1975 Wings – Listen To What The Man Said (US:#1 UK:#6)
“Listen To What The Man Said” is a hit single from Wings‘ 1975 album Venus and Mars. The song featured new member Joe English on drums, with guest musicians Dave Mason on guitar and Tom Scott on soprano saxophone. It was a number 1 single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the US and reached number 1 in Canada on the RPM National Top Singles Chart. It also reached number 6 in the UK, and reached the top ten in Norway and New Zealand and the top twenty in the Netherlands. The single was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America for sales of over one million copies.
Listen to What the Man Said” was recorded in early 1975 by Wings during their New Orleans sessions for Venus and Mars.It was a song for which Paul McCartney had high hopes, but early recordings did not live up to the song’s potential. McCartney said in 1975 of his initial opinion of the song, “It was one of the songs we’d gone in with high hopes for. Whenever I would play it on the piano, people would say ‘Oh, I like that one.’ But when we did the backing track, we thought we didn’t really get it together at all.” After Mason added guitar overdubs, the band was still dissatisfied. However, once Scott recorded the sax solo, judgements were changed. Although several takes of the solo were recorded, the very first take was the one that was used. McCartney said of Tom Scott’s impact on the track, “Someone said the famous jazz musician ‘Tom Scott lives near here.’ We said, yeah, give him a ring, see if he turns up, and he turned up within half an hour! There he was, with his sax, and he sat down in the studio playing through. The engineer was recording it. We kept all the notes he was playing casually. He came in and I said ‘I think that’s it.’ He said ‘Did you record that?’ I said yes, and we listened to it back. No one could believe it, so he went out and tried a few more, but they weren’t as good. He’d had all the feel on this early take, the first take.” The effect of a kiss smack heard on the track was recorded by engineer Alan O’Duffy, who taped Linda doing it.
Album
Venus And Mars is the fourth studio album by the British–American rock band Wings, and the sixth album by Paul McCartney after the break-up of the Beatles in 1970. Released in May 1975 as the follow-up to Band on the Run, Venus and Mars continued Wings’ run of commercial success and provided a springboard for […]
Musicians
Musicians in the tags above are confirmed. For more information click on the album.
Produced By
Paul McCartney
Songwriters
Paul McCartney
Linda McCartney
Charts
US:# 1
UK:# 6