The Beatles - Calico Skies

  

The Beatles - Calico Skies

(soniclovenoize reimagining)

1. Free As a Bird

2. The World Tonight

3. Any Road

4. Calico Skies

5. Now and Then

6. Rising Sun

7. Real Love

8. Little Willow

9. Rocking Chair in Hawaii

10.  Beautiful Night

11.  Grow Old With Me

12.  Brainwashed

Happy New Year's Eve!  To welcome in 2024, here is a reimagining that has been in the back of my mind for sometime, and the release of “Now and Then” spurred me to complete it.  This is a reimagining of a late-1990s Beatles album that presumes that The Threetles not only completed all four of the proposed Lennon demos given to them by Yoko Ono, but continued to make an entire album of Threetles material.  One could consider this the final entry (chronologically speaking) into my “What If The Beatles Didn’t Break Up?” series of album reimaginations.  This reimaging is notable because it features my own mix of “Now and Then”, which attempts to present the song in a mid-90s-sounding fashion, sounding closer to “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love”.  I have also remastered the Brainwashed tracks to sound closer to the rest of the album, specifically lowering the volume of George’s lead vocal with Ozone 10.  

As with my previous Beatles “What If?” albums, we will follow four key rules:

1. All material presented must be more or less concurrently-recorded and represent a specific timeframe.  This rule is easily sufficed, as both Paul and George were in the midst of recording Flaming Pie and Brainwashed, respectively, as they were working on completing the Lennon songs given to them by Yoko. The only exception given is the drum track and lead guitar of “Now and Then”, which was recorded in 2022.  

2. Balance of all Beatles songwriting contributions.  Here, we will use the four Lennon songs, with four Flaming Pie songs and four Brainwashed songs.  Note that Ringo's theoretical contribution is included in Paul’s “Beautiful Night”.

3. All songs must be Beatle-esque in nature, and less reliant on the idiosyncratic stylings of the individual Beatles’ solo career.  

4. The songs must flow together as a cohesive whole.  Note that, this being a theoretical late-90s release, this album would have been primarily a compact-disc release, we are not beholden to two 20-minute sides.  With that said, the album is still organized into two halves–this is just how I hear albums!

How this album relates to the actual Beatles Anthology, is up to the listener.  It might make the most sense to consider this album and the Anthology projects as separate (but related) entities; perhaps The Threetles used the momentum of the Anthology project to make one final Beatles album, released in 1998?  Also of note is the unifying influence here: Jeff Lynn.  Clearly he was the driving force of the Lennon demos and George’s album, but he was also producing much of Flaming Pie.  It’s also super convenient that the drums on both Flaming Pie and Brainwashed sound explicitly Ringo-esque!  And as with all of these Beatles reimaginings, suspension of disbelief is required for maximum enjoyment.  

Calico Skies opens with the centrifugal force of the project itself– “Free As a Bird”, taken from Anthology 1.  This sets the stage for the tone of the album and is followed by one of Paul’s strongest offerings in this period, “The World Tonight” from the otherwise overhyped Flaming Pie.  George then ups the ante with “Any Road”, using Ozone 10 to make the vocals less upfront, or at least mixed to a similar level as John and Paul songs; George’s opening banter is moved elsewhere in the album.  Paul’s fantastic “Calico Skies” follows but is more of a linking track to John’s “Now and Then”.  

Here I have used the extracted stems courtesy of Rock Band Stems, to make a new mix of “Now and Then” that sounds closer to the mid-90s mixes of “Free As a Bird” and “Real Love.”  This includes capturing the drum room sound from the aforementioned using Camaleon2, and mixing George’s guitars and Paul’s bass to be more upfront.  Also, we have mostly stripped away Giles Martin’s orchestration (although it does return briefly near the end of the song) and have completely removed Paul’s modern backing vocals and (misguided) attempt at “completing” the song with new lyrics.  Left with no chorus, I have removed the last few bars of the chorus entirely, and restructured John’s vocal to sing “Now and then I want you to turn to me…” (cryptically Lennon-esque, imo!).  Thus this section of the song simply becomes a middle-eight, for an otherwise chorus-less Lennon song (which is totally fine for an album-cut like this).  Additionally, I have mixed Paul’s slide guitar solo upward and added a spinning Leslie effect to it, in order to make it more Beatle-esque.  Finally, it is mastered to be as equally loud as “Free as a Bird” and “Real Love”, and ideally sounds of the era.  

