Also known as The Russian Album, Choba B CCCP was the seventh solo studio album by Paul McCartney. Initially released just in the Soviet Union, two years later it was issued internationally.
The album was a collection of cover versions, including several from the early years of rock ‘n’ roll. The songs dated from the 1940s to the 1960s, plus ‘Midnight Special’, a traditional folk song dating from the early 20th century.
They were recorded in the wake of the lukewarm reception to Press To Play, McCartney’s 1986 album which attempted to bring a more contemporary sound to his recordings. With sales low and chart success proving elusive, McCartney decided to go back to his roots.
In the studio
In 1987 Paul McCartney held a series of informal Friday night rock ‘n’ roll jam sessions were held in a studio in the East End of London. The various musicians taking part included Johnny Marr, Trevor Horn, Terry Williams, and Elvis Costello, although most were session musicians.
Impressed with the results, McCartney decided to record some of the songs at his Hog Hill Mill studio in East Sussex. Twenty-two titles were reportedly recorded over two days in July 1987, 14 of which found their way onto Choba B CCCP.
The bulk of the recordings were made on 20 July 1987, with McCartney on vocals and bass guitar, Mick Green on guitar, Mick Gallagher on pianos, and Chris Whitten on drums. They recorded 12 known songs: ‘Kansas City’, ‘Twenty Flight Rock’, ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, ‘I’m In Love Again’, ‘Bring It On Home To Me’, ‘Lucille’, ‘I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday’, ‘That’s All Right (Mama)’, ‘Summertime’, ‘Just Because’, ‘Midnight Special’, and ‘It’s Now Or Never’.
Several more were taped on the following day, with McCartney switching from bass to guitar. He was accompanied again by Gallagher on piano, and Nick Garvey on bass, and Henry Spinetti on drums.
At least four songs were recorded on 21 July: ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’, ‘Crackin’ Up’, and ‘I Wanna Cry’. A third studio day, 22 July, was devoted to mixing the songs from the previous two days.
There was no grand plan to release an album of rock oldies, and the recordings were left for almost a year before it was decided what to do with them. ‘Kansas City’, ‘Lawdy Miss Clawdy’, ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore’, and ‘Midnight Special’ eventually appeared on the ‘Once Upon A Long Ago’ 12″ and CD singles, and received positive responses from critics and fans.
Since Western rock music was banned by the Soviet state, music lovers there had for many years been forced to make do with illegal bootlegs, low quality copies or smuggled imports, McCartney wished to give his fans there something that was unavailable elsewhere, and with his manager Richard Ogden discussed the idea of issuing a record.
Ogden had 50 copies of an album pressed, featuring some of the July 1987 recordings, with artwork designed to look like a Russian bootleg. He gave the LPs to McCartney as a Christmas present that year, and they were distributed to friends and family.
Buoyed by the warm reactions, McCartney asked Ogden to contact the Soviet Union’s only record label, Melodiya, to see if the album could be properly released there.
The title is Russian for ‘Back In The USSR’, a 1968 song by The Beatles. Although the title should be written in Cyrillic script, it is commonly converted to Latin letters as Choba B CCCP. It should be pronounced “snova vee ess-ess-ess-er”.
The cover was designed by Michael Ross. The photograph of McCartney was taken by his wife Linda and had previously appeared inside the gatefold of their 1971 album Ram.
Six songs from the sessions remain unreleased: ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ (The Beatles); ‘Take This Hammer’ (Lonnie Donegan); ‘Cut Across Shorty’ (Eddie Cochran); ‘Poor Boy’ (Elvis Presley); ‘Lend Me Your Comb’ (Carl Perkins); and ‘No Other Baby’ (The Vipers).
The release
Melodiya were granted permission to press 400,000 copies of Choba B CCCP. However, the label initially manufactured just 50,000 copies of the album, which originally contained 11 songs, two fewer than had originally been specified by McCartney’s company MPL.
The first pressings had a yellow rear cover and red Melodiya labels, plus some surprisingly frank sleeve notes by Andrei Gavrilov. The album went straight to the top of the Moskovsky Komsomolets chart.
In 1998 a second version of the album was released in the USSR, and saw the addition of two songs, ‘Summertime’ and ‘I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday’. On 26 January that year McCartney appeared on the BBC Russian Service show Granny’s Chest for a phone-in, which was heard by 35 million people.
Approximately 350,000 copies of the second pressing were made. They had white Melodiya labels and MPL logos, as well as a white rear cover with sleeve notes by McCartney and NME journalist Roy Carr.
Choba B CCCP was initially released only in the Soviet Union on 31 October 1988. In a reversal of previous releases, exported and bootleg copies became commonplace in other countries. These often commanded high prices due to their scarcity.
MPL also imported a number of copies which were sold through the official Paul McCartney fan club, the only official outlet in the west.
