But you don’t have to make the same mistake. Wild Life was not polished, and was therefore dismissed by many who never gave it a real chance. Still, our brains are wired to accept easy ideas as truthful more quickly than challenging ideas, so a polished recording is usually more immediately accessible and pleasurable. But the rushed nature of the recording ensured a level of emotional honesty that tends to disappear through multiple takes and rearrangements. For decades, critics have abused it, using words like “flaccid” ( Rolling Stone, 1971) and “appalling” (also Rolling Stone, 1992) to dismiss the album as an unfocused collection of throwaway tunes McCartney should have spent more time perfecting. Though only Paul McCartney can truly know what that felt like, we can at least get a sense of it through Wild Life, a record that is playful and harrowing, sloppy and virtuosic, loving and bitter. There are two things that save your life: a woman who loves you and an idea for a new band called Wings. You can barely get out of the bed, and when you do get motivated, it is mostly to drink or make music by yourself. Somewhere along the way you become an adult, your friend finds a new wife, and making music with him seems less fun, no matter how much you try to make it so. Every word you say is scrutinized, often misconstrued. Then you stop touring and become a cultural touchstone for the first generation that would ever need such a thing. You tour without stop, your fame making it impossible to interact with anyone but your band. You graduate from playing for gangsters in chaotic German clubs to entertaining the Queen at the Prince of Wales Theatre in less time than it takes most people to graduate from college. Imagine, for a moment, that as a teenager you and your best friend started what would become the most famous band ever a few years later.
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