Bip bop, bip bop, bam

Starting my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

12/12/71 : Wild Life - Wings

Whilst I accept that Wings did some decent stuff in their time, I've previously endured Macca's two solo albums from around this time and believe the group didn't exactly sprint out of the starter gate. So it's fair to say my expectations are not high for this.

But even so, I wasn't expecting it to be this bad. The man has written some beautiful lyrics and songs in his times and, whilst I'm not the hugest fan of his voice, I do accept that he can sing. However, there is, unfortunately, absolutely no evidence of talent in any of those areas present on this album. The songs are rudimentary at best, the lyrics appalling (often reduced to non-words to fill in the gaps) and the singing ranges from mediocre to just horrible. All in all, I think it's fair to say I didn't like this.

We're at #11 in the charts with a new entry this week on the start of a six week run, with this being as high as it got - and it was lucky to do that well. The top five this week were T Rex, Hot Hits 8 (starting a run of three weeks at #2, which seems bizarre), Led Zeppelin, Jim Reeves and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, with the next highest new entry being The Who (#24), with the somewhat dubiously titled Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy.

Wikipedia has loads on the album (260 milliPeppers) and it tells us this is their debut album and Macca's "goal for the album was to record the songs quickly, in a few takes and with minimal overdubs" - gee thanks, Paul! A load of it is on the formation of the band - apparently Linda couldn't play any instruments and didn't want to be in the band, but Paul wasn't having any of it. The rest of it is on the creation of the album and it goes into waaaay more depth than anyone needs, so I will spare you. Critically, the reviews were either "this is bad" or "well, it's not as bad as his previous solo stuff" - amusingly, the retrospective review section suggests that generally people's views have got worse over the years. Commercially, it did way better than it deserved but didn't hit the top anywhere, with #2 in Spain being the closest it came - it got to #10 in the US.

And so, somewhat bizarrely, discogs.com tells us you're going to have to spend a tenner to get a decent copy of this or you can spend £136.85 on a mint original copy - but if you want to go really mad then you can splash out £150 on a 3 CD box set from '18 which features the album, some rough mixes (I hate to think what they sound like) and some bonus audio (ditto). Why would anyone do that to themselves?!? This is a very bad album - run away, run away... 

19/12/71 - Interestingly bonkers

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