Albums That Should Exist: Paul McCartney - Acoustic Versions, 1995-2010

Friday, March 3, 2023

Paul McCartney - Acoustic Versions, 1995-2010

Prior to the 1990s, Paul McCartney almost never performed songs in the solo acoustic format. In 1991, he recorded and released his "Unplugged" album, which was a commercial and critical success. Since that time, he's performed in that format more often, though still rarely, usually just a song or two at a time. I'll collected all the excellent sounding acoustic performances I could find, stretching from 1995 to 2010. (I haven't really seen anything solo acoustic from him after 2010, which is also around when his voice started to noticeably decline.)

This makes up a nice album with a mix of songs from various points in his career, including a bunch of Beatles songs. There are a couple of acoustic songs I didn't include because they otherwise haven't been released anywhere else. Those will be on the next stray tracks album from him.

Only two of the performances here are easily available officially. "Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)" is a bonus track on an expanded rerelease of the 1973 "Band on the Run" album (but it was recorded in 1999). This version of "Dance Tonight" is a bonus track to the 2007 "Memory Almost Full" album. Three more songs are from the "Wingspan" DVD and two are from the "In the World Tonight" DVD, but I don't know if those count as official releases of music recordings, since only video versions of those are available.

Other than that, everything else is unreleased. But those tracks generally sound very good. McCartney is so famous that he gets bootlegged a lot, even unreleased studio sessions sometimes. Only the first five, the last two, and "Bishopsgate" were recorded live. Everything else is from the studio.

I made edits on a few songs. There's a short but very interesting version of "Band on the Run" here. I call it the "Tape and Strangeness Version" based on a comment he makes during the song. It contains loops of strange sounds, such as the the use the "glass harp," which is what it's called when one uses wine glasses as musical instruments. But he had some commentary here and there over the music, so I took those out. I kept his "tape and strangeness" comment though, and moved it to the start so it wouldn't interfere with the music.

If I recall, "Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)" was short, and I repeated some of it to make it a more reasonable length. Some of the other songs here are quite short too. For instance, "Three Legs," "Twenty Flight Rock," and "Beautiful Night" are about a minute or less. But those didn't lend themselves to being extended. So I figure short is better than nothing. There are a few other songs I didn't include because they were even shorter than that, really just snippets of songs.

I also edited "That Was Me." It's an acoustic-ish live performance, but I edited out the drums to make it better fit the rest of the songs here. The sound quality of that one is also a bit rougher than the others.

The world of McCartney bootlegs is vast, so I'm pretty sure there are some other good acoustic performances I've missed. So if anyone knows of anything worthy of being added here, please let me know. I left out a couple cases where there were two versions of the same song, but there were surprisingly few instances of that.

This album is 54 minutes long.

01 One After 909 [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello)
02 Mistress and Maid [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney & Elvis Costello)
03 Eleanor Rigby [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)
04 For No One [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)
05 Lady Madonna [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)
06 Beautiful Night [Demo] (Paul McCartney)
07 Flaming Pie [Solo Piano Version] (Paul McCartney)
08 Calico Skies [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
09 Great Day [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
10 Bishopsgate (Paul McCartney)
11 Picasso's Last Words [Drink to Me] [Acoustic Version] [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
12 Yesterday [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
13 Twenty Flight Rock [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
14 The Long and Winding Road [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
15 Your Loving Flame [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
16 Let Me Roll It [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
17 Three Legs [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
18 Mrs. Vanderbilt [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
19 Band on the Run [Tape and Strangeness Version] [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
20 Dance Tonight [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
21 Ever Present Past [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
22 Feet in the Clouds [Acoustic Version] (Paul McCartney)
23 That Was Me [Live Acoustic] [Edit] (Paul McCartney)
24 Here Today [Live Acoustic] (Paul McCartney)