It feels impossible to hit the big time on two separate occasions. It usually takes an artist years to find a sound that resonates with millions around the world, so how the hell are you able to get that done twice when your first band folds? While Paul McCartney may have been one of those elite few who could make songs that everyone fell in love with, he admitted that his second try as a solo artist on McCartney II had a few songs that weren’t as fleshed-out as they should have been.
If McCartney had his way, there was a good chance that the album would have never been released. He was still having a fine time touring with Wings, and Back to the Egg gave him a handful of hits to keep him at the front of listener’s minds on tracks like ‘Spin It On’ and ‘Goodnight Tonight’.
The tour may have been a blast, but the Japanese government had other plans after McCartney was busted for cannabis. Spending any time in prison was bound to change a person, and once McCartney got out, he wanted to make something that was much more experimental than what he did before.
Looking to move back to traditional recording methods, McCartney put together a studio in his home just for fun, only to come up for air with an album of the wildest tunes he has ever made. While fans could still fall in love with tracks like ‘Coming Up’ after hearing the live version, the song ‘Waterfalls’ never sat well with him.
Recalling the recording of McCartney II, the former Beatle felt that the song wasn’t as fleshed-out as he would have liked, saying, “The song ‘Waterfalls’, a lot of people have said since, ‘Oh, I love that song’. I always thought I underplayed it a little bit because the backing is just a synth. It’s kind of thin. I think it would have been better if I had a nice orchestra on it”.
Compared to most of the soppy ballads that McCartney made that used to drive John Lennon crazy, ‘Waterfalls’ is actually far more engaging than even the writer gives it credit for. Sure, the synthesiser is a bit rudimentary compared to what he had done before, but the key is his vocal performance. McCartney had been known to be the optimistic songwriter of The Beatles, so to hear this more candid vocal approach is far more revealing than hearing ‘Ob La Di Ob La Da’ yet again.
If anything, McCartney should have unearthed this song once he decided to have another career as a classical composer. Since he had talked about laying down an orchestra for the track, how come it didn’t end up on the album Working Classical, which is basically just him having a bunch of musicians do their own tribute to McCartney’s work like ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’?
Over the years, perhaps McCartney came to appreciate what the song was all about in the first place. McCartney II was all about bringing things back to zero in terms of proper recording, and ‘Waterfalls’ is the sound of capturing pure emotion using only a handful of instruments and the heart behind it all.
