Wild Life

Bobber (April 11, 2012)

All in all, a pretty bad album with just a few highlights. Certainly not an album I enjoyed listening to.

Ronald (October 12, 2010)

I think paul was searching for an identity outside of the beatles.he wanted to create a new style but, sorry to say that most of the songs in this album are uninspired.it couldn't reach the heights of many of his well-crafted songs.I consider this album as a downfall on his musical career even though that some of the songs are enjoyable.But i couldn't believe that this album was made by a genius who once was a member of an extraordinary band called "the beatles".He's capable of doing a much,much,much,much better album than this.The whole world knew that.

Erika (June 7, 2007)

\"Wild Life\" is nowhere near as good as \"McCartney\" or \"Ram\" but it\'s still enjoyable. I like the whole underproduced sound of the album, and Linda\'s voice fits in very well. Though there are a lot of throwaway songs on this album, there are a few GREAT ones - I\'m talking about \"Tomorrow\" and \"Dear Friend.\"

Bruce Beatlefan (April 20, 2007)

Wild Life, the debut album of Paul McCartney\'s new group Wings, is historically considered a musical flop, one of the occasional lowlights in McCartney\'s amazing recording career. Now I\'m not going to say that it\'s not so, or that the music here is brilliant (it isn\'t, see my initial review below), but the negative comments mostly ignore what\'s happening in the making of this album, which is compelling and probably unique in the history of \'major\' pop music.

This album is the chronicle of a fascinating question: can we take a mother, photographer by trade, whose previous musical training mostly consisted of playing Rolling Stones records and make her over into a legitimate part of a rock and roll band? Yes, Linda McCartney lent some backing vocals (and dubious songwriting credits) in McCartney and Ram. Now she is being asked to become a fully-functional (and eventually touring) band member, contributing backing (occasionally lead) vocals, keyboards, and, perhaps most difficult of all, integrating with an ensemble of experienced professional musicians, learning the timing, the give and take, to say nothing of being a female presence in a male-dominated environment. To further say nothing of the group her bandmate was formerly a member of.

This album is a real-life \"American Idol\" episode, with two major differences: Linda McCartney is not competing against other anonymous starry-eyed wannabes, this album is released into a market alongside the likes of Who\'s Next, Led Zeppelin IV (or whatever you want to call that album) and Fragile and Aqualung. Secondly, her performance is not critiqued by Paula Abdul and her sometimes supportive, sometimes humorously caustic friends, but rather the unsmiling self-appointed Guardians of the Art known as record reviewers, who were already pissed off at Paul McCartney for \'breaking up the Beatles\'. Those kindly souls spent the rest of the decade giving Linda some pretty exquisite and shameful vitriol.

With that in mind, it\'s not surprising that Paul McCartney \"simplifies the playbook\" in the Wild Life album. Listen to the album with an empathetic ear toward Linda and it takes on a whole new life. You can almost hear Paul coaxing Linda along, taking her by hand to enable her to perform to an acceptable level. Certainly the songs \"Some People Never Know\", \"Wild Life\", \"Bip Bop\" have training wheels attached. The song \"I Am Your Singer\", a favorite of nobody, becomes the album\'s centerpiece, Linda\'s Big Moment, as she vocally duets with Paul and delivers the keyboard solo...I hear this song I and I feel like a nervous parent watching his child perform his first piano recital (I\'m sure Paul felt the same).

Overall, this album is quite bland. The only fire in this album is when Paul dismisses his bandmates for his personal letter to John Lennon (\"Dear Friend\"). If Wild Life was simply a group of unreleased sessions to train Linda and integrate the other group members (Denny Laine and Denny Seiwell) these songs would probably have the status of being legendary bootlegs which \'would have made an interesting album\', instead of a failed album that diminished Paul\'s wavering popularity (at that time). Sometimes I feel like that may have been the wiser choice, to leave most of these songs unreleased.

So, did the Linda experiment succeed? I would say yes, overwhelmingly. She was no Stevie Nicks (but Stevie Nicks on the best day of her life was not ten percent the woman, mother, and wife that Linda was); she was no Carly Simon. Her backing vocals beautified Paul McCartney\'s music for the next 26 years until her sad death. Linda recorded more music with Paul than did John Lennon! Wings had a lot of personnel rotation, several members leaving the group at various levels of disguntlement. In a rock and roll world where the \'band-chick from hell\' is an archetype, the disgruntled ex-Winger (particularly Henry McCullough) expressed frustration with her limitations, but nobody, ever, spoke unkindly about her, or stated that she was his reason for leaving the group.

Linda McCartney\'s life is one of the most fascinating I have encountered, in many ways even more interesting than her more famous husband. The Wild Life album is unique and fascinating because it places a microscope on the one part of her life which has never truly been attempted by anyone else in the entertainment business.

Bruce Beatlefan (April 27, 2006)

Paul McCartney at this stage of his career was yearning to be a part of a touring band, playing before live audiences (remember that the Beatles\' abortive \"Get Back\" project was launched for just that purpose). So the Beatles break up, he marries Linda, coaxes her to give up a successful career in photography so she can learn keyboards and sing, then surrounds himself with two Denny\'s (Laine and Seiwell) and voila, a touring band. All of which makes it somewhat shocking that their first album would contain one song that moderately rocks (\"Mumbo\") and seven that rock about as hard as...well, Barry Manilow rocked harder than this! Now that\'s not necessarily bad, and a few of these laid-back sometimes folksy sometimes bluesy tunes are nice, but nothing here will bring anyone to his or her feet. The best way to enjoy the Wild Life album is to have a couple of beers past your limit, stay up a couple of hours past your bedtime, then put the CD on headphones...then Wild Life sounds downright terrific (four stars). Otherwise, two stars, for an overall grade of three stars. The currently issued CD contains four bonus tracks--each track is precisely of the same ilk as those above.

John (September 14, 2005)

What I loved about Wild Life was the raw just jamming in a garage sound that it had. Many of McCartney's albums end up over produced but not this one, a still hung over from the Beatles McCartney jammin in his garage with Linda and this new group of guys called Wings. Not McCartney's best Wings album by a country mile but far better than it's reputation.

John (July 14, 2005)

A very weak album. A lot of garbage covers up a couple of gems. Tomorrow is classic Macca. It's so damn irresistible. It suffers a cruel fate here because it is relatively unknown in the McCartney canon. Love is Strange is an enjoyable cover of an old song. In fact it improves on it. Dear Friend is a tough listen but a great song. Paul was obviously in pain here and you can hear it. The rest of this mess is nothing to write home about. So I wont.

clay parker (June 18, 2005)

Its no "Ram", but it does have musical gems such as "Dear Friend", and "Tommorow" Beautiful album..

Harry (May 27, 2004)

Great overlooked album. Side one - brilliant. Side two, opens with the albums two weakest tracks before kicking into the wonderful Tomorrow and Dear Friend.

Deana South (May 7, 2004)

An overlooked gem. I liked it the very first time I heard it. One of his best!