Album review: Paul and Linda McCartney: Ram reissue

Paul and Linda McCartney. Photo / Supplied

Graham Reid tunes in to the only album credited to Mr and Mrs McCartney.

He turned 70 this week - in between gigs for HRH and the Olympics - and the music world tweeted its reverence. But when Paul McCartney released Ram in 1971, his second post-Beatles solo album (and co-credited to his wife Linda), critics got out blunt knives and hacked at it, and him.

Rolling Stone's Jon Landau - later Bruce Springsteen's manager and producer - said it represented the lowest point "in the decomposition of 60s rock thus far". At least with Bob Dylan's myth-destroying Self Portrait you could feel hatred, but "Ram is so monumentally irrelevant you can't even do that with it".

He said Ram was "lacking in taste", McCartney was creating superficial music, and noted the Beatles had hidden his weaknesses for sentimental cutesie-pie muzak. Ram was widely dismissed as "suburban rock 'n' roll" and polished-up mediocrity. Domesticity - and the lack of an editorial voice like John Lennon's - could only produce such a result.

Despite the critical drubbing, Ram - long a McCartney fan-favourite - topped the British charts and went to number two in the United States. Its current reissue, as a remastered single disc, double disc (with studio sessions and his exquisitely crafted single Another Day) and massive Deluxe Edition of four CDs (which includes the album in stereo and mono remasters), a DVD of films and videos, copies of handwritten lyrics and Linda's photos and book - has prompted a reconsideration.

Time allows distance from the inevitable Beatle comparisons it suffered (superior solo work from George Harrison and Lennon, McCartney characterised as the man who broke up the band) and reviews today are more generous.

Uncut magazine (giving seven out 10) found it "just occasionally brilliant and historically fascinating" while noting though "nothing quite gels", the single Back Seat of My Car "is better than 90 per cent of Let It Be". Mojo - admittedly a Beatles-obsessed magazine for seniors - gave it four stars, saying you could now "celebrate its defiantly minimalist pleasures" and observed that it sounds "quintessentially McCartney".

Ram came out of the increasingly acrimonious divorce from the Beatles when the McCartneys retreated to the countryside, which explains songs celebrating family life, eating at home and animals, and a homemade cover of him posing with a ram. It also seemed to take swipes at Lennon and Yoko Ono in the condescending Dear Boy (McCartney denies that), Too Many People and Back Seat of My Car ("we believe we can't be wrong").

On the cover was a photo of one beetle mounting another. Interpret that for yourself.

Unlike its low-key predecessor, the self-titled album of home recordings which critics were more forgiving of, Ram took its raw material into a New York studio for serious polishing. That juxtaposition between simplicity (Three Legs, Heart of the Country, Ram On) and slick pop was an uneasy one, but songs like Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey and the orchestrated rock of Back Seat of My Car (former producer George Martin doing the arrangements) were popular and stand up well as professional pop-rock. Ram also sounds terrific.

There are oddities too. The minimalist rave-up Monkberry Moon Delight was influenced by voodoo rocker Screamin' Jay Hawkins (who later covered it). The Deluxe Edition includes an even more unusual item. In 1977 an orchestrated version of Ram appeared as Thrillington, credited to band leader Percy Thrillington. It sank without trace, until it was revealed to have been McCartney's private project. Thrillington is in the big box but demands no reconsideration. But Ram?

Better than critics originally believed, if not "legendary" and memorable pop-rock from a battle-scarred veteran returning to the frontline.

Stars: 4/5
Verdict: Time heals wounds and lets McCartney's second solo album breathe more easily

- TimeOut