Celebrated at the time as a partial Beatles reunion, Paul McCartney’s “Take it Away” certainly starts that way, with an off-kilter rhythm courtesy of Ringo Starr and all of the tasteful hallmarks of a George Martin production — right down to the stoic piano accompaniment. But there was more to this standout track from Tug of War, released in April 1982.
The song’s most interesting new element, really, comes from 10cc alum Eric Stewart, whose presence clearly sparked Paul McCartney to dabble in some of that group’s now-famous layering of background vocals. “Take It Away” ends with a soaring loop of wordless sighs from a thousand Pauls, Erics and Lindas. A darker undertone surrounds the album, too, no matter how high that coda rises. That had more to do with the Beatle who wasn’t there, rather than the ones who were.
When studio ace Steve Gadd arrived for these McCartney sessions in early 1981 at George Martin’s Air Studios, he says he could immediately sense how heavy John Lennon’s recent murder still hung over his former collaborators. “It was a big impact,” Steve Gadd tells us, in an exclusive Something Else! Sitdown. “It wasn’t morbid there, but there was a lot of security around. Not where we could see them, but we knew that they had the perimeter set up, and that they were being very careful. It was just a hard time. We didn’t really talk about John a lot. Everyone was just trying to get on with it, you know? I’m glad I was there. Playing with those guys was quite an experience.”
Together with Gadd, Ringo Starr, Eric Stewart, Linda McCartney and George Martin (on electric piano) helped complete McCartney’s last best pop-confection hit. Still, though “Take It Away” spent five weeks on the Billboard singles chart, it could only reach No. 10 — likely because the track was just a bit too quirky. Between that familiar opening cadence and his closing silo of gorgeous exhalation, McCartney ends up stirring in a feverish horn counterpoint, a deceptively intricate bass and an indecipherable narrative straight out of Wings at their chart-busting peak.
As such, “Take It Away” couldn’t match the No. 1 chart heights of Paul McCartney’s earlier paper-thin Steve Wonder duet “Ebony and Ivory,” but it remains a big part of why the sometimes-uneven Tug of War album earned (and deserved) charttopping status, anyway.
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Hadn’t heard that song in ages — first-rate craftsmanship, particularly the middle eight.