September 17, 2021 —– Chart #109
Hello Musical Friends,
Welcome to Friday and the 109th edition of Chart of the day. So, for Chart of the Day #109 we go to 1973 and Sir Paul McCartney. “My Love” is a song by the English–American band Paul McCartney and Wings that was first released as the lead single from their 1973 album Red Rose Speedway. It was written by Paul McCartney as a love song to his wife and Wings bandmate Linda. The single marked the first time that McCartney’s name appeared in the artist credit for a Wings record, after their previous releases had been credited to Wings alone. Released on 23 March 1973, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US for four weeks and peaked at number 9 on the UK Singles Chart. The single was viewed as Wings’ first significant success in the US and helped Red Rose Speedway achieve commercial success.
Wings recorded “My Love” at Abbey Road Studios in London in January 1973. The song is a piano ballad and features an orchestral arrangement by Richard Hewson that was recorded live with the main track. The recording also includes a guitar solo by Henry McCullough that some commentators view as a highlight of the track. In his improvised playing, McCullough imposed his own style on a Wings song for the first time, countering the more regimented approach favored by McCartney.
“My Love” was given an unfavorable reception by many music critics, some of whom considered it overly sentimental and lyrically inconsequential. A live version of the song was included on Wings’ 1976 album Wings over America, and McCartney has continued to perform it in concert as a tribute to Linda following her death in 1998. He included the song in the musical program for Linda’s memorial services in London and New York City, where it was performed by a string quartet. Tony Bennett, Nancy Wilson, Brenda Lee, Andy Williams and Harry Connick Jr are among the many artists who have covered the song. Too sentimental? That’s up to you, but I like the song and it plays well on guitar.
Paul McCartney began writing “My Love” on piano as a love song to his wife Linda. He said he wrote it early on in their relationship; McCartney biographer Luca Perasi dates the composition to 1969 or 1970. The song is a piano ballad in the style of McCartney’s Beatles song “The Long and Winding Road”.
After forming the band Wings with Linda in the summer of 1971, McCartney included “My Love” in the set lists for the group’s two concert tours in 1972. When they performed it at Nottingham University on 9 February for Wings’ public debut, the song included Linda singing lines in response to McCartney’s lead vocal. According to Perasi, the performance was otherwise “almost identical” to the version that the band subsequently recorded for official release.
McCartney invited Richard Hewson, with whom he had worked before while with the Beatles, to arrange the orchestral accompaniment for “My Love”. The song was recorded live at Abbey Road Studios in London with a 50-piece orchestra accompanying the band. The session took place in January 1973, late in the recording for Wings’ second album, Red Rose Speedway. McCartney played Fender Rhodes electric piano on the track, while Denny Laine substituted for McCartney on bass guitar. The idea to tape the basic track and the orchestral arrangement simultaneously went against music industry convention, since the session musicians were paid by the hour. Hewson recalled that he recruited “the best jazz musicians I knew … They had this particular warm sound” and that the reason for the live recording was because McCartney wanted to capture “a certain feeling”. In music journalist Tom Breihan’s description, although the song appears to lack a formal structure, “It chugs and twinkles with the slow confidence of an old torch song, while the orchestra … swells and contracts.”
According to Hewson, around 20 takes were performed over three hours, leaving the musicians tired and having to assure McCartney that their playing could not be improved on. The song contains a guitar solo by Northern Irish guitarist Henry McCullough, who took the opportunity to express himself in his playing and depart from what he saw as McCartney’s regimented approach to recording. McCullough later said, “it had got to the point where I achingly wanted to be the guitar player in the band”, rather than a sideman playing lines dictated by McCartney. McCartney recalled in a 2010 interview:
I’d sort of written the solo, as I often did write our solos. And he walked up to me right before the take and said, “Hey, would it be alright if I try something else?” And I said, “Er … yeah.” It was like, “Do I believe in this guy?” And he played the solo on “My Love”, which came right out of the blue. And I just thought, Fucking great. And so there were plenty of moments like that where somebody’s skill or feeling would overtake my wishes.
According to McCullough, it was the first time that anyone in Wings had challenged McCartney, and it was an approach that others in the band encouraged, in an effort to make Wings a genuine band and improve McCartney’s image. He described the end result on “My Love” as “a stroke of luck, a gift from God really, and you get that in music”.
Studio version:
Live in concert: https://youtu.be/qGStwcniqyI
Keep rockin’ my friends,
Stan