last song is "The End of the End," after all, in which McCartney tells us about what he'd like to happen "on the day that I die." (He wants "songs that were sung/to be hung out like blankets/that lovers have played on/and laid on while listening to songs that were sung," and will likely get his wish.) But it never gets overwhelming, for McCartney mostly resists his tendency to get plodding and maudlin. In fact, Memory Almost Full must be the most sanguine album made during the dissolution of a marriage since...well, ever. "What went out is coming back," he sings in "Vintage Clothes," and from the sound of things, that may not be just wishful thinking. What's past is prologue; if we're lucky, what to come may be McCartney's late renaissance.

Benjamin Lukoff - Amazon.com



Allusion to the digital world though it may be, there's a sweet, elegiac undercurrent to the title of Paul McCartney's Memory Almost Full, an acknowledgement that it was written and recorded when McCartney was 64, the age he mythologized on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, released almost exactly 40 years before Memory. Certainly, McCartney has mortality on the mind, but this isn't an entirely unusual occurrence for him in this third act of his solo career. Ever since his wife Linda's death from cancer in 1998, he's been dancing around the subject, peppering Flaming Pie with longing looks back, grieving by throwing himself into the past on the covers album Run Devil Run, slowly coming to terms with his status as the old guard on the carefully ruminative Chaos and Creation in the Backyard. But if that previous record was precise, bearing all the hallmarks of meticulous producer Nigel Godrich, Memory Almost Full is startlingly bright and frequently lively, an album that embraces McCartney's unerring gift for melody. Yet for as pop as it is, this is not an album made with any illusion that Paul will soon have a succession of hit singles: it's an art-pop album, not unlike either of the McCartney albums. Sometimes this is reflected in the construction - the quick succession of short songs at the end, uncannily (and quite deliberately) sounding like a suite - sometimes in the lyrics, but the remarkable thing is that McCartney never sounds self-consciously pretentious here, as if he's striving to make a major statement. Rather, he's quietly taking stock of his life and loves, his work and achievements. Unlike latter-day efforts by Johnny Cash or the murky Daniel Lanois-produced albums by Bob Dylan, mortality haunts the album, but there's no fetishization of death. Instead, McCartney marvels at his life - explicitly so in the disarmingly guileless "That Was Me," where he enthuses about his role in a stage play in grammar school with the same vigor as he boasts about playing the Cavern Club with the Beatles - and realizes that when he reaches "The End of the End," he doesn't want anything more than the fond old stories of his life to be told.

This matter-of-fact acknowledgement that he's in the last act of his life hangs over this album, but his penchant for nostalgia - this is the man who wrote the sepia-toned music hall shuffle "Your Mother Should Know" before he was 30, after all - has lost its rose-tinted streak. Where he once romanticized days gone by, McCartney now admits that we're merely living with "The Ever Present Past," just like how although we live in the present, we still wear "Vintage Clothes." He's no longer pining for the past, since he knows where the present is heading, yet he seems disarmingly grateful for where his journey has taken him and what it has meant for him, to the extent that he slings no arrows at his second wife, Heather Mills, he only offers her "Gratitude." Given the nastiness of the coverage of his recent divorce, Paul might be spinning his eternal optimism a bit hard on this song, but it isn't forced or saccharine - it fits alongside the clear-eyed sentiment of the rest of Memory Almost Full. It rings true to the open-heartedness of his music, and the album delivers some of McCartney's best latter-day music. Memory Almost Full is so melodic and memorable, it's easy to take for granted his skill as a craftsman, particularly here when it feels so natural and unforced, even when it takes left turns, which it thankfully does more than once. Best of all, this is the rare pop meditation on mortality that doesn't present itself as a major statement, yet it is thematically and musically coherent, slowly working its way under your skin and lodging its way into your cluttered memory. On the surface, it's bright and accessible, as easy to enjoy as the best of Paul's solo albums, but it lingers in the heart and mind in a way uncommon to the rest of his work, and to many other latter-day albums from his peers as well.

