Paul McCartney Archive Collection! | Page 15 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

meanmistermustard said
‘Wild Life ‘ is viewed as a heavily undercooked, incredibly raw album by many whereas ‘Red Rose Speedway ‘ is deemed to be very inconsistent. If Paul is looking for some sort of contemporary appreciation for his career then neither of those will be appealing – and the way he’s going about the reissues so far suggests he is.

Looking at what’s left I can see why Paul would be hesitant to get them out. ‘Pipes Of Peace ‘ was a simple choice as you shove it in with the acclaimed ‘Tug Of War ‘ and hype/promote the latter but there isn’t much else where you can do that. That’s not to say they are all not worthy of release, more that Paul seems to be wanting his stronger albums out and appears to have been opting for the more well received. Aside from one single how on earth do you promote ‘Give My Regards To Broad Street ‘? He should have just put out multiple releases, 4 or 5 at a time, start out at the beginning, end stage one with ‘Band On The Run , stage three begins with ‘McCartney II ‘, but he went with the strongest, and the flaws of the project are now blatant.

It’s all incredibly disappointing.  

Don’t forget McCartney II also piggybacking on McCartney.  They indeed really should’ve been released in sets of 5 or so. His discography kind of lends itself to that anyway: Wave 1 — McCartney through Band On The Run ; the beginning of his post-Beatles career, Wave 2 — Venus And Mars through Back To The Egg ; the final years of Wings; Wave 3 — McCartney II through Back in the U.S.S.R.; Paul going solo for good, Wave 4 — Flowers In The Dirt through Paul Is Live; the ‘comeback’ years, Wave 5 — Flaming Pie through Back in the U.S./World; his late-period resurgence. I’d even have settled for them being released EVERY OTHER year in this approach.

And, again, the fact that no hint was given in the Flowers set as to which title(s) will be next can’t help but reek of them not knowing which direction to go next. They’ve essentially painted themselves into a corner on this project by going with all the most popular/acclaimed albums first.

sir walter raleigh said
The most frustrating thing for me is Flowers In The Dirt . That was an exceptional re-release of a great album, with new cool content to come along with it. 

Yet I saw on here and other places at the time of its release that Macca fans were disappointed. 

If it were up to me they should give each album (of merit) a similar look that they gave to Flowers In The Dirt . Obviously not all of Paul’s albums have this pile of Elvis Costello demos, but at least there was excitement behind it as well. 

There are a million better ways to be doing this.   

Making ALL OF THE MUSIC available digitally – instead of basically bribing people to buy the full deluxe editions in order to get them – would’ve gone a long way to avoiding the damage. Instead, certain fans who no longer really buy physical albums are basically seeking out pirated downloads online of the mono mix of Ram , the remastered Thrillington album, the remastered original mix of Tug Of War , the 1988 Flowers demos, and the remastered Flowers non-album B-sides (which, again, annoyingly lacked the ’89 version of “The Long And Winding Road ;” I’m a little more forgiving of the additional omission of “I Wanna Cry” since learning it was actually recorded during the Back in the U.S.S.R. sessions).