Flowers In The Dirt, Paul McCartney’s eighth solo studio album, and his final one of the 1980s, was a commercial success and marked a creative return to form.
The 1980s was a decade of highs and lows for the former Beatle. It began with a drugs bust and incarceration in a Tokyo prison, continued with the loss of John Lennon, the disbanding of Wings, and a succession of albums and singles of varying quality.
Creatively adrift, McCartney took stock in the wake of Press To Play, 1986’s attempt at a modern sound which was largely spurned by the public. The Choba B CCCP collection of rock ‘n’ roll classics helped reignite his muse, and a songwriting collaboration with Elvis Costello took the musical renaissance a step further.
McCartney and MacManus
McCartney and Costello – real name Declan MacManus – had first met in 1982, when they were both working on albums at AIR Studios in London. McCartney was recording Tug Of War, while Costello was making Imperial Bedroom. Linking the two was former Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick, who was producing Imperial Bedroom and engineering Tug Of War at the same time.
The two musicians met in the summer of 1987 at MPL’s offices in Soho Square, London. They began by finishing off some half-completed songs: Costello’s ‘Pads, Paws And Claws’ and ‘Veronica’, and McCartney’s ‘Back On My Feet’.
The pair then reconvened at McCartney’s home studio in Sussex, writing a series of songs together and recording 24-track demos. According to Costello, they wrote together in the office above the studio, using “two acoustic guitars, an electric piano and a big notebook”.
Costello encouraged McCartney to jettison his public persona and focus on his songwriting. Interviewed by Musician magazine, he said: “There’s no denying that he has a way of sort of defending himself by being charming and smiling and thumbs-up and all the bit. I said once that I thought he should try and step from behind that, at least insofar as the music was concerned.”
The collaboration reignited a creative spark for McCartney, and helped tighten some of the weaknesses of his solo works. However, Costello favoured raw production, and drew on a number of melodic ideas which recalled The Beatles. Both these factors eventually led McCartney to choose other producers to work on Flowers In The Dirt.
The thing with Elvis was that I kept picking up this slight feeling of John. I would sing a line and he would come up with a witty acerbic foil to it, like John used to. I said to Elvis, ‘This is getting a bit like me and John. I’m being me and you’re being him. How come you get all the witty lines and I get the dumb-twit ones?’ But Elvis has this great sarcastic quality in his voice. I said, ‘My God, that’s mine and John’s whole style.’ I’d write some romantic line and John would write the acid put-down, It wasn’t eerie; it was nice having that rapport. It is the nearest I have come to John. We sat down as equals.
Nine songs by Costello and McCartney are known to have been demoed at this time, eight of which have been bootlegged: ‘The Lovers That Never Were’, ‘Twenty-Five Fingers’, ‘Tommy’s Coming Home’, ‘So Like Candy’, ‘You Want Her Too’, Playboy To A Man’, ‘Don’t Be Careless Love’, and ‘My Brave Face’. Of those, ‘Tommy’s Coming Home’ and ‘Twenty-Five Fingers’ remain unreleased. Another song, ‘Flying To My Home’, was also written at this time.
I started writing the bridge of ‘My Brave Face’, that Beatley descending ‘Ever since you’ve been away…’ We were doing a vocal rehearsal in the kitchen and he sang the line ‘Take me to that place.’ I hit the low harmony on ‘place’ and he went, ‘Oh no, no. This is getting to be too much. That’s exactly like ‘There’s A Place’ or ‘I’ll Get You’’.
Three of the songs – ‘You Want Her Too’, ‘Don’t Be Careless Love’ and ‘My Brave Face’ – were subsequently recorded for Flowers On The Dirt. ‘The Lovers That Never Were’ was recorded for Off The Ground in 1993, while ‘So Like Candy’ and ‘Playboy To A Man’ appeared on Costello’s 1991 album Mighty Like A Rose.
It’s an interesting fact to know that MY BRAVE FACE was first recorded with Horn and Lipson. Do you know the source of this info?
really love this album. It might be my favorite… I haven’t decided yet, though…
It’s my favorite of his post-70’s albums. I can’t really listen to anything that followed it though.
Put It There is a personal favorite of mine…gotta be among my top 10 favorites of his solo career.
Paul needs a “John”. Especially someone not daunted by his status. He always works better with others to challenge him, Denny, Elvis, The Firemen collaboration is some of his best work these days..
This is a much under rated album.
If they could have reconciled to work together more we could have experienced even better things. It would have been fascinating to see where they would go over a number of albums.
I definitely think John needed Paul more to give variation to his melodies and to provide those glorious McCartney middle eights. Later Beatles Lennon and solo Lennon music tune wise was repetitive and sparse, what Goldman called restricted like “the blind mice.” Solo McCartney music is musically and genre very diverse. Lennon even resorted to stealing a Zappa song on STINYC album, using the “stewball” folk tune for “happy Xmas tune”and repeating tunes for different songs like “how do you sleep” and “steel and glass” being same tune.
As McCartney many bootlegs, b sides and outtakes all show, McCartney has had all styles of music pouring out of him for many decades now. As the Lennon’s had many nannies for Sean, I always thought musically he just burned out in his retirement but fortunately due to “coming up” inspiring him, he again briefly returned to music just before his death. He was in early solo days trying to coast on the hippie activist causes, but that ended when the war wound down and disco became big thus he was lost and chased Elton and Bowie for hits and partied with Nielson before his househusband excuse.
Elvis can not stand Paul as a person and they will probably never work with each other again. There were some hairy arguments between the two musicians in the studio during the recording of this album, Paul railed Elvis for having a bad attitude.
I don´t like this album very much. Put it there is good, though, and the Brian Wilson-esque middle eight in Motor of love is lovely. My Brave Face, Figure of eight and This one are alright, but the latter should have had the “This swann is gliding” parts cut away”, that would have made it more dense and catchy. Its middle eight works impeccably with the rest of the song.