George’s “Rising Sun”--one of the highlights from Brainwashed, imo, follows to close the first half of Calico Skies.  “Real Love” from Anthology 2 hits the reset button, followed by Paul’s exemplary “Little Willow” from Flaming Pie.  It is gently crossfaded into George’s “Rocking Chair in Hawaii”; although technically better George songs were on Brainwashed, this one really serves the vibe of Side B the most precisely.   Paul’s “Beautiful Night” follows, which we are here considering a collaboration with Ringo, sufficing as his contribution to the album (anything from Vertical Man would have ruined Calico Skies, sorry/not-sorry!).  This is followed by “Grow Old With Me” from The John Lennon Anthology, featuring George Martin’s orchestral arrangements and overdubs–the closest to a “Beatles” version we have (ignoring the terrible Ringo Starr cover).  Closing the album is one of George’s best songs, “Brainwashed”; although this really starts to bend my Rule #3, I will give an exception, being what it is–the grandest of finales.  Perhaps George got the last laugh over Paul in the end?  

Sources used:

The Beatles - Anthology 1 (1995)

The Beatles - Anthology 2 (1996)

The Beatles - Now and Then (2023 stem extraction by Rock Band Stems)

George Harrison - Brainwashed (2002)

John Lennon - John Lennon Anthology (1998)

Paul McCartney - Flaming Pie (1996)

 

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Paul McCartney & Wings - One Hand Clapping

 

 Paul McCartney & Wings – One Hand Clapping
(soniclovenoize reconstruction)

Side A:
1. One Hand Clapping
2. Jet
3. Let Me Roll It
4. Junior’s Farm
5. My Love

Side B:
6. Little Woman Love/C Moon
7. Maybe I’m Amazed
8. Band On The Run
9. Wild Life
10. Hi Hi Hi

Side C:
1. Live and Let Die
2. Soily
3. Go Now
4. Blue Moon of Kentucky
5. Bluebird

Side D:
6. Suicide
7. Let’s Love
8. Sitting At The Piano/All Of You
9. I’ll Give You A Ring
10. Baby Face
11. Blackbird
12. Country Dreamer
13. Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five

My how time flies! Why is the pandemic not over yet!? Sorry for the delay, but it’s finally here-- the second of a trilogy of famous live albums that never were, in memory of the live music we can’t quite yet experience again. This is a reconstruction of the proposed 1974 live in-the-Abbey Road studio album One Hand Clapping by Paul McCartney & Wings. Originally meant as the studio rehearsals for a 1974 Wings Over Australia tour that never happened, the proceedings were filmed for a possible film release, akin to The Beatles’ Get Back project eight years earlier. Despite the high quality of live studio performances—especially of the then-unreleased “Soily”--McCartney shelved the entire project, as was the fate of a number of other self-financed Wings film projects throughout the 70s and 80s. This reconstruction attempts to replicate what a double-LP release in 1974 could have been like, using the best possible sources, including official releases and painstakingly-remastered bootleg recordings. All tracks have been sequenced in the actual recording order, spread across four sides of a vinyl record.

The arrival of Band on The Run signaled a few changes in Paul McCartney & Wings. Firstly, it was McCartney’s first post-Beatles “masterpiece album”, finally equaling the quality of a typical Beatles album. Miraculously, the album was a product of the trio of Paul, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, as drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough quit the band just before the start of the album’s recording sessions. This eventually led to the second major change for Wings: a new line-up. A month before Band On The Run’s December 1973 release, Wings broke in their new guitarist Jimmy McCulloch by recording some of Linda’s songs as Suzy and The Red Stripes, as well as a session for Paul’s brother Michael, as McGear, in February 1974.

Wings finally recruited drummer Geoff Britton and headed to Nashville in July to rehearse for a planned tour of Australia. While they were there, Wings also recorded the single “Junior’s Farm” (one of this author’s favorite Wings songs) as well as a handful of country-tinged tracks under the name The Country Hams. Rehearsals for the theoretical tour continued across the ocean in late August at McCartney’s old stomp: Abbey Road studios! But McCartney thought a little more of these activities than just simply rehearsals, as he employed boy-genius engineer Geoff Emerick to record the session, as well as David Litchfield to film and direct the sessions for a possible documentary film release.