Stephen Thomas Erlewine - All Music Guide



His best record since 1989's Flowers in the Dirt, Memory is beautifully elegiac and surprisingly caffeinated. (A-)

Chris Willman
Entertainment Weekly



A vividly tuneful throwback to the peak of Wings, when McCartney had just discovered his personal freedom and exacted revenge on the world with enormous rainbow-colored melodies. [Rating: Excellent]

Aidin Vaziri
San Francisco Chronicle



Large parts of Memory Almost Full do, in fact, sound like Wings on a good day; jaunty, tuneful, laced with high-end harmonies and spangled by a guitar sound straight off Band on the Run.

Neil Spencer
The Guardian



What's most remarkable about Paul McCartney's inaugural album for Starbucks' Hear Music imprint is its cross-promotional hoo-ha. To win it space on his demographic's overloaded cerebral hard drives, Memory Almost Full will play all day June 5th in every Starbucks in the world, in ten of which caffeinated fans will send birthday greetings to the ex-Beatle, who turns sixty-five on June 18th. Nevertheless, by McCartney's recent standards, the album justifies the pop eccentricity he pursues so imperturbably.

"Dance Tonight" is so simplistic it could make you shudder, but repeated plays soon implant its strummed hook, and the rest of the album establishes that the party it sets up is a setup - a bit of Eden before a fall that comes immediately with the peppy but regretful "Ever Present Past," about all the time a sixty-four-year-old has already wasted on work instead of love. "Gratitude" is an astonishingly unrecriminating romantic fare-thee-well from a guy who is going through a bitter divorce. "Vintage Clothes" and "Feet in the Clouds" incarnate his nostalgia and whimsy with some wit and considerable musical invention. And the final tracks make clear that boyish Paulie conceived this record as the old man he is. "End of the End" lays out funeral instructions that include jokes, songs, "stories of old" and assurances of an afterlife not all his contemporaries believe will transpire. And "Nod Your Head" appears to advise aging lovers on their beds of pain. Not simplistic at all.

ROBERT CHRISTGAU - May 30, 2007
Rolling Stones
 

 L y r i c s

Dance Tonight

Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

Everybody gonna dance around
Everybody gonna hit the ground
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

(Chorus)
Well you can come on to my place if you want to
You can do anything you want to do

Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

(Whistling)

Well you can come on to my place if you want to
You can do anything you want to do

Everybody gonna stamp their feet
Everybody's gonna feel the beat
Everybody wanna dance around tonight

(Bridge)

Everybody's gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

Everybody gonna jump and shout
Everybody gonna sing it out
Everybody gonna dance around tonight

Well you can come on to my place if you want to
You can do anything you want to do

Everybody gonna dance tonight
Everybody gonna feel alright
Everybody gonna dance around tonight
Everybody gonna dance around tonight
Everybody's gonna feel alright tonight


Ever Present Past

I've got too much on my plate
Don't have no time to be a decent lover
I hope it isn't too late
Searching for the time that has gone so fast
The time that I thought would last
My ever present past

I've got too much on my mind
I think of everything to be discovered
I hope there's something to find
Searching for the time that has gone so fast
The time that I thought would last
My ever present past

The things I think I did
I do, I think I did
The things I think I did
When I was a kid

I couldn't understand a word that they were saying
But still I hung around and took it all in
I wouldn't join in with the games that they were playing
It went by, it went by, in a flash
It flew by, it flew by, in a flash

There's far too much on my plate
Don't have no time to be a decent lover
I hope it's never too late
Searching for the time that has gone so fast
The time that I thought would last
My ever present past

The things I think I did
I do, I think I did
The things I think I did
When I was a kid
When I was a kid


See Your Sunshine

She makes me feel glad, I want her so bad
My heart is beating madly for her
If you ask me why, I'm not gonna lie
I'll have to say I adore her

Ooh, look what you do to me baby
You're making me feel so fine (so fine so fine)
Step out in front of me baby
They want you in the front line (so fine so fine)
They wanna see your sunshine, oh ya ya

