McCartney Takes a Stand

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Band on the Run finds McCartney walking a middle ground between autobiographical songwriting and subtle attempts to mythologize his own experience through the creation of a fantasy world of adventure—perhaps remotely inspired by his having recently written "Live and Let Die." He does it by uniting the myth of the rock star and the outlaw, the original legendary figure on the run.

Up until now, the critical assumption has been that McCartney's lyrics mean little if anything, that he is a mere stylist, playing games with words and sounds. And it is of course possible that the words to Band on the Run don't mean (or weren't intended to mean) as much as I think they do. But I'll take a chance, and say that Band on the Run is an album about the search for freedom and the flight from restrictions on his and Linda's personal happiness. It is about the pursuit of freedom from his past as a Beatle, freedom from the consequences of the drug busts that have kept him from the United States and forced him into thinking of himself as an outlaw…. It is also about two people becoming what they want to be, trying to decide what they want to do, and asking to be accepted for what they are now rather than what they were then.

If the listener were to ignore the music and the skill with which McCartney has developed his theme, the entire enterprise might seem banal. But he holds the record together through the continual intimation that he enjoys the search for freedom more than he might enjoy freedom itself. In the best tradition of outlaw mythology, he makes being on the run sound so damned exciting….

A lesser talent would have taken the escape concept and perhaps woven a simple story around it. But, consistent with his own past, the songs overlap both in their content and sentiments (some are even reprised), the album forming a unit without ever becoming too schematic, literal, over-bearing or overtly accessible.

On Band on the Run, there are two separate searches going on: McCartney's for himself and the listener's for McCartney. (p. 48)

The album's abrupt and surprising ending suggests that the McCartneys are afraid they may find what they are looking for only to discover that it, too, fails to satisfy them. Thus they end with only one commitment: to remain a band on the run. That decision has resulted in (with the possible exception of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band) the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles. (p. 50)

Jon Landau, "McCartney Takes a Stand," in Rolling Stone (by Straight Arrow Publishers, Inc. © 1974; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Issue 153, January 31, 1974, pp. 48, 50.

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