McCartney also sang the work (in his own way)

In this article, Luca Trambusti has collected some songs that explicitly deal with the theme of work (almost always manual, with few exceptions). Paul McCartney, in his first solo single, also explored the topic, in a less direct way but with his usual, affectionate attention to the stories of ordinary people. Here’s how.

As an appetizer of “ram” – whose engravings were still far from completed – Paul opts for this intimate song, yet with undeniable commercial virtues. Stilistically and from the point of view of the atmosphere, “Another day” seems in continuity with the home approach of the album “McCartney”, more than with the muscle one that “Ram” would have showed off a few months later (albeit with one side B, “Oh Woman Oh Why?”, Definitely impetuous).

The publication of this passage as a single is the result of a very original choice, and it is the phonic Dixon Van Winkle who chooses it, after receiving from McCartney the task of selecting the song that he had considered most suitable among those recorded during the New York sessions. The technician Mixa quickly and fury “Another Day” and his assistant David Crawford prints one hundred copies to be sent to radio for promotion. “When I listened to it the next day, I realized that it was a disaster!” Van Winkle admitted. “We had remained bewitched on the side of bass, but with the radio compressor she shot from crazy. I learned the lesson quickly. We never remixed and Paul never said anything about it.”

Another day (Paul and Linda McCartney)

Registration: 12 October 1970, Columbia Studios, New York

“Another day” was another song that dated back to the “Get Back” sessions of 1969 Get Backthe television miniseries in three parts curated by Peter Jackson and broadcast on Disney+ in 2021) and another time to the acoustic guitar (January 25, Apple Studios): these are executions mentioned, but the words of the first two stanzas are understood, the same present in the definitive version.

It is precisely this song that inaugurates the sessions that would have created the album “Ram” and not by chance: evidently McCartney kept us particularly, and the song is the first faced at the Columbia Studios on 12 October 1970. The formation sides with McCartney on the acoustic guitar and the guiding item, Dave Spinozza to the acoustic guitar and Denny Seiwell on the battery. “It was the first song we recorded in New York,” confirmed the drummer. “We started at ten in the morning and for lunch we already had a good take. Every day Paul came to the studio with something fresh … We had a series of incredible songs to do. He mentioned the piece and then we left. We practically made a song a day.”

“Another Day” is finished with several overdue both to the Columbia and the A&R Studios, with a session dedicated to the items that takes place on January 21, 1971. The Track Sheet – the sheet of study that specifies the content of the various tracks of the recording – reports the detail of the sixteen slopes, which are thus used: battery (traces 1–4), bass (track 5), acoustic guitars (traces 6 and 7), electric guitars (traces 8–10) and voices (traces 11–16).

The arrangement is rich and enhances the acoustic nature of the song: you listen to a bass full of melodic ideas by McCartney and different parts of electric guitar (Spinozza and McCartney). The song also proposes the vocal harmonizations between Paul and Linda for the first time, introducing the characteristic style of the couple: the modulation of her at the end of the stanzas is memorable (at 0:34, repeated later at 1:47 and 3:03) and the additional part in the serious register of McCartney in the last verse. Seiwell also performs percussion, played using a telephone directory found in the recording room.

“Another day” has an intimate and domestic air that gives it an artisan charm, and the music collects the melancholy veins of the text: in the median section in three quarters of the Latin brand, the spinox guitar underlines the terms “Sad” and “Alone” with crying notes obtained through the use of the volume knob, which creates the characteristic compliance. “It is a great song,” Spinozza said Speciazza in no uncertain terms. “I remember overcoming different traces of guitar. A truly magical song and production.”

From the lyrical point of view “Another Day” is an intimate passage song and deals with the theme of social alienation. The story traces the portrait and day-day of a Middle Class girl, and reveals all the skills of psychological introspection of McCartney, who draws on the theme of solitude he already explored: in his famous book “The Beatles Apart” (1981) The critic Bob Woffinden will define “a right observation of domestic life, a song in the noble tradition of ‘Eleanor Rigby’, on a lonely woman.”

The themes of daily life, routine and a “normal” existence exert a unique charm on its author. “‘Another day’ is a song on everyday things,” explained Paul, “the people waking up, brushes their hair, wash, go to the office, drink a coffee, get away a lot of documents and go home, and it’s just another day … the meaning of the song is all here.”

Paul, however, captures its exceptional nature. “I like to write about ordinary people and their everyday life,” explained McCartney. “We all get up in the morning and do the usual things, yet somehow – and despite everything – there are often moments of pure magic.”

The lyrics are focused on the repetitiveness of daily gestures and on the boredom of an unpaid employment, in an office “where the cards accumulate” relentlessly. McCartney analyzes the sense of tiredness and existence full of sadness of the protagonist (however, only “sometimes”, a clarification that accentuates the drama of his condition), which also from a sentimental point of view lives without certainties, struggling with a man who is not next to her in a stable way (“and he comes / and he stays / but he leaves the next Day”): An almost cinematic and 2:03 existential painting, precisely at the end of the Middle Eight, you can listen to an effect of festive crowd (in fact called “crowd” on the study sheet), in clear contrast with the afflicted tone of the events narrated.

The song is built in skits. Paul himself recognizes the film quality of the song. “Think of an intersection between ‘Eleanor Rigby’ is the window on the courtyard ‘of Hitchcock,” explained McCartney. “Yes: because, as far as I am sorry to have to admit, in this song there is a certain voyeurism. Like many writers, I too are a little look: if there is a window with the light on and someone in the house, I start to look at. I raise my hands, I am guilty (…) the person I am observing is, coincidentally, a version of Linda when he lived alone in New York before I met her, even if I meet her. (The reference is to the third verse of the song, “AS She Posts Another Letter to the Sound of Five”) was a British radio broadcast to which people wrote by telling their problems. “

The first two stanzas illustrate two moments of the girl’s day. In the first we see (and it is appropriate to use this verb, because the touches are quick but precise, very focus) the protagonist who gets up in the morning, washes his hair and dresses: how beautiful the image of her who “sink” the hands in the impermeable.

It is ready for another day. In reality, it is “only” another day, nothing special in short. In the second verse the scene moved to the office, with a desk full of documents, and where the girl drinks one of the many coffees to break the boredom and hide from remaining awake. In the Middle Eight, McCartney makes a leap from the objective reality to the inner world of the girl. She is sad and alone in her apartment, until the man of his dreams comes to “break the spell”. He spends the night with her, but the next day he is already ready to run away. The third verse sees the girl who sent another letter addressed to “The Sound of Five” (note: another, that is, it is not the first, to indicate again how gestures always follow one another); People do you feel even worse, making her feel only semi -round. The final verse repeats the first, to determine the sense of predictability of this existence. A TV series could be made.

Musicians:

Paul McCartney voice, choirs, acoustic and electric guitar, bass • Linda McCartney Harmonie vocal • Dave spinozza acoustic and electric guitar • Denny Seiwell drums, percussion

The text is taken from Luca Perasi’s recent book dedicated to the album “Ram”