The first day of rehearsals on August 26th produced full-band versions of “Jet”, “Let Me Roll It”, “Junior’s Farm”, “My Love”, “Little Woman Love”/”C Moon”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and a short instrumental jam which would become the theme song for the project: “One Hand Clapping”. The second day of recording produced takes of “Band On The Run”, “Wild Life”, “Hi Hi Hi”, “Live and Let Die”, “Soily”, “Go Now”, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Bluebird.” Day three of recording saw Paul performing a number of songs alone at the piano, which has posthumously been dubbed “The Cabaret Sequence.” Paul went though supposedly impromptu performances of “Suicide”, “Let’s Love”, “All of You,” “I’ll Give You a Ring” and a ‘proper’ take of “Baby Face.”

Day four saw the entire band returning to the studio to add overdubs to the live tracks recorded on the 26th and the 27th: “My Love”, “Live and Let Die”, “Band On The Run” “Bluebird” and “Jet”. August 30th, the fifth and final day of recording, was a unique staging meant as an interlude segment in the One Hand Clapping film: a solo acoustic performance by Paul in the backyard of Abbey Road studios! Although Paul again drifted through several impromptu takes of a number of classic 1950s rock songs, he did record fairly complete takes of Beatles classic “Blackbird”, the then-unreleased Wings b-side “Country Dreamer” and the as-yet unreleased “Blackpool.” Afterwards, Paul retreated back into Studio Two to track a tight solo piano version of “Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”, which mysteriously morphs into the Band On The Run studio version in the actual unreleased One Hand Clapping film, as well as all known audio recordings.

And that was essentially the last anyone heard of One Hand Clapping, aside from archival releases and bootlegs of varying quality. While the film was completed later in 1975, it was never released; Paul had a tendency to finance vanity projects himself, comfortable with leaving them in the vault, such as the animated Bruce McMouse Show which did not see release until 46 years later! This line-up of Wings eventually returned to Abbey Road in November to start work on their next album, Venus and Mars, recording a handful of songs: “Rock Show”, “Love In Song”, “Letting Go” and “Medicine Jar.” Needing a change of scenery, Wings relocated to New Orleans in early 1975, where Britton exited the Wings due to personal disagreements with the bands’ guitarists. Joe English was hired as a session drummer to finish the album and was later asked to join Wings when the album was completed. Venus and Mars was released in May to critical and commercial success.

But what of the missing live-in-studio One Hand Clapping? Only “Baby Face” received overdubs during the Venus and Mars sessions—a New Orleans jazz band—presumably for possible b-side inclusion. While the film made it’s rounds on the bootleg circuit and eventually as a bonus on the 2010 Band On The Run box set, various tracks have trickled out on archival releases over the years, as well as it’s presumed entirety on various bootlegs. For this reconstruction, we will cull all of these sources and piece together as much as we are able to—including the live between-song banter, which is essential to the spirit of these recordings. All sources from bootlegs have been painstakingly remastered to match the fidelity of the pristine officially-released tracks, and all of the songs are presented mostly in the order of witch they were recorded, as per Chip Madinger and Mark Easter’s excellent Eight Arms To Hold You: The Solo Beatles Compendium. We will also use only the two most complete songs from Paul’s “Backyard Session”, as the goal here is to present a facsimile commercial double LP that could have been released in late 1974 in lieu of a Band On The Run tour.

Side A begins with the theme of the film and the title track, “One Hand Clapping”, taken from Yellow Cat’s fantastic One Hand Clapping bootleg, the best quality boot of the band-sessions. Following is “Jet” and “Let Me Roll It” from the 2010 Band On The Run box set, with the studio banter restored from the bootlegs. “Junior’s Farm” and “My Love” follow, both taken from the Yellow Cat bootleg. Side B fades in with the medley of “Little Woman Love” and “C Moon” from the Yellow Cat bootleg, followed by “Maybe I’m Amazed” from the 2011 box set for McCartney. Next is “Band On The Run”, again taken from the 2010 Band On The Run box, followed by a fraction of “Wild Life” and a roaring “Hi Hi Hi”, both from the Yellow Cat bootleg, to close out the first disc.

