Pitchfork
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Paul McCartney wasn’t exactly in the commercial doldrums in 1989, but he certainly understood ignominy was within his grasp. Press to Play, his 1986 album, generated no real hits to speak of. George Harrison—the young kid he brought into the Beatles back in 1958—bested Paul in 1987 with Cloud Nine, an album that contained the number one smash “Got My Mind Set on You” and a lesser hit called “When We Was Fab,” an affectionate nod to his time as a Moptop that played right into the lingering nostalgia from the 20th anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in ’87.
Savvy as ever, McCartney decided it was time to strengthen his ties to his Beatles past on Flowers in the Dirt, the 1989 record that effectively opens the third act in his monumental career. McCartney designed Flowers in the Dirt to be taken out on the road in his first international tour in over a decade and while that in itself would’ve been a noteworthy event, he realized he should have a record to peddle as well. He’d been working on new songs but the project came into focus when his management suggested it might be a good idea to team with Elvis Costello, the former punk who had been a card-carrying member of the Beatles fan club since he was a kid.
Most of the contemporary press regarding Flowers in the Dirt highlighted the collaboration between Paul McCartney and Elvis Costello, positioning Costello as the salt to McCartney’s sugar. Comparisons to John Lennon were encouraged, as the publicity team pushed the idea that the songwriters composed “eyeball to eyeball,” just like the two Beatles did at the start of their career. Costello encouraged McCartney to dig out his iconic Höfner bass—he hadn’t used it since the Beatles—and the two wrote enough material to constitute a full record. But after initial sessions with Costello as a producer didn’t go as expected, Paul sought out other options, bringing in a bevy of producers (Micthell Froom, David Foster, Steve Lipson, and Trevor Horn) to help cast as wide of a net as possible with these songs. With McCartney also behind the boards, there was no shortage of cooks in the kitchen.
So it’s no wonder that things rarely cohere. “My Brave Face,” one of the four McCartney/Costello compositions (“Où Est le Soleil?,” originally a bonus track on the cassette and CD versions, is now officially canon), opens the album with a melodic punch. Any momentum it provides is crushed by the stiff synth-funk of “Rough Ride,” a Lipson/Horn production that should’ve been relegated to a B-side but instead exists as the worst second track ever released on an album. From there, Flowers in the Dirt proceeds in fits and starts, sometimes achieving a small measure of grace. McCartney always excelled in familial love, so “We Got Married” and the valentine to his son “Put It There” pull on the heartstrings. But the deliberate proto-digital gloss flattens the album, softening the edges of the Costello collaborations and disguising the loveliness of such sweet miniatures as “Distractions.”
It is the rarest of things: a Paul McCartney record where you can sense his need to be loved. Maybe if McCartney’s confidence hadn’t been shaken by Press to Play’s commercial underperformance—and if his competitiveness hadn’t been stoked by Harrison’s success—he would’ve settled on a single collaborator. But the parade of producers on Flowers in the Dirt suggests he’s trying every style in hopes of a hit. Maybe the hit could arrive on adult contemporary radio, so he has David Foster—the architect of Chicago’s ’80s comeback—polish “We Got Married.” Maybe he could squeak out an MTV hit with the help of Trevor Horn, or perhaps Costello could give him an assist on college radio, or maybe stoke some memories of the Beatles. McCartney decided to cover his bets, and he wound up with a record that feels constrained and insecure.
All of this calculation makes the Archive Collection—both in the slim double-disc and the absurdly overstuffed box—so revelatory. Both variations are built upon the demos McCartney recorded with Costello, both containing the spare guitar-and-voice renditions that recall the Everly Brothers more than Lennon/McCartney. These nine songs were recorded in the autumn of 1987 and they crackle with energy. They’re ragged and right, feeling more alive and cohesive than the album that came later. Some of the songs would show up on later records by both—“So Like Candy” is a centerpiece on Mighty Like a Rose and “The Lovers That Never Were” performed a similar role on Off the Ground—but the songs are best heard as a piece. Costello was too verbose and florid to be Lennon, but his melodic gifts and sarcasm challenged McCartney, who never relied on easy turns of phrase here. That’s why it’s better to have the songs heard as a collective: They’re stronger when played together.
The recently released Super Deluxe Edition contains full-band demos from 1988, which may have been the full-band renditions that McCartney decided were unsatisfactory. They’re livelier than Flowers in the Dirt, with “The Lovers That Never Were” suggesting the intricate melodicism of Costello’s Burt Bacharach collaboration Painted From Memory and “Playboy To a Man” riding an organ groove straight out of the Attractions. While some of the B-sides and mixes are entertaining—“Back on My Feet,” the flip of the UK-only hit “Once Upon A Long Ago” is an amiably anonymous ’80s adult contemporary cut and the highlight of the bunch—they wind up bolstering the slightly desperate nature of McCartney in 1989. The demos, however, offer a different story. Here, McCartney isn’t concerned with commerce, he’s just thrilled to be working with a musician who could be his equal as a writer and a performer. That’s the divide between the initial release of Flowers in the Dirt and the reissue: the 1989 LP is made for a mass audience, while the reissue reveals the art lurking underneath the gloss.
Tue Mar 28 05:00:00 GMT 2017