• Paul McCartney - Ram On

I’ve been listening to this lovely album a lot this week. Playful, inventive and quite brilliant.                                                                                                 

“Some people take a trip to India, Tibet, hitchhike through Europe. This was my trip to Tibet, only it was Scotland. The album is certainly in tune with the freedom that a lot of people want these days in our strange world where bankers can rip the economy apart. It’s nice to have a little bit of art to fall back on.”

I think I was too influenced by John Lennon’s cynicism before, too influenced by the critics and Band on the Run’s popularity, maybe listened too young. But as with Dylan’s much-maligned Self Portrait, there’s a masterful musical mind at work here.

It’s also the sound of the end of the Sixties, or rather the Sixties never having existed. Rock, revolution, all gone from this record. But it’s not whimsy. Listen to Uncle Albert or Smile Away or Back seat of my car or Ram On…

You can read Pitchfork’s re-assessment by Jayson Greene here - a 9/10 review - and a short interview with McCartney on the making of Ram here (from where the above quote is taken)