(A caveat: This song does not perhaps entirely belong in the Paul McCartney Collection, as Paul's contribution amounts to the bass part, some background vocals probably, and an enormous bank account used to finance preposterous recording session projects such as this one.) To anyone with half an ounce of perception who was alive during the 1970s, Wings was transparently a Paul McCartney solo project under a group name for some sort of cryptic reason relating to the former Beatle's internal battle between egomania, deep-seated yearnings for collaborators who would keep his bad ideas in check, and even-deeper-seated yearnings to just be an ordinary rock star in a really darn good rock band. Looking over Wings' track record, the first of these motivations seems to have won out, with the second having ended in nearly complete failure. But the third led to some of the band's most curious moves: songs written by the various come-and-go Wings, performed by the band with McCartney as just the little ol' bass player. Oddly enough, guitarist Jimmy McCullough contributed (as far as I can remember) more songs than permanent members Denny Laine and Linda McCartney each did - even more interestingly, both dealt with the woes of drug addiction, a vice which would eventually take McCullough's life. The first of McCullough's numbers for Wings, "Medicine Jar," is a pretty decent steamed-up Seventies rocker with a reverberating opening riff, standard Wings harmonies, and a few lyrical touches that make it one of the darkest numbers in the band's repertory, i.e. "I know how you feel now - your friends are dead." By no means a bad performance, and it fits well on Venus and Mars, but there's not much more to say about it. "Wino Junko," on the other hand, is a genuine oddity of the finest variety. Like many of the songs it shares space with on Wings at the Speed of Sound, Wino Junko is bloated, overproduced to the point of sounding underproduced, and thin on ideas. And yet it still has more to recommend it than most of the other songs on this album - granted, the competition includes the infamously bad, bad, bad, bad "Cook of the House" by Linda McCartney ("The salad's in the bowl; the rice is on the stove"), but even a bad round of songwriting by Paul McCartney isn't normally the sort of thing that gets outshined by the second-fiddle guitarist. By now you're no doubt wondering what's so great about "Wino Junko." The main thing it has going for it is the goofy singsong chorus: "Wino Junko, can't say no / Wino Junko eyes aglow / Pill freak, spring a leak, you can't say no / Till you go down again." I admit the song benefits tremendously from the listener imagining (as I do) that Wino Junko is both a wino (who is additionally a junkie), and a run-down junk (ie, a boat) anchored in a harbor and converted into a shady dive which the wino junkie patronizes. So when the "pill freak" "springs a leak," it refers both to the character's personal collapse and the final disintegration of the yacht-turned-speakeasy in which he stands. This interpretation is beefed up by the opening line "Doctor Tom is getting on - all he does is sign his name," which could easily refer to the wino's arrival at the bar, when he signs his name on the guest registry. Hey, it's plausible. What else can I say about this song? It's got some great cheesy underwater-type vocal effects in some of the harmonies, and the final barrage of about fifty thousand "Wino junko!"s is pretty cool. Ultimately, the real appeal of this track for me is the way it manages to epitomize the complete excess of Wings like no other song1 while still being a great deal of fun. A must on mix CDs collecting Wings oddities. 1- Except probably "Morse Moose and the Grey Goose," which I highly recommend. For that song, though, you have to imagine that the "Grey Goose," rather than being a "steady boat," is a telegraph operator communicating with a moose who has learned Morse Code and thinks he has made a new buddy over the wire with a goose. Credit for this interpretation goes to Matt Voss. Either way, it's great to hear Paul McCartney giving his rocking, Little-Richard-style all to scream out lines like "MY NAME IS MORSE MOOSE! And I'm callin' youuuuuuuuu."< click here to refresh the full Songs That Time Forgot page if you can only see this subpage> |
