Rock and roll springtime take 3 (LP 3158 - 3160)

Paul McCartney  Off The Ground (CD, Parlophone Records, 1993) ***  

Paul McCartney  Flaming Pie (CD, Parlophone Records, 1997) ****  

Paul McCartney  Run Devil Run (CD and Vinyl, Parlophone Records, 1999) ****

Genre: Pop 

Places I remember: Music shop at St Lukes Mall - long gone, JB Hi Fi

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Young Boy (Flaming Pie)

Gear costume: Run Devil Run, I Got Stung (Run Devil Run) 

They loom large in his legend (The Album Collection playlists): Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4; Part 5

Active compensatory factors: Compared to the sixties, seventies and eighties, Macca was much quieter in the nineties - just the three studio albums. Elsewhere he was involved in The Beatles Anthology project, and some side projects that I'll get to later in the odds and sods post. 

The new band was promising, with Hamish Stuart, Robbie McIntosh, and Blair Cunningham joining Wix, Linda and Paul. 

Off The Ground has some promising moments (nice production values, the title song and Hope Of Deliverance) but it flutters out in a cloud of earnestness. Macca following through on his social consciousness doesn't make for great tunes.

Flaming Pie is much better. A proper Paul McCartney album that he somehow managed to complete even though Linda was battling cancer (she passed away in 1998). His inspiration came from The Fabs and he produces a nicely understated acoustic feel to the album. Young Boy could be a long lost Beatle song.

It's still got some padding on it - an issue in the CD years. Some of the jams with Steve Miller could have been edited out but overall this is a passable Macca album.

He went back to the oldies again for Run Devil Run and, at this stage - late nineties, this became a fun vanity project. This time he put his back into it and created some fun and quality from the reboot. He also has a few guys joining him who know what they're doing - among them Dave Gilmour, Ian Paice and Mick Green.

Nb. the album on CD also comes with a bonus interview CD.

Where do they all belong? On to the new millennium's studio albums for take 4.