Song Of The Day 6/19/2013: Terry Knight - "Saint Paul"

It was Paul McCartney's birthday yesterday, and I meant to put this song up there then, but things got in the way. Don't blame Yoko. Keeping in spirit with the Sissy Spacek song about John Lennon we featured a couple of weeks ago, I thought we'd do another, somewhat awkward lament about a Beatle.

Terry Knight (1943-2004) was a musician who flew to London in 1968 for a meeting with Apple Records, hoping that they'd sign him as a solo artist or staff producer. He had lunch with Paul and Ringo. At some point during his visit the Beatles got into a terrible argument -- I think Ringo actually said he was quitting that moment -- and Knight flew back to New York empty-handed. Out of either disappointment or spite, Knight wrote the song "Saint Paul" on the plane home. The lyrics apparently reflected Knight's opinion that the Beatles weren't going to be around much longer. As so many artists of the time did (though only one did artfully), Knight incorporated lines of various Beatles songs in his recording, which resulted in some legal wrangling between Capitol Records and McCartney's publishing company when the song finally saw the light of day in 1969.

"Saint Paul" couldn't have come out at a better time for the "Paul-Is-Dead" theorists. They believed Knight's song contained several clues to back up their assertions that McCartney had been killed in a motorcycle accident in 1966, and that the Beatles had been using a McCartney impersonator ever since.  There's no clear reason why Knight would have had access to that kind of information, or why the Paul-Is-Dead crowd would have considered him a worthy source. However, they were the birthers of their time, so any scrap of disconnected data or unsubstantiated hearsay was like Cool Whip to them.

Knight went on to manage and mentor Grand Funk Railroad. Paul McCartney was resurrected in 1970 and has been alive ever since, except for the Pipes Of Peace album.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hey--Stan here. Pretty good, but ... what's with the "baby talk" section of the song? I have to stir the pot and mayhap be a wee bit contrarian, hopefully not to a Hitchens-istic extent, w/r/t the Press To Play vs. Pipes Of Peace controversy (you've got to hear that word as con-TROVVER-see). I didn't like *either* LP, but I like Pipes Of Peace better than Press To Play. Haven't heard either one in a long time, but I *do* remember that my displeasure over Press To Play was fresh enough in my mind in the early 1990s that I once said, "Ru Paul? That's what Beatles fans do when they hear Press To Play."

Any campaign of pun control has an uphill struggle ahead of it.
Paul Pearson said…
"Ru Paul." Good one. Very good one.

I don't defend "Press To Play" above all other Paul McCartney solo/Wings albums, but I do prefer it to "Pipes Of Peace." There are less awkward moments on "Press To Play," though they're there. "Pipes of Peace" was way too slick, and sounds phoned-in. Neither is among his best solo work. But "Press to Play" has "Stranglehold" and "However Absurd," and on "Angry" it at least sounds like he's trying. The only good song on "Pipes of Peace," to me, was the only hit on the album, "Say Say Say." And that might have more to do with Michael Jackson's contribution than Paul's.

Neither album is as bad or perverse as "Red Rose Speedway" though.
Paul Pearson said…
Granted, however, the song "Press" is... kind of embarrassing.