To express his grief for his wife, Shah Jahan commissioned the construction of the Taj Mahal in memory of Mumtaz Mahal. So great was his love for his late wife that he holed himself up for a week after her death and forsook frivolity, flamboyant dress, and music for two years. To this day, the Taj Mahal stands as a majestic monument to one man’s love for his wife.
Art has been a conduit for grief for centuries, with artists as varied as Maxim Vorobriev, Edvard Munch, Francis Bacon, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres using their work as tribute to their lost loved ones. On his relationship with his late lover Ross Laycock, Gonzalez-Torres said:
Love gives you the space and the place to do other work. Once that space is filled, once that space was covered by Ross, that feeling of home, then I could see, then I could hear. One of the beauties of theory is when you can actually make it into a practice.1
When Paul McCartney lost Linda McCartney in 1998, he described his grief as all-consuming, saying, “I just couldn’t do anything, really. I was just grieving. I gradually got back into it; I just sort of wrote my sadness out.” 2 It’s that grief and love that haunt Linda McCartney’s sole solo studio album, Wide Prairie.
A compilation of McCartney’s work from 1972 and 1998, Wide Prairie is the epitome of a labor of love. Though the genesis of the record came out of joy, her early death of breast cancer in October of 1998, six months before the album’s bow, makes it a poignant listen. “Well, [the LP’s release] is sad,” Sir Paul said, “because Linda died. But when we made it, of course, it wasn’t sad. She was alive, and there are happy memories around it. Obviously, they’re tinged with sadness, but the actual record itself is very happy.”3
Listening to Wide Prairie is an experience that is a font of contradictions. Mostly, the music was recorded during McCartney’s days with her husband’s band, Wings. (McCartney was a vocalist and keyboardist for the group.) An accomplished photographer, she joined Wings after her husband proposed the idea, wanting to find a project that would satisfy his creative muse after the Beatles’ demise but that would also allow him to spend time with his love. Sir Paul said that he simply wanted to be with her. “We’re just friends, and it seems that if that were an option all the time — to be without her or to be with her — I’d always choose to be with her.”4
Linda McCartney’s social activism made her a beloved figure, and she was publicly mourned for her good works after her death. The lovely image projected by the McCartneys of the devoted married couple ameliorated the kinds of petty snipes she had to endure early in her marriage and musical career when it was suggested that the sole reason for any of her accomplishments was her marriage. Like Yoko Ono, Linda McCartney was subjected to a public that sneered at her musical talents, resentful of her success. (On top of the shared misogyny, Ono had to contend with awful racism, as well, which complicated her experiences.)
Sir Paul contends that even if his wife started as an amateur, she grew into her talents. “As time progressed,” he pointed out, “I don’t think anyone realized that she became the keyboard player on pieces like ‘Live and Let Die’, which has got really difficult stuff in the middle.” He added, “She was synthesizing a whole orchestra on the tour, and that’s really difficult to do. But she learned it all, and she did it all and took it kind of seriously.”4
In his review of Wide Prairie for AllMusic.com, Stephen Thomas Erlewine wrote, “There are a few enjoyable tunes (more than you might expect, actually), but they’re slight, albeit endearing. Ultimately, that’s the key to Wide Prairie — sure, it’s uneven, and Linda’s musical talents were limited, but it’s hard to dislike the album.”5
Wide Prairie may draw comparisons to Paul McCartney or Yoko Ono’s works. Linda McCartney’s musical legacy will forever be entwined with her husband’s, and her music will also be scrutinized, like Ono’s, by detractors who intend to find evidence of nepotism. The Ono/McCartney comparisons are unfounded. Linda McCartney’s approach to music and her thesis came from quite a different place than Ono’s. The latter was an accomplished avante-garde performance and conceptual artist who incorporated music into her work. She had already exhibited and performed at venues like Carnegie Hall when she met John Lennon. Lennon’s connections and fame unequivocally aided her access to a recording career. Still, Ono’s musical reach has been far wider and more enduring (due as much to its prolific discography as to its quality). In contrast, McCartney seemed happy to support her husband, seeing their collaboration as a way to extend their mutual affection for each other.
