Album This song officially appears on the Back To The Egg Official album.
Timeline This song was officially released in 1979
This song was recorded during the following studio sessions:
September 11 to 29, 1978
“Reception” is the opening song of “Back To The Egg“, the latest album by Wings released in 1979.
From Wikipedia:
[…] The album’s opening song is “Reception“, an instrumental, in which McCartney attempted to capture the effect of turning a radio dial and finding “about four stations at once“. The track features a guitar-controlled synthesizer (played by Juber) over a funk-inspired bassline, and spoken voices, including a reading of part of “The Poodle and the Pug“, from Vivian Ellis’s opera Big Ben (1946). The next three songs – “Getting Closer“, “We’re Open Tonight” and “Spin It On” – adhere to the proposed album-wide concept. Writing in Melody Maker in June 1979, Mark Williams interpreted “Reception” as representing a radio being tuned in a car, whereby “the occupant is on his way to a gig, hence ‘Getting Closer’ [to the venue] and, upon arrival, ‘We’re Open Tonight’“. The notional live performance is then reflected in the sequencing of what Madinger and Easter term “heavier rock tracks such as ‘Spin It On’“. […]
While the commercial version on Back To The Egg lasts 1:08, a rough mix lasting 2:34 has surfaced and is “radically different due to the content, level and placement of the imposing broadcasts” (from Eight Arms To Hold You, by Madinger & Easter).
Samples of “Reception” have been used on Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest, the first album by the Fireman released in 1993.
Fragments of random spoken and musical broadcasts begin what would become the opening track on the album. To start, we laid down a track with a Meters-like groove, Denny and I playing interlocking funky guitar parts. Then I overdubbed a lead guitar melody using an ARP Avatar guitar synthesizer, to which was added a sonic collage of real and created radio fragments to give the impression of a radio receiver being tuned.
Laurence Juber, in Guitar With Wings, 2014
They were pretty much random recordings, fitting in with the concept of reproducing the miscellaneous sounds ones hears when tuning a radio across the frequencies in England, picking up a mish-mash of British and European stations and extraneous bleeps and buzzes along the way. Back To The Egg was jointly produced by Paul and Chris Thomas, and engineered by Phil McDonald and Mark Vigars, and this was the team that assembled the sounds in the studio.
From Club Sandwich N°79, Autumn 1996
What did you do
When you were making
The effort sheriff
Well we were after
A man who was apparently
Been doing something pretty desperate…
We started off
And we were two days
On his tail
But we lost him…
Official album • Released in 1979
1:08 • Studio version • A
Paul McCartney : Bass, Producer Denny Laine : Electric guitar Laurence Juber : Electric guitar Steve Holley : Drums Mark Vigars : Assistant engineer Phil McDonald : Recording engineer Chris Thomas : Producer
Session Recording: September 11 to 29, 1978 • Studio Lympne Castle, Kent
Credits & recording details courtesy of Luca Perasi • From the books "Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs" • Buy Volume 1 (1970-1989) and Volume 2 (1990-2012) on Amazon
Official album • Released in 1993
1:08 • Studio version • A
Session Recording: September 11 to 29, 1978 • Studio Lympne Castle, Kent
Credits & recording details courtesy of Luca Perasi • From the books "Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs" • Buy Volume 1 (1970-1989) and Volume 2 (1990-2012) on Amazon
Back To The Egg - Ultimate Archive Collection
Unofficial album • Released in 2015
1:08 • Studio version • A
Paul McCartney : Bass, Producer Denny Laine : Electric guitar Laurence Juber : Electric guitar Steve Holley : Drums Mark Vigars : Assistant engineer Phil McDonald : Recording engineer Chris Thomas : Producer
Session Recording: September 11 to 29, 1978 • Studio Lympne Castle, Kent
Credits & recording details courtesy of Luca Perasi • From the books "Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs" • Buy Volume 1 (1970-1989) and Volume 2 (1990-2012) on Amazon
Back To The Egg - Ultimate Archive Collection
Unofficial album • Released in 2015
2:34 • Rough mix • B • Long version
Paul McCartney: Music Is Ideas. The Stories Behind the Songs (Vol. 1) 1970-1989
With 25 albums of pop music, 5 of classical – a total of around 500 songs – released over the course of more than half a century, Paul McCartney's career, on his own and with Wings, boasts an incredible catalogue that's always striving to free itself from the shadow of The Beatles. The stories behind the songs, demos and studio recordings, unreleased tracks, recording dates, musicians, live performances and tours, covers, events: Music Is Ideas Volume 1 traces McCartney's post-Beatles output from 1970 to 1989 in the form of 346 song sheets, filled with details of the recordings and stories behind the sessions. Accompanied by photos, and drawing on interviews and contemporary reviews, this reference book draws the portrait of a musical craftsman who has elevated popular song to an art-form.
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David Harvey • 3 years ago
This website is interesting and Laurence Juber's 1979 comments as well as 2014 give a very interesting insight into the guitars he, Denny and Paul used on 'Back to the Egg'. Paul also had a specially-made left-handed Rickenbacker fretless bass in addition to his regular left-handed fretted one that he used with The Beatles and around this time, he started to use his left-handed Yamaha bass.
The PaulMcCartney Project • 3 years ago
Thanks for your comments and details about Paul's guitars, David!
