One single from Paul McCartney's Pipes of Peace topped the American chart, while the album itself became his first solo record to miss the US top 10. That gap between a smash hit and a modest long-player is the puzzle at the heart of the project. The answer starts on October 31, 1983, when the former Beatle finally released his fifth solo studio album on Parlophone in Britain and Columbia in America. It had been ready, more or less, for months.
A release date that kept slipping
The record was supposed to arrive on February 7, 1983, but the date kept slipping all the way to the end of October. Recording had stretched from December 1980 to August 1983, with long pauses. One interruption came in November 1982, when McCartney stepped away to start filming Give My Regards to Broad Street. Some songs had been lying around since the sessions for his previous album, Tug of War, produced like this one by George Martin.
Four tracks grew directly out of those earlier sessions: Hey Hey, Sweetest Little Show, Keep Under Cover and Average Person. They were recorded in London and Montserrat. The two duets with Michael Jackson, Say Say Say and The Man, went down in May 1981, then got final overdubs in London in February 1983. Other songs such as Tug of Peace, Pipes of Peace and So Bad were recorded in a burst in September 1982, while The Other Me came later still.
A patchwork of sessions and sounds
That patchwork creation explains the album's strange shape. Pipes of Peace is a pop record full of ballads and mid-tempo rock numbers, but the sound is more electronic than Tug of War. George Martin had wanted that earlier album to be tougher and funkier, and he felt Pipes of Peace moved closer to that goal. Say Say Say, with its mix of funk and country-and-western, is the clearest proof, a song about a difficult relationship that became the album's lead single on October 3, 1983.
The single was a global smash. Say Say Say reached number one in seven countries, including the United States, and went platinum there. In Britain it stalled at number two. The album itself did well in the UK, climbing to number four and selling 300,000 copies. But in America it stopped at number 15, the first McCartney album to fall short of the Billboard top 10. A hit single, in other words, could not drag the whole record up with it.
A hit single, in other words, could not drag the whole record up with it.
Earnest tone and a cancelled single
Part of the problem may have been the album's tone. The title track came from a request by a children's organisation, passed on by jazzman George Melly, for a song about an optimistic future for children. McCartney later called it a peace anthem. Tug of Peace went further, literally stitching together the title songs from Tug of War and Pipes of Peace into one track. It was earnest, gentle and a long way from the funk of Say Say Say.
Even the planned second single from the duets never came out. The Man was scheduled for release on February 12, 1984, but McCartney cancelled it shortly before the date. The album's cover, photographed by Linda McCartney, and its gatefold sleeve with song titles and musician portraits suggested a careful, personal package. But the record inside was a collection of scraps and detours, held together by Martin's production and mixed digitally in Montserrat. The album also carried a platinum certification from the RIAA, despite its modest chart peak. Among the players were Denny Laine, the former Wings guitarist, and the inner sleeve featured lyrics alongside two art reproductions. The inner sleeve also paired two works of art: Vincent van Gogh's painting of his chair with a pipe, and Clive Barker's chrome sculpture of Van Gogh's chair.
Forty-three years on, the contrast remains: a number one single, a number four album in Britain, a number 15 in America. Pipes of Peace is not the album McCartney planned in 1982, nor the one he started in 1980. It is the album that survived the delays, the film shoot and the stop-start sessions. And for all that, it still produced one of the biggest hits of his solo career.