As Erlewine’s review suggests, Wide Prairie isn’t the discovery of a great and unheralded artist, only appreciated after her untimely death. Linda McCartney’s musical gifts were narrow, but there is such goodwill accompanying this record that, really, listening to the album is a moving and enjoyable experience. Because this is a collection of recordings that span over 20 years, there is a haphazard, loose quality to the sound: there are shades of country, pop, rock, music hall, Beatles-style harmonies, Los Angeles singer-songwriter pop, even reggae. McCartney’s recordings took place alongside Sir Paul’s phenomenally successful solo career, who released several albums in the 1970s that sometimes felt like informal jams in his home recording studio.
There’s a similar shaggy feeling to Wide Prairie – it’s not immaculately polished or slick. The musical accompaniment is a bit ramshackle, and there’s little care or attention paid to pretty up McCartney’s vocals, which sometimes fail. Despite the incredible lineup of musicians who have contributed to McCartney’s thin discography – including Paul, various colleagues from Wings, former Pretenders guitarist Robbie McIntosh, prolific steel guitarist Lloyd Green, and her son, James McCartney also gets into the act, contributing to a couple of the tunes – the album sometimes approaches outsider art like the Shaggs.
As an opener, the title track couldn’t be a better introduction to the album. Recorded in 1973 by Wings, “Wide Prairie” perfectly encapsulates the best, most endearing parts of Linda McCartney’s musical talents. Starting with a slick guitar intro, which also features a seductive spoken word exchange between the McCartneys (Paul’s Liverpudlian accent on his brief “Have you got a light” line is instantly recognizable), the song changes course, becoming a bouncy honkytonk number that tells the sweet – if cliched tale – of a young girl growing up in the West. (McCartney was an East Coaster, growing up in New York.) Linda McCartney affects a nasal ‘country twang’ as she sings around Vassar Clements and Johnny Gimble’s fiddles. The song takes another sudden swerve, and Paul gets a brief solo, accompanied by funky trumpets, that injects the song with a burst of rock polish before returning to McCartney’s hootenanny.
The country western affectation is an intriguing choice for McCartney, a woman who did not grow up in the rural environs of the lyrics. “Well, I was born in Arizona,” she drawls somewhat tunelessly, “And when I was only three / My mother took me to her saddle/and we rode the wide prairie.” Paul McCartney wrote in the liner notes to the record, “I have always thought of this song as Linda’s fantasy.”6 The wide prairie McCartney croons about conjures images of a little blond girl learning to live off the land and appreciate the simple things in life. It’s not a song that seeks to examine any realities of Southwestern living. However, it dovetails with her time at the University of Arizona, during which she nurtured an interest in nature photography. It’s a poignant song that brings up a very American sort of lore, which was a large part of her life, as she was drawn to nature, horses, and wide open spaces. Her mother and father maintain a looming presence in the song, an especially moving bit of myth-making on McCartney’s part, given that her mother died in a plane crash when she was still in college.
Linda McCartney returns to the images of horses with the final track on the album, “Appaloosa”. Recorded a month before her death, the song is at once a tribute to her horse, Blankit, an appaloosa the McCartneys kept on their ranch. But the song is also a spirited history of the genocide against the Indigenous people of the Pacific Northwest. Paul took on the recording duties, playing a variety of instruments, including a driving electric guitar that seems to be galloping through the song, as does the titular appaloosa. The lyrics show a startingly mature songwriter who developed a distinct point of view, particularly when empathizing with the tragic history of the Nez Perce tribe. The lyrics are sweetly compassionate as she writes:
Life for you was easy, full of love/
Sleep beneath the yellow moon above/
Then, the foreign soldiers came from far across the sea/
Stealing all the tribal land that once had been so free/
Starving people that you love are crawling through the snow/
Will they get across the border, heaven only knows
The appaloosa in the song are noble like the Nez Perce people. The horses in the lyrics try to save the Nez Perce tribe from the encroaching violence of the colonizers, who threaten to steal the land and resources of the Indigenous people. The barbed lyrics belie the beguiling sing-song rhythm of McCartney’s singing.
