Paul McCartney • Pure McCartney (4CD, 2CD, 4LP)

It’s amazing that Paul McCartney hadn’t gotten around to a compilation of his solo/Wings material of this magnitude until now. Pure McCartney follows in the footsteps of his previous best-ofs in that it completely overlooks chapters of his output as if he’s embarrassed by them… Or warning the marketplace that a certain album is about to be given the Archive Series treatment and thus including none of its tracks. Could he be that canny? That crass? I hate to say it: Yes.

As is the custom these days, this compilation comes in multiple form factors: you have the budget 2CD version, the 4LP version and the mega 4CD version. With 67 tracks on this behemoth, you’d think Macca could cover all of the ground he’s trodden since his first solo album in 1970 and yet he completely avoids Driving Rain (not the greatest album), Run Devil Run (a ’90s album of covers) and 1989’s brilliant Flowers in the Dirt. I’d expect a 4CD collection of a 45 year solo career to favor some albums more than others – Band on the Run and Ram are heavily represented – but I’d also figure at least one song from each album would be manageable. And since Flowers is such a classic, you’d think a big hit like “My Brave Face” would make the cut. Nope. (Don’t get me started on the fact that there’s only two songs from Venus and Mars here.) There’s no reason to not represent Flowers except that he’s trying to avoid cannibalising an Archive Series release later in the year. And that smacks of pure commercialism.

My grumbling aside, Pure McCartney still has no trouble showing what a brilliant songwriter, bass player and singer the man is. What he does include here sees to that handily, even on the 2CD version. No need for me to go over the individual tracks except to say I’m sure no one could match this man’s output in terms of quality. Still, it’s not like each CD is 80-minutes-full, so there was certainly room for reps from Flowers, Driving Rain and Run Devil Run. Oh well. It’s his best-of and he can do what he wants with it. In fact, it IS pure McCartney to purposefully skip over bits ‘n’ bobs of his catalog. Wings Greatest (a one LP comp from 1978) skipped “Listen to What the Man Said” (a #1 hit!) and 1987’s All The Best! and 2001’s Wingspan similarly missed key tracks depending on what country’s version you bought. (All the Best! in the UK featured his then current single, “Once Upon a Long Ago,” which wasn’t even released in the US and thus didn’t make the American version of the compilation. Yet here on Pure McCartney there are five songs from his latest, New. Maybe his memory’s going and so the most recent stuff is at the forefront of his genius brain.)

Take a look at the tracklist of the various versions to decide whether you need this release. For me, I have everything on the 4CD version so I expect to be skipping over this one, at least for now. And that, my friends, is Pure Gooch.

3/5 for contents, 5/5 for quality! (Hear Music, 2016)