With a little help...

And suddenly there he was again, early 2015: after about thirty years McCartney was back at the top of the charts along with Rihanna and Kanye West with FourFiveSeconds. Thanks to the remarkable collaboration with Kanye. It's not the first time that McCartney works together with others; and that’s quite an understatement for someone who has made fame as one half of a legendary writing duo.

The first partner McCartney worked with after The Beatles’ break-up was wife Linda. A big part of the songs on McCartney's first five post-Beatles albums are credited to both. It is a partnership which was legally contested by Northern Songs, the music publishing which owns almost all the Lennon & McCartney compositions. But Lennon and McCartney lost control over the company and as a result they don’t receive royalties anymore. McCartney is attached to a contract with Northern Songs and to avoid that he also won’t receive royalties for his new songs, a co-authorship with Linda is not a bad idea. Her share provides at least an income again. But Northern Songs couldn’t prove this theory and so the court case was won by the McCartney’s.



How this partnership worked in practice, isn’t entirely clear. It's hard to imagine that they occasionally sat down together to jointly write a song in a few hours; as Lennon and McCartney were accustomed to do so in their early years. Probably it was more like that Linda was just present while Paul was working on a new song and that she mostly served as a sounding board. So more like Lennon and McCartney in their later period: What do you think of this? Should I change this? And occasionally she may have suggested an effective, small subtle addition. As in the case of the James Bond-track Live and Let Die; the reggae-part in the middle was written by Linda. 

Video: Live and Let Die (Live)

Denny Laine
During the Wings-years, Denny Laine became the musical partner of McCartney. But the two never became a real writing duo. The first joint composition can be found on Band on the Run (1973). No Words is a great track, but because all other songs are from such an extremely high level, it is not the album's most notable one.
It remains as a beginning of collaboration. However, McCartney assists Denny Laine with some songs he wrote for Wings, but new shared tracks are not being released. Until 1977, when they're starting writing together again. The album London Town has up to five McCartney-Laine compositions, and they are certainly not the least ones. In addition, the collaboration provides McCartney's greatest success since The Beatles: Mull Of Kintyre.
But again it is of short duration. On the next and final Wings album Back To The Egg, almost all tracks comes from McCartney alone; Denny Laine contributed one song.

Video: Mull Of Kintyre

Eric Stewart
After Wings’ breakup there are various short partnerships, like the ones with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. In 1985 McCartney starts a collaboration with Eric Stewart, best known from the 70's-band 10cc. Together they write a dozen songs, six of which appear on the album Press To Play, among them the single Stranglehold. Also the 10cc-track Yvonne originates from these sessions.

Video: Stranglehold

But the partnership with Eric Stewart isn’t that successful; McCartney certainly isn’t at his peak in this period and the recording sessions for Press To Play aren’t always going ahead in a good mood because of tensions between McCartney and producer Hugh Padgham. Eventually Press to Play becomes Macca's worst selling album to date. But the album’s hidden gem is a McCartney-Stewart composition: Footprints.

Video: Footprints

Elvis Costello
Much more interesting is the next collaboration, the one with Elvis Costello. Together they write about twenty songs, including the hit single My Brave Face. The joint composition Veronica brings Elvis Costello his biggest success in the United States. 
The tracks can be found on as many as four albums: Flowers in the Dirt (1989) and Off the Ground (1993) by McCartney and Costello’s Spike (1989) and Mighty Like A Rose (1991). And that might be a missed opportunity: Just a single album by both artists together would have been a fantastic one.

Video: Veronica - Elvis Costello

The successful collaboration with Elvis Costello will be the last one for a while. Songs written together with others in the nineties and this century, are mostly due to one-time jam sessions like with Steve Miller and Ringo Starr on the album Flaming Pie (1997). The best known example is the single Cut Me Some Slack (2012), which also started as a jam along with the surviving members of Nirvana.

Video: Cut Me Some Slack

Kanye West
It takes until 2014 for a new collaboration, this time with Kanye West. Not exactly one of the most obvious persons to work with. McCartney admits he had his doubts at first: 

My first thought was: where do I start with? He has a lot of talent, but is also very controversial and can take curious decisions." 

But the partnership turns out good. Three joint compositions are officially released, of which McCartney has left his mark most on FourFiveSeconds.

Video: FourFiveSeconds

Commercially most of the collaborations were successful. Especially those with Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson. But creatively it seems that it brought McCartney not always what he expected. And that is not surprising at all. Because, whoever is going to write together with McCartney, that person will always have to compete with that illustrious predecessor. John Lennon's strength was that he could challenge McCartney to pull out all the stops. Moreover, he had no problem to correct Paul mercilessly if he thought something was crap; and just to do that, his successors simply are too respectful towards the ex-Beatle. 

Related Posts:

Macca's 'Mad Masterpieces'
Paul McCartney's Eighties
Paul’s Granny Music

André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

Nieuwere post Oudere post