Mull of Kintyre: Has It Really Been Thirty Years!

This blog post, of course, will date me beyond all deniability.  You see, in 1977 I bought an eight-track tape (if you don't know what that is, look it up...I mean "Google" it.  You will get no sympathy from me!) of Paul McCartney and Wings that had several good songs on it, as was usual for McCartney and Wings.  But then there was this strange, weird song.  It was by no means a rock and roll song, and it was seemingly did not belong on the same album (Google THAT too, if you don't know what that is).  And right in the middle of this number, there were honest to goodness bagpipes!  As Paul sang the words, something strange was happening to me.  As the chorus ended and the bagpipes started, my finger hovered over the "change track" button on my "tape deck" (thats right, GOOGLE those terms!) but I could not move to punch that little button.  The words and the music had become strangely haunting.  Keep in mind I was sixteen at the time, and the last thing I wanted to do was listen to bagpipes in stereo!  But I just could not push that button.  Somehow this strange and unseen place that Paul sang about had become visible in my mind.  Of course I did not know what a mull was, but even at sixteen years old I was pretty sure that Kintyre was in Scotland or Ireland, maybe Wales.

This is the truth, although hard for me to admit over thirty years later - as I drove around in my old white Chevrolet, with Mull of Kintyre blasting out as loud as my speakers could go without "buzzing,"  I was CRYING!  Paul McCartney was singing about his new home in what was I suppose his old stomping ground, or maybe he had just adopted his new residence.  I was young, what did I know?  But Paul had managed to write lyrics that were highly charged with visualizations even an ignorant American teenager could identify with.   And his words, combined with the haunting, mysterious music of those bagpipes, which faded in and out with the chorus, evoked a feeling I could not understand.  I felt somehow connected to that place that I had never seen, to those images that I had never known.  It was almost as if I had been transported to Scotland in the blink of an eye.  And the feeling was so intense that I was actually crying!

That winter and the following spring I played Mull of Kintyre over and over until the tape broke because it had worn thin on Track Three.  I was somewhat of a cheap skate and I never attempted to buy another tape.  In a year or so, eight-track tapes had gone the way of the dinosaur, but I also did not buy the tape in its cassette version, either.  Somewhere along in this time, I was converted to full-time country music when the radio station where I was employed became an all-country channel.  After that, I started buying mostly country music, and I just never got around to finding another McCartney and Wings tape.

As fate would have it, some thirty years later (give or take) I was corresponding with one of my cousins on Facebook when she mention that she liked "Mull of Kintyre."  I told her that I liked it very much too, in fact, that I had found it to be a haunting and mysterious song.  She had had the same experience.  So I "Googled" "Mull of Kintyre" and found it online.  When I played it on the PC, I was again struck with that haunting, mysterious feeling of years ago.  Although Paul McCartney sings of a place I have never been, the words of his song seemed to transport me there, and it was almost as if I was a native there.  Like Marty Robbins once asked: Could it be that a man can disappear from life and live another time?  Well, that is a little deep and off the wall, but somehow I truly felt like I had been there.  Mull of Kintyre is probably one of Paul McCartney's most heartfelt songs   It was a very popular song, topping the charts in Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Europe...but I did not remember it doing so well in the United States.

A few minutes of research verified my belief.  Although Mull of Kintyre was so very popular overseas, even becoming a popular Christmas song, here in the US of A, Mull of Kintyre as a single never made it anywhere near the Top Ten.  I learned something else, as well.  In all of the concerts Paul McCartney has done in the United States, he never included Mull of Kintyre on any of the venues.  This would not have been disturbing I suppose, except that Paul unfailingly performed Mull of Kintyre in Canada, Britain, Australia, and other points overseas.  I did not come across any direct quotes from Paul or his management, but there are some who say that Paul refused to perform Mull of Kintyre as sort of a protest or boycott when he played in North America.  And I firmly believe this to be a loss for Paul McCartney fans here.

Now, some thirty years after the fact, I have noticed that Mull of Kintyre has received thousands of hits on Youtube.  That being the case, I hope, if you are not familiar with it, you will give Mull of Kintyre a listen.  It is as sweet and mystreious - and haunting - as it was thirty years ago.