As he had done before, some of the songs were issued as b-sides for Flowers In The Dirt 12″ and CD singles. ‘I’m Gonna Be A Wheel Someday’ and ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ accompanied ‘My Brave Face’; and ‘I’m In Love Again’ was one of the ‘This One’ b-sides.
Two more songs from the Choba B CCCP sessions were also issued in that period. ‘I Wanna Cry’, a studio jam with lyrics by McCartney, appeared on the CD single ‘This One’, and ‘It’s Now Or Never’, an Elvis Presley cover, was released in the UK in February 1990 on the NME charity album The Last Temptation Of Elvis.
Following the USSR’s collapse in 1991 the 13-track version of Choba B CCCP was released worldwide, on cassette tape and compact disc. It came out on 30 September 1991 in the UK, and on 29 October 1991 in the USA.
The album reached number 63 in the UK and 109 in the USA – its sales were likely hindered by dedicated McCartney fans having already bought imported versions.
The compact disc edition of the international release added a 14th song, ‘I’m In Love Again’, another song which had previously been released on the CD single ‘This One’.
The title of the album “Choba B CCCP” is an incorrect transliteration, using a combination of Latin (English) — “Choba” — and Cyrillic (Russian) — “B CCCP” — letters. The correct transliteration (using ALL Latin letters), which would help English speakers pronounce the title, should be “Snova V SSSR.” And, as indicated in the text, it should be pronounced “snova vee ess-ess-ess er.”
You’re right, of course, and the title ideally should have been written correctly, but unfortunately the website can’t handle Cyrillic letters very well. Also the album is commonly known among English-speaking fans (and on McCartney’s own website) as Choba B CCCP, so it would be a bit confusing if I changed it here!
Your resume of the history of Choba B CCCP is impressively accurate except for a couple of timing details. I knew Paul’s former Manager Richard Ogden quite well at the time and what I remember him saying what happened was that Paul wanted the so-called “Russian” album to come out as his next EMI album release (it would have been a year before “Flowers in the Dirt”) but Parlophone and Richard did not want it to be officially released at all, because doing so would set up an album recorded for fun in two days by two “scratch” bands to be critically compared to John Lennon’s carefully crafted and acclaimed rock and roll album. So Richard suggested to Paul that MPL should secretly release it as a bootleg in the UK, completely without EMI’s knowledge, dressed up to look like it had actually come out of Russia, hence the title and Mike Ross’s sleeve design. Paul embraced the idea but when MPL’s legal eagles heard about it they insisted that Richard should inform EMI, who predictably enough immediately put the mockers on it. I remember Richard saying that Paul had really been into the idea and was somewhat cheesed off that EMI had been told about it, but the damage was done. To try to smooth things over Richard manufactured 50 copies at his own expense, using an ancient 12″ hand press at EMI’s factory, which they kept to make “test pressings”, with the sleeves hand-printed by Mike Ross and presented them to Paul for Christmas, each disc sealed and numbered 1-50. I understand that Paul kindly signed and gave a copy to everyone involved with it. But in the new year he was still pushing for it to be officially released so Richard took the whole Russian theme one step further and persuaded EMI to license it exclusively to the Soviet State record label Melodiya, with whom EMI cooperated quite often on classical recordings, knowing full well that even though Melodiya was not permitted to export, thousands of copies would immediately flood into the West, as you quite rightly point out it did. I remember Richard dining out at the time on his experiences of flying twice to Moscow to negotiate with the top brass in Melodiya as the Soviet Union collapsed around their ears.
Thank you Tom! That was really interesting to read.
I have an original that my mom purchased in Russia in 1990, it has summertime and I’m going to be a wheel someday already in it, so it would be incorrect that they were only on the rereleased 1998 version.
I did enjoy the info on it though, thank you.
Why do you say the original liner notes by Andrei Gavrilov were “surprisingly frank”? I’d like to read them, or at least some examples of their frankness.
I’ve added a translation (I don’t speak Russian, so some of it may be incorrect) to the second page.
Here’s a sample:
“In recent years, McCartney has often been reproached – and, in general, rightly – that his new recordings have already become so coldly professional that the lively breath of rock, so characteristic of the Beatles, has long been felt in them. The Beatles could afford to hit the wrong chord, get a little out of tune with their voice, even get confused in the lines of the verse – all this gave their songs an immediate charm. McCartney has everything checked out, like on a computer. By the way, this is why many preferred his live recordings to studio ones – during live performances, sometimes the crazy atmosphere of the early sixties suddenly reappeared, when the Beatles played in very dubious institutions in Hamburg or the Liverpool Cavern, offering listeners not skill and experience , not the precision of the arrangements and the filigree of the performance, but the enthusiasm and youthful arrogance.”
It’s not wholly negative, but I can’t imagine a new McCartney album going out with that kind of commentary attached.