The Pop Corporation

It’s remarkable, that for a band as well documented as The Beatles, that there’s any surprises left. Yet, there we were with our jaws on the floor watching Peter Jackson’s ‘Get Back’, while Paul McCartney chipped away at a notion until it became the centrepiece of the whole film. Never mind the rooftop gig (great as it is) or the hidden recording in a vase of flowers (great as it is) and the fine array of clothes and haircuts – it was watching how a song happens. And not just any song – a really brilliant and hugely famous one.

When you think you’ve seen it all, and heard the ‘Hey Jude’/”that’s the best bit” anecdote for the hundredth time (it’s genuinely adorable to hear Macca repeating the same stories), it’s amazing that there’s things about them that are ferreted away. They had an unlimited budget, what with being the most popular band in the universe, so the tape was constantly running. There’s countless non-Anthology out-takes from dodgy bootlegs and the like, over on YouTube, and people have somehow got their hands on the tapes and released the multitracks of some of the most famous songs ever recorded, so if you want to just listen to the violas and drums from ‘Hello Goodbye’, you invariably can.

Paul McCartney, the most creative and restless (and sometimes tremendously odd) of the Fabs, is a particular goldmine. For a man as famous as him, it’s amazing that Percy ‘Thrills’ Thrillington was ever a thing, and that people in general, aren’t all over it. It’s McCartney at his most playful, which probably won’t do for those who demand that their artists be serious all the time and don’t indulge in any frippery. For those that love a bit of it, it’s magic.’Ram’ is now a classic, although it spent some time being maligned. It was forged in the acrimonious Beatle Year of 1971. A flurry of creativity, jibes, vandalism, toxic legal battles, heartbreak and so much more. John Lennon heard coded digs at him, which saw him retaliate on the ‘Imagine’ album. McCartney sang “too many people preaching practices” and the LP artwork showed two beetles having it off, with Lennon returning fire with ‘How Do You Sleep?’, egged on by a particular vicious George Harrison, leaving Ringo Starr (also in for the session) to berate John and George for taking it too far.

Tasty stuff, and the released cut of the song is still one of the most vinegary attacks in recorded history… and then Lennon included an image in the ‘Imagine’ album which aped Macca’s ‘Ram’. So much for imagining all the people living life in peace, eh?

It was ugly and pithy, but what fan of pop-culture doesn’t enjoy an ill-advised feud between two former best friends, now and then? We are but basic creatures who thrive off occasional cruelty.

And so, Lennon eventually went on the piss with Harry Nilsson for a couple of years, Ringo started acting, and George walked the tightrope of spiritual guru and relentless shagger. McCartney, however, never more happy than pottering around with whatever musical idea entered his head. The man’s gift for melody is unmatched, so we’re right to indulge him. Of course, this period of The Fab Four’s history is well scrutinised and comprehensive, but ‘Thrillington’ still seems to fly under the radar. Even die-hard Beatle nuts aren’t guaranteed to know about it.

So let’s know about it now.

During 1971, Paul McCartney recorded an album which was made-up entirely of cover versions from his own ‘Ram’ album, but it was shelved thanks to the formation of Wings. A lost album isn’t really huge news, but ‘Thrillington’ isn’t exactly thrown together. It’s not some scratchy recordings of an artist tinkering away in the potting shed — it’s a ‘light orchestra’ version, which had a great promotional campaign for the eagle-eyed. McCartney went about inventing the Percy Thrillington character who was a socialite, and he took out advertisements in the UK press talking about Percy’s various appearances, in a bid to create some curiosity.

Macca was only mentioned in passing as a pal of Percy’s, and when it finally got released in 1977 (completely at odds with the punk and disco that was doing the rounds at the time), it only got the briefest of mentions, notably in the ‘Random Notes’ section of Rolling Stone magazine. This was post-modern, guerrilla advertising. It is actually brilliant.

Add to this, artwork by rock-art legends Hipgnosis, who did notable work for Pink Floyd, T-Rex, Led Zep, ELO, 10cc, and others. It also featured the Mike Sammes Singers, who you might know as the voices for TV themes like ‘Stingray’ and a Tuc biscuits advert, who McCartney will have known from providing the backing vocals for ‘I Am The Walrus’ (they’re responsible for the ‘ho ho ho hee hee hee ha ha ha’ bit, as well as the ‘oompah oompah stick it up yer jumper’ sections).