She picks up daisys from a field
She loves to weave them in her hair
I know she knows it isn't real
She still hears music in the air
Its coming from inside her heart
I hope it lasts forver
The sun is shining in the sky
She wants to dance around the world
And though I'd love to be the guy
That gets to walk off with the girl
I'll go along with all she needs
And it will be my pleasure

Ooh, look what you do to me baby
You're making me feel so fine (so fine so fine)
Step out in front of me baby
They want you in the front line (so fine so fine)
They wanna see your sunshine, oh

She makes me feel glad, I want her so bad
My heart is beating madly for her
If you ask me why, I'm not gonna lie
I'll have to say I adore her

Ooh, look what you do to me baby
You're making me feel so fine (so fine so fine)
I wanna see your sunshine


Only Mama Knows

Verse One:
Well, I was found in the transit lounge
of a dirty airport town
What was I doing on the road to ruin
Well my mama laid me down
My mama laid me down

Verse Two:
Around my hand was a plastic band
With a picture of my face
I was crying, left to die
in this godforsaken place
This godforsaken place

Chorus:
Only Mama knows
what she laid me down
in this godforsaken town
Where she was running to what she ran from
Though I always wondered, I never knew
Only Mama knows
Only Mama knows

Middle:
I'm passing through
I'm on my way
On the road, no ETA
I'm passing through
No fixed abode
And that is why....
I need to try
To hold on
I've got to hold on (3X)

Verse Three:
Was it planned as a one night stand
or did she live in disgrace
Well, I never
will I ever
see my father's face
See my father's face

Repeat Chorus (2X)

Gotta hold on... (4X)


You Tell Me

When was that summer when the skies were blue?
The bright red cardinal flew down from its tree?
You tell me

When was that summer when it never rained?
The air was buzzin' with the sweet old honeybee
Let's see
You tell me

Were we there?
Was it real?
Is it truly how I feel?
Maybe
You tell me

Solo

Were we there?
Is it true?
Was I really there with you?
Let's see
You tell me

When was that summer of a dozen words?
The butterflies and hummingbirds flew free
Let's see
You tell me

Let's see
You tell


Mr. Bellamy

I'm not coming down
No matter what you do
I like it up here without you

Go light, Mr. Bellamy
We'll have you down soon

No one to tell me what to do
No one to hold my hand
Bellamy's got a lot to do
And I hope that you'll understand

Nobody here to spoil the view
Interfere with my plans
Bellamy's got a job to do
And he's hoping you'll understand

Steady, Lads
and Easy Does It
Ooooh, don't frighten him!
Here we go...

I'm not coming down
No matter what say
I like it up here anyway

Sit tight, Mr. Bellamy
This shouldn't take long

In the delusionary state
No wonder he's been feeling strange of late
In the delusionary state
No wonder he's been feeling strange of late

Nobody here to spoil the view
Interfere with my plans
Bellamy's got a job to do
And he's hoping you'll understand

Steady, Lads
and Easy Does It
Don't frighten him!
Here we go...
Here we go...

I'm not coming down
No matter what you do
I like it up here without you

(outro) Come down, come down to me (4X)


Gratitude

Gratitude [3x]

I'm so grateful for everything you've ever givin' me
How can I explain what it means to be loved by you
By you, loved by you, loved by you

Show my gratitude, gratitude, show my gratitude
I wanna show my gratitude, gratitude ya.

Well, I was lonely, I was living with a memory
But my cold and lonely nights ended when you sheltered me
Loved by you, I was loved by you, ya, I was loved by you

I wanna show my gratitude, gratitude, show my gratitude to you
Gratitude, show my gratitude to you, oh ya

I should stop loving you
Think what you put me through
But I don't want to lock my heart away
I will look forward to
Days when I'd be loving you
Until then, gonna wish and hope and pray
Ya ya ya ya ya!

