Venus and Mars

I had occasion to think of Paul McCartney and Wings (or was it just Wings at that point?) album Venus and Mars the other day, so I listened to it for perhaps the first time in forty years. It came out in 1975, the height of my adulation for McCartney, when I tried to get my hands on everything he recorded (that I could afford out of my allowance) and every bit of information about him I could glean (I remember I bought a copy of People magazine with him on the cover, a first and last). I'm pleased to say that the album holds up quite well.

Venus and Mars was a mixture of New Orleans rhythm, jazz, and blues and space age wizardry. The titular planets, represented on the cover by billiard balls, were allegedly stand-ins for Paul and Linda McCartney, and we are assured that "Venus and Mars are all right tonight." It does seem a joyous record, and represents the McCartney spectrum.

We have his silly love song, "Listen to What the Man Said," (who is the man, I don't know) which was the hit single, with Tom Scott on saxophone; his vintage song, "You Gave Me the Answer," the old-fashioned style that John Lennon disdainfully called "granny music;" his growling blues song, "Call Me Back Again," vocals in the style of "Oh, Darling!" his straight forward, kick-ass rock and roll in "Rock Show;" a torch song, "Letting Go," and a song that may just have you burst into years, especially if you have or had a loved one with dementia, "Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People."

There are also a couple of fun songs that make no sense at all--"Magneto and Titanium Man," which uses a few Marvel comics characters (every Marvel fan knows the line, "and the Crimson Dynamo came along for the ride"), and "Spirits of Ancient Egypt," with the lead sung by Denny Laine, which is about--I honestly don't know.

Jimmy McCullough, a guitarist new to the band, composed a very good rock song called "Medicine Jar," which had an anti-drug message. It's therefore sad to know that McCullough died four years later from morphine and alcohol poisoning.

The album was recorded in New Orleans, and featured Allen Toussaint, one of the great New Orleans musicians, playing piano on "Rock Show." McCartney had many of the songs running together, and I suppose in his mind there was some kind of theme. I don't know exactly what, but it works. This is an album that isn't meant to be put on shuffle, as each song moves effortlessly into the next. "Venus and Mars" is in two parts, leading off both sides of the LP, and I can distinctly hear in my head, all these years later, the transition into the following songs.

I stopped buying McCartney albums a few years later, as I started listening to newer sounds, but he has never stopped, despite my absence. But for those years in the seventies, when I was buying records and sitting by my record player, staring at the album covers, he was my king.