Review Summary: I'll hold you for as long as you like...I'll hold you for the rest of my life...
To compare a Beatles solo album to any album made by the band itself will almost always be a bad decision and lead to disappointment on your part. It's well-known that none of the four Beatles had particularly consistent solo careers, all producing flashes of brilliance (yes, even Ringo), but also with their fair share of duds. Still, when thinking of albums that are considered worthy of standing alongside such pillars of popular music as
Abbey Road and
Revolver, four are usually named: George Harrison's ambitious 1970 triple album
All Things Must Pass (certainly the most musically potent of any solo record), the emotional roller coaster that was John Lennon's
Plastic Ono Band, Paul McCartney's 1971 indie record
RAM, and Ringo's 1973 self-titled album, the closest the Beatles ever came to officially reuniting (all four appear at various points on the record). Yet as excellent as these records are, they are all decidedly the work of each individual; only the most casual listener would ever mistake these for actual Beatles albums. None of them successfully capture the so-called "magic" that made the Beatles what they were, the atmosphere possessed by their records that defies description.
It might come as a surprise when I say that
Flaming Pie, while decidedly a Paul McCartney solo record through-and-through, comes the closest out of any solo Beatles album to capturing that Beatles atmosphere. There is somewhat of an explanation for this, though; the record was made immediately following McCartney's work on the Beatles Anthology project, a lengthy endeavor that saw, among other things, the three surviving Beatles come together to record two songs alongside old John Lennon demo tapes. As McCartney put it, "It reminded me of The Beatles' standards and the standards that we reached with the songs. So in a way it was a refresher course that set the framework for this album." Wanting to go with a more organic feel for the record, McCartney relied heavily on ELO mastermind Jeff Lynne, who produced much of the record as well as provided some of the backing instrumentation. Also appearing at times were old Beatle cohorts Ringo Starr (who provided drums and backing vocals on a couple of songs) and George Martin (who assisted with production and string orchestrations), as well as both Paul's wife Linda (ill with cancer at the time, it would claim her life the year after
Flaming Pie's release) and son James.
Having such an organic feel really works in the album's favor; while a lot of McCartney's studio albums are notorious for their at-times laughably excessive attempts at experimenting with modern trends (see
Pipes of Peace,
Press to Play,
NEW),
Flaming Pie's intimacy is a refreshing change-of-pace. Paul is at his best (and, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, his most Beatle-esque) when he's doing softer acoustic numbers. "The Song We Were Singing" very clearly expresses nostalgic feelings for the Beatle days (even if the group in question is not explicitly mentioned), and songs like "Somedays" and "Calico Skies" harken back to the types of ballads one could find on
Revolver or
The White Album, so much so at times that one wonders whether this was an intentional attempt on Paul's part to recreate those songs. There was a certain maturity to McCartney's post-'65 ballads that more resembled that of a man twice his age than the 20-something he was back then, and that maturity is on full display here. The difference between the early ballads and the ones on here is sincerity; as good as Paul was at painting a picture of sincerity in the early days with his soothing tenor vocals, it's not difficult to tell that Paul was singing about feelings and ordeals he had yet to experience himself. This is not the case on
Flaming Pie. Never does one feel that Paul is playing a character or expressing any sort of false sentiment; this record is unequivocally *him*, and the sentiments grow all the more powerful when you take into account what his wife was dealing with at the time.
This maturity doesn't completely take away from the album's liveliness, however. "The World Tonight" is a mid-tempo rocker that features one of Paul's best late-career vocals, and Steve Miller comes in to provide energetic guitar and vocals on a trifecta of tracks: "If You Wanna", "Young Boy", and "Used to Be Bad". Overall the record is not stacked with these types of songs, though, and yet even still it manages to keep from growing overly slow and maudlin. There's an almost wistful optimism to the album, as if Paul is steeling himself to prepare for whatever the future may hold as his wife is slowly losing her battle with cancer. The closer "Great Day" causes this emotion to resonate particularly strongly, as Paul repeatedly sings, perhaps as a means of comforting himself,
"it's gonna be a great day, and it won't be long". Of course, this may not have been the intended effect, considering the song itself was written in 1970 and Linda was not determined to be terminally ill until after the album's release, but in hindsight it's a haunting sign of things to come.
Flaming Pie is not a ground-breaking album by any stretch of the imagination, but it is an important one in the saga that was the Beatles and their respective solo careers. Is it as good an album as
RAM? Probably not, but in ways it's almost a more gratifying listen. It's an exercise in nostalgia and sincerity never before seen and never since replicated in a Beatles album, solo or otherwise. Whether one wishes to interpret it solely as McCartney attempting to capture some of that "Beatles magic" (paying tribute to the Fab Four in the process), or perhaps also as what would end up being a final tribute to wife Linda,
Flaming Pie touches emotional chords that not even primal therapy-era John Lennon could manage, and for that reason alone, it remains one of the very best solo Beatles albums.
