{"id":807509,"date":"2020-05-16T08:00:56","date_gmt":"2020-05-16T14:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=999174"},"modified":"2020-05-16T08:00:56","modified_gmt":"2020-05-16T14:00:56","slug":"flashback-paul-mccartney-launches-coming-up-with-a-bizarre-snl-bit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/music-news\/flashback-paul-mccartney-launches-coming-up-with-a-bizarre-snl-bit\/","title":{"rendered":"Flashback: Paul McCartney Launches \u2018Coming Up\u2019 With a Bizarre \u2018SNL\u2019 Bit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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After nearly a decade with Wings, in 1979, Paul McCartney<\/a> decided to make a record for himself, by himself, as he\u2019d done with his first solo album, 1970\u2019s McCartney<\/em>. So he retreated to his Scotland farm with a bunch of synthesizers and bleeped and blooped his way into one of his most subversive albums, McCartney II<\/em>, a record that \u2014 even 40 years after it came out, on May 16th, 1980 \u2014 Macca fans are still trying to make sense of.<\/p>\n

He launched the album in the U.S. a day after its release via a bizarre yet funny bit on Saturday Night Live<\/em>. A few months before unveiling McCartney II<\/em> \u2014 or more specifically 122 days, as \u201cWeekend Update\u201d anchor Jane Curtin reported on the show \u2014 he\u2019d been busted for smoking pot in Japan, so the show sent a correspondent, nasal-voiced comic Don Novello\u2019s character Father Guido Sarducci, a parody of an Italian priest, to interview him in London. But because Sarducci screwed up the time-zone differential for a \u201clive\u201d segment, it\u2019s 5 a.m. there, and McCartney is sleeping. Sarducci throws pennies and rocks at his window, and barks Beatles songs through a megaphone in his stilted, broken English. (The segment is not available on YouTube, other than as an audio recording<\/a>, but the whole episode is available via Hulu.)<\/p>\n

Eventually, a very irritated Paul and Linda McCartney come down to talk to the priest. Despite Paul protesting an interview, Sarducci starts grilling him about the weed bust. \u201cIs it true that you haven\u2019t had any marijuana in 122 days \u2014 yes or no?\u201d Paul demurs and asks that they talk about the music video he\u2019d made for McCartney II\u2019<\/em>s lead track, \u201cComing Up,\u201d but Sarducci keeps asking him about pot. After a question about how long it took to make the clip \u2014 a week, Paul says \u2014 Sarducci asks, \u201cIf you was still smoking, do you think it would have taken longer or shorter?\u201d After some back-and-forth, McCartney agrees to one last question, as long as it\u2019s not about marijuana. Sarducci asks what animal he\u2019d want to be, to which McCartney says a koala bear. \u201cIs that the little animals, all the time they eat eucalyptus leaves, they get-a stoned all the time?\u201d Sarducci says, laughing.<\/p>\n

Finally, SNL<\/em> plays the video, which was quite innovative for its time. Although Linda plays two backup singers, McCartney takes on every other role in various costumes, kind of his own riff on Sgt. Pepper\u2019s<\/em>, but also showing that he\u2019d played everything on the song, as he\u2019d done on the album. Some of his characters included Sparks\u2019 mustachioed, eyebrow-raising keyboardist Ron Mael, Shadows guitarist Hank Marvin, and himself as he looked in the Sixties, among others. The bass drum reads \u201cThe Plastic Macs.\u201d The clip was fresh and New Wave\u2013y, and it fit the song\u2019s jittery guitar line and McCartney\u2019s own heavily effected vocals, which sounded a bit like Leon Redbone on helium. Despite its weirdness, the song had a great chorus, and, following a mixed review<\/a> for the album, which dubbed it \u201cstrident electronic junk music,\u201d Rolling Stone<\/em> later recognized the track and McCartney II\u2019<\/em>s \u201cTemporary Secretary\u201d as ranking among his best solo tunes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Despite the lukewarm reception critically, both McCartney II<\/em> and \u201cComing Up\u201d were hits. In a weird twist that seems predictable in hindsight, the McCartney II<\/em> version of \u201cComing Up\u201d went to Number Two in the U.K., while its B side \u2014 a more traditional \u201cband version\u201d of the song<\/a> that Wings recorded at a Glasgow gig in 1979 \u2014 made it to Number One in the U.S., prompting his label to make a one-sided single of the song, since it wasn\u2019t on the LP.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the song\u2019s most interesting aspect is how John Lennon apparently credited \u201cComing Up\u201d<\/a> as the reason he wanted to make music again. Six months later, he and Yoko Ono released Double Fantasy<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Popular on Rolling Stone<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After nearly a decade with Wings, in 1979, Paul McCartney decided to make a record for himself, by himself, as he\u2019d done with his first solo album, 1970\u2019s McCartney. So he retreated to his Scotland farm with a bunch of synthesizers and bleeped and blooped his way into one of his most subversive albums, McCartney […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-807509","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-music-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-07-10 22:18:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}