An orchestra made up of some of the most respected session musicians in the business, avant-garde visual-artists, all involved on a secret project of cover versions for an album that was recorded before the album was even out, released years later, and conceived during one of the most famous squabbles in pop.

What a strange and wonderful thing!

Some people took a punt and bought the thing, while the rumours swirled about McCartney’s involvement – besides, anyone with an original copy was always going to be a collector’s item if McCartney ever came clean, right? Even if was it just some chintzy Beatles-related knock-off, of which there are plenty, they’re still fun to have right? Just look at that artwork – that’s worth your entrance fee alone!

It wasn’t until 1989 that McCartney confessed all.

Journalist Peter Palmiere, speaking to McCartney at a Los Angeles press conference asked about the album, which saw McCartney — promoting a world tour — saying: “What a great question to end the conference. The world needs to know! But seriously it was me and Linda — and we kept it a secret for a long time but now the world knows! — you blew it!”

And now, original vinyl copies of ‘Thrillington’ are fetching a pretty, where they were once going for peanuts.

Richard Hewson — the man who helped to bring ‘Thrillington’ to life (he’d previously done some arrangements for The Beatles) was sent an advance copy of ‘Ram’, to create a new version of it before the proper release had been heard by anyone else. Among the tubas, banjos, and upright basses, some singers from France called The Swingle Singers (who were known, according to Hewson for “doing sort of jazzy, scat renditions of Bach”) where hired to provide the voices for the album.

By the close of the recording sessions, Paul McCartney hadn’t played a single note or sang at all on the project, instead, overseeing it and acting as executive producer.

The ‘Thrillington’ album would eventually get a re-release on one of the discs of a deluxe reissue of ‘Ram’, and because Paul McCartney likes to revive the things that people forgot for nerds like us, it was given a remaster and re-release on vinyl at a much more reasonable price than original copies were changing hands for. And for the streamers, it’s there too. A wonderful little curio amongst a tidal wave of hits.

And yet, so extensive is McCartney’s back catalogue, it is still tucked away, easy to miss, purring away underneath the reissues and spit ‘n’ shine of Beatle remasters. You have to assume that, amidst all the nonsense that was going on in Paul McCartney’s life at the time, this was something of a holiday for him — hiring some friends and musicians, and recording something that was fun and easy on the ear, not worrying about writing huge hits, or breaking new ground that everyone would analyse to death — an idea that McCartney would revisit with a variety of other pseudonyms and collabs, like The Fireman, Liverpool Sound Collage, Twin Freaks, and whatever other releases he’s put out under everyone’s noses without anyone noticing.

Often, McCartney is at his best when he sounds like he’s kicked his shoes off and just goofing around. Even when Macca is at play, he’s still able to create rich, wonderful projects that make everyone else look a bit slovenly.

And that’s the thing — he just can’t sit still. He’s collaborating with Rihanna, or even the (re)imagined McCartney III tracks with Khruangbin, Blood Orange, Phoebe Bridgers, Anderson Paak and more. He headlined Glastonbury and played tracks from his ‘NEW’ LP and to hell with the moaners and gripers watching TV. ‘Thrillington’, although borderline quaint (not a bad thing) with echoes of ragtime, Temperance Seven and the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, charity shop gems and more, just shows you what a restless and insatiable ear he has for all kinds of music.

He wrote ‘Silly Love Songs’ as a reply to the critics who said he was too schmaltzy, but this is the man who wrote some of the finest pop and rock songs that’ll ever be recorded – the absolute gall of some people to question whether he’s ‘got’ whatever ‘it’ is. Through pop, rock, disco, love-songs and much much more, Macca has done it all. He was ahead of the curve with brutalist synthpop (the now classic but historically ridiculed ‘Temporary Secretary‘) and Balearic bliss (‘Secret Friend‘) in the same project period, so it’s fair to say that judging McCartney too quickly or too in-line with any trend is pure folly.

The fact is, ‘Thrillington’ is the result of an abundance of ideas. Where some musicians agonise and fret, only releasing music every five years (or even longer), McCartney just can’t sit still. It’s the joy and fun of this project that leaps out of its grooves. The publicity, the self penned liner notes written under yet another pseudonym, the sheer silliness of it all – here’s to ‘Thrillington’, which in its own way, is the most Paul McCartney thing he’s ever done.