The Bar Is Higher For Ex-Beatles

Paul McCartney was used to adoration as a member of The Beatles. The dozens of songs he wrote sold millions of copies and generated critical acclaim as some of the best pop music ever written. So, imagine his surprise when his first solo effort after the breakup of the Fab Four was critically slagged. And imagine his further surprise when his second solo effort, “Ram”, released in 1971, was also put through the critical wringer. Granted the bar for the guy who wrote Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby and The Long & Winding Rd is going to be higher than for most other artists but the dislike for this record was almost universal within the music press.

Jon Landau in Rolling Stone called it “incredibly inconsequential” and monumentally irrelevant” and “emotionally vacuous”. New Music Express said it was “an excursion into almost unrelieved tedium” and Robert Christgau called it a “bad record” Oh, and John Lennon(feuding with Paul at the time) called it “muzak”.

It wasn’t all negative although Melody Maker was a bit back-handed when they said “Its a good album by anybody’s standards and certainly far better than the majority of released by British groups and singers. Trouble is you expect more from a man like Paul McCartney.

Source: Tom King/wsau.com

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