Disc two begins with “Live and Let Die”, taken from The In-Laws soundtrack. Next is the fantastic studio take of “Soily” that was never released, as well as Denny Laine’s “Go Now” and Paul’s go-to cover, “Blue Moon of Kentucky”, all taken from the Yellow Cat bootleg. We end the side with the final full-band recording of One Hand Clapping, “Bluebird” from the 2010 Band On The Run box. I chose to condense all of the Cabaret Sequence and Backyard Sessions together on Side D, starting with only the Cabaret material shown in the film. Using the bootleg MoMac’s Hidden Tracks Vol 7 as the source for the core, I patched in the proper demo of “Let’s Love” from 2014 Venus and Mars box set, which was presumably recorded during the One Hand Clapping sessions. Ending the sequence is “Baby Face”, again from the 2014 Venus and Mars box, featuring overdubs anachronistically recorded 1975 for this presumed 1974 release. Since nothing from The Backyard Sessions actually made the cut into the One Hand Clapping documentary, I will simply include the two most complete takes of “Blackbird” and “Country Dreamer”, with dialog edited to give the illusion that and random passerby had requested the songs. The album closes with “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” taken from the 2010 Band on the Run box; instead of segueing into the album version of the “Band On The Run” coda fade, I have used the early live version for continuity.

Special thanks to Mark Heggen for making the awesome cover artwork-- something that One Hand Clapping never had in any iteration!

 


Sources used:
Band On The Run (2010 Deluxe Edition)
The In-Laws (soundtrack, 2003)
One Hand Clapping (bootleg, Yellow Cat Records, 1994)
McCartney (2011 Deluxe Edition)
MoMac’s Hidden Tracks Vol 7 (bootleg, 2002)
Venus and Mars (2014 Deluxe Edition)



flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
* md5 files, track notes and artwork included

The Beatles - The 1970s Beatles Albums (upgrade)

The Beatles – The 1970s Beatles Albums
(a soniclovenoize reimagining)
October 2019 UPGRADE

Disc 1 – Instant Karma! (1970)

 
Side A:
 1.  Instant Karma!  (We All Shine On)
 2.  All Things Must Pass
 3.  Every Night
 4.  I Found Out
 5.  Beware of Darkness
 6.  Working Class Hero
 7.  Momma Miss America

 
Side B:
 8.  It Don’t Come Easy
 9.  Isolation
10.  Junk
11.  My Sweet Lord
12.  Maybe I’m Amazed
13.  Love
14.  Hear Me Lord

Disc 2 – Imagine Clouds Dripping (1971) 

 
Side A:
 1.  Power To The People
 2.  What is Life
 3.  Dear Boy
 4.  Bangla Desh
 5.  Jealous Guy
 6.  The Back Seat of My Car

 
Side B:
 7.  Imagine
 8.  Another Day
 9.  Back off Bugaloo
10.  Oh My Love
11.  Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey
12.  Isn’t It A Pity

Disc 3 – Living In The Material World (1972)

 
Side A:
 1.  Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
 2.  Hi, Hi, Hi
 3.  John Sinclair
 4.  I’m The Greatest
 5.  Who Can See It
 6.  Woman Is The Nigger Of The World

 
Side B:
 7.  Live and Let Die
 8.  New York City
 9.  Living In The Material World
10.  Single Pigeon
11.  Happy Xmas (War Is Over)
12.  My Love
 

Disc 4 – Band On The Run (1973)

 
Side A:
 1.  Mind Games
 2.  Jet
 3.  One Day At A Time
 4.  Mrs. Vanderbilt
 5.  Photograph
 6.  Be Here Now

 
Side B:
 7.  Band On The Run
 8.  I Know (I Know)
 9.  Don’t Let Me Wait Too Long
10.  Out Of The Blue
11.  The Day The World Gets Round
12.  Let Me Roll It
 

Disc 5 – Good Night Vienna (1974)

 
Side A:
 1.  Venus and Mars/Rock Show
 2.  Whatever Gets You Thru The Night
 3.  Love In Song
 4.  So Sad
 5.  Steel and Glass

 
Side B:
 6.  Junior’s Farm
 7.  (It’s All Down To) Good Night Vienna
 8.  Dark Horse
 9.  #9 Dream
10.  You Gave Me The Answer
11.  Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)
12.  Venus and Mars (Reprise)
 

BONUS Disc 6 – Skywriting By Word Of Mouth (1980)

