Capitol 11419
Producer: Paul McCartney
Track listing: Venus and Mars / Rock Show / Love in Song / You Gave Me the Answer / Magneto and Titanium Man / Letting Go / Venus and Mars (Reprise) / Spirits of Ancient Egypt / Medicine Jar / Call Me Back Again / Listen to What the Man Said / Treat Her Gently — Lonely Old People / Crossroads Theme
July 19, 1975
1 week
Venus and Mars is significant to Paul McCartney’s career for a number of reasons. Most notably, it became McCartney’s third consecutive Number One album (and fourth overall) since leaving the Beatles. Two other factors suggested that McCartney was willing to leave the Beatles behind him: Venus and Mars was credited simply to “Wings,” rather than “Paul McCartney and Wings,” and it was the first effort by a former Beatle not to be issued on Apple, the label the Beatles founded in 1968.
McCartney said giving the group a supporting credit, as was the case on Red Rose Speedway and Band on the Run, “was an embarrassment to me” in Jeremy Pascall’s Paul McCartney and Wings. “It was never Paul McCartney and the Beatles, Paul McCartney and the Quarrymen, or Paul McCartney and the Moon-dogs. Wings is quicker and easier to say and everybody knows I’m in the group anyway.”
By early 1974, even before Band on the Run had hit the top of the chart, Wings was once again a quintet with the addition guitarist Jimmy McCulloch, formerly Thunderclap Newman and Stone the Crows, and drummer Geoff Britton. Britton’s stay, however, was brief. Although the band recorded “Love in Song,” “Letting Go,” and “Medicine Jar” with the drummer at Allen Toussaint’s Sea Saint houseboat studio in New Orleans, he was replaced by Joe English in February 1975, when the band moved to Wally Heider Studios in Los Angeles.
While the personnel change was an annoyance, as was a minor brush with the law (Linda McCartney was busted for carrying a small amount of marijuana in her purse while the band was recording in Los Angeles), those troubles were minor compared to the Band on the Run sessions.
With little adversity, McCartney emerged with another fine album. The anthem “Rockshow” made references to triumphant moments in McCartney’s career, including the Concertgebow in Amsterdamn, which Wings had played in 1972, and the Hollywood Bowl, where the Beatles had performed a string of historic dates. The album’s title track was reprised on side two, much like the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
Former Traffic member Dave Mason was featured playing guitar on the album’s first single, “Listen to What the Man Said,” McCartney’s favorite song on the album. But McCartney reserved his praise for another guest musician. “I really liked what Tom Scott did on there with the sax,” he told Timothy White in the book Rock Lives. “We just went for it live.”
The public also took a liking to the song, which hit the top of the Hot 100 just as Venus and Mars rose to the summit of the album chart. Another track on Venus and Mars, “Medicine Jar,” which was written by McCulloch and his friend Colin Allen from Stone the Crows, would take on an ominous meaning following McCulloch’s death from heart failure in September 1979. “Jimmy wanted to write on anti-drug song,” McCartney told White. “As to why, I’m not sure, but I’d say he’d seen the personal warning signs. That song, I think, was Jimmy talking to himself. Listening to it now and knowing the circumstances of how he died, I’m sure that’s what it is. He’s really saying to himself, ‘Get your hand out of medicine jar.’ I don’t think he managed to. He was a great guitar player, but he was into a little too much heavy stuff. But if I’m reading too much into it, then let’s just say I’m just as bad as the fucking critics, okay?”
THE TOP FIVE
Week of July 19, 1975
1. Venus and Mars, Wings
2. Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, Elton John
3. One of These Nights, The Eagles
4. Love Will Keep Us Together, The Captain & Tennille
5. Cut the Cake, Average White Band