I wanna show my gratitude, gratitude
I wanna show my gratitude, show my
Yeah my gratitude

To be loved by you, be loved by you,
Loved by you, to be loved by you

Gratitude [3x]


Vintage Clothes

Don't live in the past
Don't hold on to something that's changing fast
What we are, is what we are and what we wear
Is vintage clothes, vintage clothes:

We jump up for joy
Who cares if we look like a girl or boy
What we are, is what we are and what we wear
Is vintage clothes, vintage clothes:

A little more, a little tall
Check the rack
What went out, is coming back

Don't live in the past
Don't hold on to something that's changing fast
What we are, is what we are and what we wear
Is vintage clothes, vintage clothes:

A little more, a little tall
Check the rack
What went out, is coming back


That Was Me

That was me, in the scout camp, in the school play
Spade and bucket by the sea, that was me

That was me, playing conkers at the bus stop
On a blanket in the blue bells, that was me

The same me that stands here now
When I think that all this stuff
Can make a life that's pretty hard to take it in, that was me

Well that was me, royal iris, on the river
Mersy beat n' with the band, that was me

Yeah that was me, sweating cobwebs under contract
In the cellar, on TV, that was me

The same me that stands here now
If fate agreed that all of this
To make a lifetime, who am I to disagree, that was me

That was me, accapella at the alter
in the middle of the picture, that was me

That was me at the party, sweatin' cobwebs
In a cellar on TV ya that was me

The same me that stands here now
When I think that all this stuff
Can make a life that's pretty hard to take it in, that was me
That was me, ya, that was me!


Feet In The Clouds

Teacher said I had my head in the clouds
They directed, I suspected, disconnected hat in my way

On the street I had my feet on the ground
Stood corrected, well protected, resurrected had it my way

I've got my feet in the clouds, got my head on the ground
I know that I'm not a square as long as their not around
But I find it very very very very very very hard
Yes I find it very very very very very very hard

Love is fab it's like a stab in the heart
My hidden treasure, made to measure, for my pleasure, I had it my way

I've got my feet in the clouds, got my head on the ground
I know that I'm not a square as long as their not around
But I find it very very very very very very hard
Oh I find it very very very very very very hard
Yes I find it very very very very very very hard...

I've got my feet in the clouds, got my head on the ground
I know that I'm not a square as long as their not around
But I find it so hard I find it so hard


House of Wax

Lightning hits the house of wax
Poets spill out on the street
To set alight the incomplete
Remainders of the future

Hidden in the yard. Hidden in the yard.

Thunder drowns the trumpets blast
Poets scatter through the night
But they can only dream of flight
Away from their confusion

Hidden in the yard. Underneath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
the answer to it all

Lightning hits the house of wax
Woman scream and run around
To dance upon the battleground
Like wild demented horses

Hidden in the yard. Underneath the wall
Buried deep below a thousand layers lay
the answer to it all


The End Of The End

At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey
To a much better place
And this wasn't bad
So a much better place
would have to be special
No need to be sad

On the day that I die I'd like jokes to be told
And stories of old to be rolled out like carpets
That children have played on
And laid on while listening to stories of old

At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey
To a much better place
And a much better place
Would have to be special
No reason to cry

(whistling)

On the day that I die I'd like bells to be rung
And songs that were sung to be hung out like blankets
That lovers have played on
And laid on while listening to songs that were sung

At the end of the end
It's the start of a journey
To a much better place
And a much better place
Would have to be special
No reason to cry
No need to be sad
At the end of the end


Nod Your Head

If you really love me baby
Better then stayin in bed
If you really love me baby, nod your head

If you really love me baby
Til you fall down dead, she said
If you ever wanna make it, nod your head

Nod it up, nod it down
Side to side, round and round

If you ever wanna prove it
Then you hang it on a thread
If you ever wanna shake it, nod your head

If you think the life your leading
Is better then the life you lead
If you like the life your livin'
Nod your head

Well nod it up, nod it down
Side to side, round and round
Round and round

If you really love me baby
Better then stayin in bed
If you really love me baby, nod your head
 

 M P 3   S a m p l e s


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