 
Side A:
 1.  (Just like) Starting Over
 2.  Take It Away
 3.  Dream Away
 4.  Ballroom Dancing
 5.  Watching The Wheels
 6.  Wanderlust

 
Side B:
 7.  Tug of War
 8.  Nobody Told Me
 9.  All Those Years Ago
10.  The Pound is Sinking
11.  I’m Losing You
12.  You Can’t Fight Lightning
13.  Beautiful Boy (Darling Boy)


Well hello there.  This is a long requested re-upload/upgrade, and I’ll finally make good on my promise to do it: The 1970s Beatles albums.  A series of reimaginings that ask “What if The Beatles didn’t break up in 1970?”, my collection, included here as one singular set, includes five proper 1970s Beatles albums: 1970’s Instant Karma, 1971’s Imagine Clouds Dripping, 1972’s Living In The Material World, 1973’s Band On The Run and 1974’s Good Night Vienna.  I am also offering my long-lost 1980 Beatles reunion album Skywriting By Word of Mouth as a sixth bonus disc of this set. 

Pretty much all sources have been upgraded, specifically from John’s Signature Box (which contains all original mixes), George’s Apple Years box set and Paul’s Archive Series releases.  Some slight tracklist alterations were made to fix errors or misjudgments I made seven years ago.  More importantly, all crossfades were recreated and, in my opinion, improved over the originals. 

Source used:
George Harrison – The Dark Horse Years 1976-1992 (2004)
George Harrison – The Apple Years 1968-75 (2014)
John Lennon – Sometime in New York City (2005 remix)
John Lennon – Signature Box (2010)
John Lennon – Imagine (2018 box set)
Paul McCartney – Band On The Run (2010 remaster)
Paul McCartney – McCartney (2011 remaster)
Paul McCartney – RAM (2012 remaster)
Paul McCartney – Venus and Mars (2014 remaster)
Paul McCartney – Tug of War (2015 remix)
Paul McCartney – Red Rose Speedway (2018 remaster)
Ringo Starr – Stop and Smell The Roses (1994 remaster)
Ringo Starr – Photographs: The Best of Ringo Starr (2007)

flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR Pro and Goldwave --> flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included

Paul McCartney & Wings - Red Rose Speedway 2LP (upgrade)

 

Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway

(double-album reconstruction by soniclovenoize)

June 2019 UPGRADE

Side A:

1.  Big Barn Bed

2.  My Love

3.  When The Night

4.  Seaside Woman

5.  Get On The Right Thing

Side B:

6.  Best Friend (live)

7.  Tragedy

8.  I Would Only Smile

9.  One More Kiss

10.  Single Pigeon

11.  Little Lamb Dragonfly

Side C:

1.  I Lie Around

2.  Hi Hi Hi

3.  Loup (1st Indian on The Moon)

4.  1882 (live)

5.  The Mess (live)

Side D:

6.  Night Out

7.  Mama’s Little Girl

8.  Country Dreamer

9.  Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands of Love/Power Cut

This is an upgrade to my reconstruction of a double-album version of Paul McCartney & Wings’ 1973 album, Red Rose Speedway.  Originally conceived as a musically versatile 2LP with contributions from other members of Wings outside of McCartney, the album was trimmed down to a more commercial single-disc configuration, which was eventually released to mixed acclaim.  Although an official release of McCartney’s final 2LP configuration appeared in 2018, the tracklist was incongruent and had a rather lackluster flow; this reconstruction uses those original 1973 mixes, but configured with my own tracklist from 2013 that presents the material in a more pleasing track order. 

Upgrades to this June 2019 edition are:

• All sources taken from the Red Rose Speedway 2018 box set, using all original 1973 mixes.
• “Big Barn Bed” and “My Love” are properly crossfaded, as originally intended. 
• Addition of “Hi Hi Hi” to Side C tracklist.
• Original, unique edit of the a capella outro to “Get On The Right Thing” onto the album versio
• Original, unique shorter edit of “Loup” which is segued into and thus serves as an into to “1882”.

