Paul McCartney: McCartney [CAPITOL]

Why you'll love it

This Abbey Road remaster is pressed on 180g vinyl in a glossy gatefold jacket, with a large lyric and photo insert and a download card. McCartney spent three weeks at No. 1 in the US and went 2x Platinum there.

This edition

• Remastered at Abbey Road Studios
• 180g vinyl
• Gatefold jacket
• Lyric and photo insert
• Download card included
• Stereo mix
• Pressed in Germany

About the album

Paul McCartney made his first solo album mostly at home on Cavendish Avenue in St John's Wood, on a Studer four-track with no mixing desk and no level meters. He summed up the setup as a Studer, one mic and nerve, and he played everything himself: guitars, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion, overdubbing one part at a time before moving to Morgan Studios and EMI to finish it.

Linda McCartney sings harmonies, adds the strange breathing on "Kreen-Akrore," is easiest to hear on "Man We Was Lonely," booked the studio time under the name Billy Martin, and took the photos throughout the packaging. "The Lovely Linda" opens things as a 45-second equipment test, "That Would Be Something" and "Every Night" are instant classics, "Junk" is quietly gorgeous, and "Maybe I'm Amazed" is the piano ballad he wrote for Linda and stubbornly refused to put out as a single.

It was the first of nearly 30 years of McCartney albums to feature Linda's photographs, starting with that family snapshot collage inside the gatefold. Over here, it's still the reference standard for what one man can do in his front room with a tape machine and no supervision.

Also at Kops: more Paul McCartney on vinyl · browse Rock

Tracklist

Listen

On MPL / Capitol, a reissue of the 1970 album.