Controversially, one of my favourite Wings albums is their final one, Back to the Egg, and one of
my favourite songs on it is the soulful groove-driven 'Arrow Through Me'.
I was surprised,
on hearing the episode of ‘Take It Away: The Complete Paul McCartney
Podcast’ devoted to the album to hear the show’s hosts say they didn’t like Macca’s
vocal performance on this song when, for me, it’s part of what makes it so
good; it fits the feel of it perfectly. I really favour the sound of Paul’s
voice around this time, particularly on the more belty numbers, as there’s more grit in there than usual (a sound he definitely plays with on
this song, despite it being less of a rocker).
I only learnt
recently that 'Arrow Through Me' doesn’t have any guitars on it, not even a
bass, which I also found surprising, as there's a warmth to the recording that you wouldn’t expect
from an almost entirely keyboard-based number. What makes the song for me is
the melody, which jumps all over the place in typical McCartney style. It’s a
shame the album it's on was such a flop as it seems to have clouded Paul’s
opinion of it; he’s seldom has anything good to say about 'Back to the Egg', although funnily
enough, he did mention this song in particular around the release of his recent
career retrospective compilation ‘Pure McCartney’ (which it features on),
saying he’d forgotten about it until someone at his office dug it
out for him; Paul said he liked it so much, he had to show it off to his band’s drummer
as he thought he’d like the groove.
This particular
period of Macca’s career was typically productive. Another story I only read
recently recalls him challenging the rest of the band to write a b-side
to the single Goodnight Tonight appropriately overnight, saying whoever came up
with the best song would get it on the flipside of the record. You can probably
guess who won; I’ll give you a clue: he played bass for The Beatles. This is what he
came up with…