Wings: Venus And Mars

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Videos by American Songwriter

Wings
Venus And Mars (McCartney Archive Collection)
(MPL/Hear Music/Concord Music Group)
Rating:  4 out of 5 stars

Over the course of the last several years, Paul McCartney has been revisiting his solo and Wings endeavors with remastered albums packaged alongside various b-sides, demos, and video footage.  Each release has had a standard release with 2 CDs alongside a book/box set variation with even more material, photographs, and ephemera, as well as vinyl reissues.  Which version you opt for may depend upon your level of fandom or perhaps even more so your curiosity into the musical life of one of the greatest talents 20th century music has ever seen.  While the deluxe book/box set versions are no doubt more expensive than their standard counterparts, there’s a great value to them and the books are unquestionably a labor of love that have tracked session dates and background stories.

For the sixth and seventh entries, we are treated to Venus And Mars and At The Speed Of Sound, two studio albums that were released around the epic Wings Over America, the live album (reissued just last year) that marked his return to touring in the USA.

Venus And Mars is an album filled with the many moods McCartney had so artfully mastered already by the album’s 1975 release.  Opening with the sweet and starry title track, the almost-wistful ballad soon shifts into the aptly titled “Rock Show” that boasts classic rock muscle and pounding piano.  In a way, it’s too bad “Venus And Mars” didn’t see a longer version.  The 80 seconds we do get show a lot of promise that still feels like it has more of its own story to tell.  “Rock Show” could still have existed right next to it without the medley being any less potent. 

Two beautiful ballads also appear, “Love In Song” and “Treat Her Gently/Lonely Old People,” even if each is tinged with its own set of melancholy circumstances both lyrically and musically.  Still, if it’s critical reappraisal or rediscovery that McCartney is after then it’s songs like these that make these reissues well worth the effort. 

The album itself managed three singles that all cracked Billboard’s Top 40:  “Listen To What The Man Said,” “Letting Go,” and “Venus And Mars/Rock Show.”  Just prior to the album being released, “Junior’s Farm” got its own 45 release.  That track along with its B-side (“Sally G”) surfaces on the second disc of material that includes the single version of “Letting Go,” an alternate mix of “Hey Diddle” (last heard from on the Ram bonus disc from the same archive series) by Ernie Winfrey who also worked with the band on the aforementioned “Junior’s Farm” among others, and another riveting version of “Rock Show.”  The bonus disc is one of the most generous helpings of session material of the entire campaign thus far. 

On the accompanying DVD in the book/box set, a grainy TV ad for the album showcases the band fooling around in a pool parlor, which evokes a remembrance of a time when bands and labels utilized television commercials to promote new material.  Elsewhere, we get around 15 minutes of rehearsal footage of the band at Elstree Studios giving a glimpse of what was to come as well as another video showcasing the group recording the festive “My Carnival.”  One final video shows the band’s trip to New Orleans, where some of the sessions for the album took place at Sea-Saint studios, partying on a riverboat with none other than The Meters who were playing “Jungle Man.”  Drinks and dancing lend to what looks to be a good time being had by all.

There’s a lot to take in, and that’s not even including the expansive book.  Furthermore, McCartney has released an extended version of “Letting Go” that is NOT included in either set for free on his website as well as a handful of other images and coloring pages.  It notes more material may be made available in the near future.

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Wings: At The Speed Of Sound