After a pair of solo albums--the second of which spawned some heavy hits--Paul McCartney was determined to form a new musical group he could front with his wife Linda and rediscover the excitement of his early Beatles days.  By 1971, he had recruited former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and session drummer Denny Seiwell, the later who had already performed on McCartney’s RAM from the previous year.  Wings was born, and their debut album Wild Life was hastily written and recorded that summer.  A disappointing and lightweight release, McCartney admitted it was the sound of a band in its infancy, as the band had not had the time to evolve and, frankly, improve beyond musical acquaintances just jamming.  The only way to do that was to play live… 

Early 1972 saw the addition Joe Cocker guitarist Henry McCullough to the lineup and the band embarked on a university tour of the UK in February.  Boldly, the quintet entered Olympic Studios with the legendary Glyn Johns in March to record the new batch of road-tested songs, which also included material penned by other members of Wings besides McCArtney: “Big Barn Bed”, “When The Night”, “The Mess”, “Single Pigeon”, the Thomas Wayne & The DeLons cover “Tragedy”, “Mama’s Little Girl”, the spacey instrumental “Loup (1st Indian On The Moon)”, Linda’s “Seaside Woman”, Denny Laine’s “I Would Only Smile”, “Thank You Darling” and “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.  Although an album’s worth of material was recorded, the quality was only marginally better than the previous year’s Wild Life, and much of the studio time was wasted with Wings still trying to find their musical grounding.  Fed up with what he perceived as just messing about rather than serious work, Glyn Johns quit the project at the end of the month.  Only the session’s final recording, “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, was released as a single in May, to a perplexed audience.  Is this a rock band or a children’s song?  It was barely anything in between. 

Following the aborted Olympic Sessions, Wings embarked on another European through July and August, appropriately dubbed Wings Over Europe.  While continuing to perform the new material tracked during the Olympic Sessions, Wings added even newer compositions to their repertoire, such as “1882”, “Best Friend”, “Soily”, Laine’s “Say You Don’t Mind” and McCullough’s “Henry’s Blues”.  After the conclusion of the tour, the group recorded the reggae-influenced track “C Moon” in September for a future single release.

Doubling down to not only make a proper album but to produce it themselves, Wings recruited engineers Alan Parsons and John Leckie to record a second batch of new Wings material, this time in the luxurious Abbey Road Studios.  The Wings Over America tour had whipped the band into shape, as the late-September/early-October Abbey Road sessions produced material more refined and colorful than either Wild Life or the Olympic Sessions:  the rave-up “Night Out”, country ballads “One More Kiss” and “Country Dreamer”, four songs that were later conjoined into a medley “Hold Me Tight/Lazy Dynamite/Hands of Love/Power Cut” and the rocker “Hi Hi Hi”, which was selected to pair with “C Moon” as a stand-alone single release in December.  Additionally, Wings went into McCartney’s vault to finish off three half-finished tracks from the Fall 1970 RAM Sessions: “Get On The Right Thing”, “Little Lamb Dragonfly” and “I Lie Around”.  Suddenly, the group had the basis of an album with promise. 

The end of October saw the band track another new song, this time with Paul’s old producer George Martin: “Live and Let Die”, intended for the subsequent James Bond film.  Much to Alan Parson’s disappointment, that song was never destined for this ongoing album project, now titled Red Rose Speedway.  But looking over the quantity of material recorded with Glyn Johns in March, Parsons in September and the refurbished RAM outtakes, it became obvious that this second Wings album could be a double-LP!  Returning to the studio in November for follow-up sessions, a subpar “1882” was tracked along with a lackluster instrumental called “Jazz Street”.  It was decided that mutitracked tapes of “1882” and “The Mess” from the August tour were better than their studio counterparts and received overdubs; likewise, a live “Best Friend” was also used, with added overdubs.  January 1973 saw the band track the final addition to the album, the ballad “My Live”, recorded live in the studio with an orchestra. All of the pieces were now in place. 

Assembling the vast amount of material into a cohesive double album was not an easy task.  Several test masters have been discovered throughout the years, showing McCartney's difficulty in arranging the material cohesively.  An acetate assembled December 13th, 1972 had the following configuration:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / When The Night / Single Pigeon / Tragedy / Mama’s Little Girl / Loup / I Would Only Smile

Side B – Country Dreamer / Night Out / One More Kiss / Jazz Street

Side C – I Lie Around / Little Lamb Dragonfly / Get On The Right Thing / 1882 / The Mess

Side D – My Love / Best Friend / Seaside Woman / Medley

That tracklist was shifted around a bit, and the final double-album configuration, dated January 30th, 1973, looked like:

Side A – Night Out / Get On The Right Thing / Country Dreamer / Big Barn Bed / My Love

