Paul McCartney - Pipes of Peace (1983)

Just when you thought it was safe to go back to the record store, because Paul McCartney's 1982 album Tug Of War suggested a new maturity and seriousness to his work going forward, out came the 1983 follow-up, Pipes of Peace, which only served to remind us of everything we hated about the ex-Beatle's worst solo and Wings work from the seventies. Tug of War had been a theme album about the struggle of opposites, and Pipes of Peace was Macca's attempt at a sequel with a theme of reconciliation and love as a solution for the world's ills, the title track prompted by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore's assertion that in love, all of our problems disappear. But there's one problem that hasn't disappeared here; Macca is too sentimental and lackadaisical to make his overall theme gel.

Given that many of the songs here were recorded during the Tug of War sessions, and so featured the same people - Ringo Starr, 10cc's Eric Stewart, bassist Stanley Clarke, drummer Steve Gadd, producer George Martin - it seems as if Pipes of Peace had been a planned sequel to Tug of War from the start, rather than a random set of inferior outtakes. Alas, a random set of inferior outtakes is exactly what the album sounds like. The ballads are inescapably mushy, and the rockers are no more energetic than some of the peppier numbers from an album by America (whom George Martin also worked with). The title track is earnest enough as a plea for teaching the next generation to pursue peace instead of war, but McCartney's solution for little children - "Got to give them all we can 'til the war is won" - makes me wonder why we can't just stop the war rather than try to win it. (What war is he referring to, anyway?)  And when he proposes that we teach kids "songs of joy instead of 'Burn, baby, burn,'" he sounds like a grade school music teacher who's convinced that he's made the world a better place by having his students sing folk songs.

The limpid music of Pipes of Peace is instantly forgettable, but bad lyrics that leap out like phantasms in a horror movie stay with you for good (that America influence again). Paul apologizes to his woman in "The Other Me" for having "acted like a dustbin lid" (the other him must have written this song), he tells her in "Through Our Love" how he'd like to take some time and "roll it all up in a ball and spend it with you," and he poses this rhetorical question in "Keep Under Cover:" "What good is art if it hurts your head?" (I won't say it; it's too easy a shot.) What's especially frustrating about Paul's work here is that, once in awhile, a good lyric will emerge, like this line from "Average Person" - "Hollywood ambition made a starlet grown up overnight" - in a song that's otherwise listless and dull. You wish he'd written better verses around it, and you know he could have if he'd tried. And then there's "So Bad," which lives up to its title; Paul serenades us with a falsetto.

As did Tug Of War, Pipes of Peace featured a Motown veteran as a guest artist - Michael Jackson in place of Stevie Wonder. At his worst, Jackson could be just as soft-headed as our hero. Here, though, he actually saves McCartney from complete embarrassment. "Say Say Say" is a direct pop song with a consistent groove, marred only by a cheesy, repetitive harmonica riff. While Paul sings "Don't leave me with no direction," Jackson gives him just that - direction, with a commanding vocal that ranks with his groundbreaking singles from Off The Wall. "The Man," their other collaboration here, is less coherent as a song - it celebrates an individual who enthusiastically takes pleasure in just being alive - but at least Macca and his future music publisher convincingly bring that enthusiasm to life. Which is more than I can say for how the pedestrian jazz-rock instrumental "Hey Hey" (which Paul co-wrote and performed with Stanley Clarke) worked out. But, having said all that, I endorse McCartney's idea for teaching children songs of joy. Just play the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night soundtrack album in your kid's nursery.