“Appaloosa” also touches upon two other essential factions of Linda McCartney’s legacy: her love of animals and activism. After her death, her animal rights activism has arguably become an even bigger part of her memory than her estimable photography career. She and her husband were leading voices for environmentalism and animal rights activism. Though not an inherently political musician, she used her music to express her views on the treatment of animals.
These views are most explicitly aired in “White Coated Man”, a late 1980s number she wrote with her husband and close friend, actress and animal rights activist Carla Lane. The song took aim at the practice of vivisection and animal experimentation. A video was released after the album’s release for “White Coated Man” that dramatized the lyrics, told from the perspective of a caged animal undergoing several experiments. In the video, directed by James Clark, images of caged animals are juxtaposed with leering, satirical parodies of ads for perfume, cleaning products, makeup, and laundry detergent. The song’s ominous, New Wave-inspired guitar rock connotes an apocalyptic, oppressive reality for these animals (which Clark matches in the horror-like music video).
Linda McCartney, Paul, and Lane collaborated on another animal welfare song, “Cow”, which bears the hallmarks of 1980s Paul McCartney. It’s a tuneful pop number with some zig-zagging synths and a hearty electric guitar solo. The simplistic lyrics mourn the fate of a cow contentedly grazing in a field. The words hit the idea of innocence hard, describing the cow as a “placid creature” or a “trusting creature” with a “quiet dignity”. Unlike “White Coated Man”, “Cow” aims directly at the practice of meat eating and factory farming, damning a nameless meat eater who “will eat you / Because he didn’t look.” It’s a daring accusation and point: meat is easy to consume because most of us have never seen where it comes from. The track isn’t just suggesting that meat eating is wrong but that it’s cowardice.
Songs like “Cow” and “White Coated Man” show the promise of a singer-songwriter who would flourish with solid support. Her passion and compassion shine through, even if her lyrical content can betray a triteness. With songs like “Appaloosa” and “Wide Prairie”, she shows a solid grasp of storytelling, and it would have been great to hear more from her.
One of the highlights of the record is a family affair. “The Light Comes from Within” has McCartney joined by Paul and their kid, James. The song was Linda McCartney’s final recording, and the defiant lyrics could be interpreted as a reflection of her attitude towards her illness. Though she’s excoriating her critics, there are moments in the song that sound like she’s addressing her cancer, particularly when she sings, “Oppression won’t win / The light comes from within…I wanna smell the flowers / You need complete control.” There’s a snarky attitude to the song as if she’s summoning up her energies, pent-up frustration, and anger at her illness and channeling it in a song that includes such sharp lines like “You make me sick / You say I’m simple / You say I’m a hick / You’re fucking no one / You stupid dick.”
One of the most unique tributes to Linda McCartney came from Yoko Ono in an essay published in Rolling Stone. Acknowledging the extraordinary place the two women kept in pop culture, she wrote, “Then came the Beatles’ breakup. The world blamed it on Linda and me. The attack was like a storm. I think the fans needed a scapegoat, and they chose us!” More so than anyone else, Ono understood the kind of scrutiny and petty resentment McCartney faced from her husband’s fans. She also recognized how McCartney’s estimable achievements were often undersold. Yoko Ono summed up Linda McCartney’s legacy by noting, “Her commitment to vegetarianism and animal rights brought her message to a wider audience than that of rock & roll.”7
CITATIONS
1. Interview of Felix Gonzalez-Torres by Ross Bleckner. Bomb. 1 April 1995. Spring 1995 Issue.
2. Interview of Paul McCartney and Owen Gibson. The Guardian. 26 September 2006.
3. You Gave Me the Answer – ‘Wide Prairie.’ Paul McCartney. 2 August 2019.
4. Interview with Paul McCartney and Chrissie Hynde. USA Weekend. 30 October 1998.
5. Review of Linda McCartney’s Wide Prairie by Stephen Thomas Erlewine. AllMusic.
6. Wide Prairie. The Paul McCartney Project: Unofficial Fan Site.