Side B – Single Pigeon / When The Night / Seaside Woman / I Lie Around / The Mess

Side C – Best Friend / Loup / Medley

Side D – Mama’s Little Girl / I Would Only Smile / One More Kiss / Tragedy / Little Lamb Dragonfly

After a week of test listening, it was decided that a more concise (and thus more marketable) album was needed, and the material was paired down considerably.  A single-disc master was prepared on February 22nd, 1973, which included:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / My Love / Get On The Right Thing / Country Dreamer / Medley

Side B – Single Pigeon / One More Kiss / Night Out / Seaside Woman / Mama’s Little Girl / Tragedy / Little Lamb Dragonfly

After more tinkering, the final single-disc master was prepared March 26th, 1973:

Side A – Big Barn Bed / My Love / Get On The Right Thing / One More Kiss / Little Lamb Dragonfly

Side B – Single Pigeon / When The Night / Loup / Medley

Red Rose Speedway was released in April and although the critics were skeptical of the album’s lightweight whimsy, “My Love” became a number one single anyways.  Likewise, many fans claimed the album had potential but was missing something, although they couldn’t quite put their finger on it.  In hindsight, the nine tracks released only told half the story of Red Rose Speedway; the album is best heard in the session’s entirety, as its value is best understood as the sum of its parts.  While neither the released Red Rose Speedway nor the album's worth of outtakes are exceptional, when combined, it becomes an exceptional body of work.  While not a blockbuster, it shows a band with the audacity to defy critics with a double album no one really asked for; that, a massive underdog, is it's strength.  But how can we assemble this mess of three different sessions—four, counting the live tracks—into a sensible double LP? 

Analysis of the running order of both the December 13th and January 30th 2LP acetates show a clumsy construction, although they both contain a number of isolated ideas that we can adopt into our more cohesive Red Rose Speedway.  Firstly, we assign the notable rockers to begin each side of the double LP: “Big Barn Bed”, “Best Friend”, “I Lie Around” and “Night Out”.  Secondly, we assign the two mid-tempo rockers to end Sides A and C (”Get On The Right Thing” and “The Mess”) and the two epics to close Sides B and D (“Little Lamb Dragonfly” and The Medley).  Next, we disperse the songs led by the other members of Wings onto different sides of the album: Linda’s “Seaside Woman”, Laine’s “I Would Only Smile” and his vocal on “I Lie Around”.  Likewise, the two (mostly) instrumental tracks “Night Out” and “Loup” should be placed on separate sides as well.  Then we simply fill in the blanks, using some song pairs from both acetates that flow pleasantly, assembling four 20-minute LP sides.  

My Side A begins with what seems to be the keystone track of Red Rose Speedway, the country-funk rocker “Big Barn Bed”.  It is crossfaded (correctly, as opposed to the current remasters) into the hit single of the album “My Love”.  “When The Night” follows, flowing into “Seaside Woman”.  Closing the side is “Get On The Right Thing”, which features my own edit of the a capella ending from the rough mix, crossfaded from the standard album version, creating an interesting end to Side A.  Side B begins with “Best Friend”, followed by a grouping of the folkier tracks: “Tragedy”, “I Would Only Smile” hard edited into “One Last Kiss”, “Single Pigeon” and probably the best song of the set, “Little Lamb Dragonfly”.

Side C begins with the joyous “I Lie Around”, the only way to logically open the second disc, in my opinion.  One complaint Red Rose Speedway had earned is the lack of McCartney’s rock fare and its emphasis of lightweight pop and ballad.  To offset this, I’ve included “Hi Hi Hi” to give the second disc some punch; although not originally intended for Red Rose Speedway, it really does give it the mid-album jolt it needs.  To counter-balance this, I’ve edited nearly half of “Loup” down to merely a segue track into the fantastic live “1882”.  That song is crossfaded into “The Mess” to make a continuous live performance to close out the side, patching McCartney’s "The Mess" dialog from the 1996 remaster of Red Rose Speedway, which was mysteriously absent from the 2018 remaster.  Side D opens with “Night Out”, a fun, albeit pointless track.  Followed by the serene “Mama’s Little Girl” and jaunty “Country Dreamer”, the album closes with the only logical possibility:  The Medley.

Sources used:
Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (1996 Steve Hoffman remaster)
Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (2018 Delux Edition)

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