''Driving Rain'' is the twelfth studio album by English musician
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
, released on 12 November 2001 as a double LP, a single cassette, and single CD.
Background
Following the example of ''
Run Devil Run'' brisk production schedule, ''Driving Rain'' – except for two songs – was cut with
David Kahne
David Kahne is an American record producer, musician, composer, and former record company executive.
Professional career
Kahne started his musical career as a working musician and soon became Director of A&R for America's first punk and new ...
producing in two weeks, starting in February 2001. McCartney used musicians who were scheduled to back him on tour.
Album cover
The cover of the album features a photograph taken with a Casio wristwatch containing a built-in camera.
Music and lyrics
"Back in the Sunshine Again" was co-written by McCartney and his son
James
James is a common English language surname and given name:
*James (name), the typically masculine first name James
* James (surname), various people with the last name James
James or James City may also refer to:
People
* King James (disambiguat ...
.
On 11 September 2001, McCartney was sitting on a plane in New York City when the
terrorist attacks
The following is a list of terrorist incidents that have not been carried out by a state or its forces (see state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism). Assassinations are listed at List of assassinated people.
Definitions of terrori ...
occurred, and was able to witness the events from his seat. Incensed at the tragedy and determined to respond, he composed "
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
" and helped organise
The Concert for New York City
The Concert for New York City was a benefit concert, featuring many famous musicians, that took place on October 20, 2001 at Madison Square Garden in New York City in response to the September 11 attacks. Aside from performing for charity, the co ...
, a large all-star show at
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, colloquially known as The Garden or by its initials MSG, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in New York City. It is located in Midtown Manhattan between Seventh and Eighth avenues from 31st to 33rd Street, above Pennsylva ...
on 20 October.
The songs "About You" and "Heather" were written for
Heather Mills
Heather Anne Mills (born 12 January 1968) is an English former model, businesswoman and activist.
Mills first came to public attention in 1993 when she was a model and was involved in a traffic collision with a police motorcycle in London. T ...
, as thanks for helping McCartney grieve the death of his first wife,
Linda
Linda may refer to:
As a name
* Linda (given name), a female given name (including a list of people and fictional characters so named)
* Linda (singer) (born 1977), stage name of Svetlana Geiman, a Russian singer
* Anita Linda (born Alice Lake i ...
.
Release and reception
In November 2001, ''Driving Rain'' was released to generally strong reviews but stunned many with its very low sales. The album sold 66,000 copies in its first week in the US.
''Driving Rain'' peaked at number 46 in the UK,
and became McCartney's lowest-selling album in his homeland. The US reaction was a little stronger, with the album peaking at number 26 and being certified Gold by the
RIAA
The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/o ...
.
McCartney halted the pressing of ''Driving Rain'' so that "Freedom" could appear as a
hidden track
In the field of recorded music, a hidden track (sometimes called a ghost track, secret track or unlisted track) is a song or a piece of audio that has been placed on a CD, audio cassette, LP record, or other recorded medium, in such a way as t ...
(since the artwork had already been printed). The just-released "From a Lover to a Friend" (which only reached number 45 in the UK) was repackaged with "Freedom", although the single failed to re-chart.
Reviewing the album for ''
Uncut
Uncut may refer to:
* ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship
* ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997
* '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...
'' magazine,
Ian MacDonald
Ian MacCormick (known by the pseudonym Ian MacDonald; 3 October 1948 – 20 August 2003) was a British music critic and author, best known for both ''Revolution in the Head'', his critical history of the Beatles which borrowed techniques from a ...
commented on McCartney's spontaneous approach to its recording, saying that "In parts (for example, the lengthy closer 'Rinse The Raindrops'), the results are almost ferocious, coming as close to a McCartney-esque
Tin Machine
Tin Machine were a British–American rock band formed in 1988, and fronted by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. The band consisted of Bowie on lead vocals, saxophone and guitar; Reeves Gabrels on guitar and vocals; Tony Fox Sales on bass ...
as one could reasonably imagine." MacDonald considered the more "polished and produced" tracks to be "the most successful", however, and concluded: "Possibly a grower, this album is certainly better than anything Macca's done for some while, if not the late masterpiece some of us have been hoping for."
Fox News
The Fox News Channel, abbreviated FNC, commonly known as Fox News, and stylized in all caps, is an American multinational conservative cable news television channel based in New York City. It is owned by Fox News Media, which itself is owne ...
commentator
Roger Friedman
Roger Friedman is an American journalist who runs the website, Showbiz411.com since 2009. Friedman's career started at Ballantine Books in the early 1980s as a book publicist, where he helped create bestsellers for baseball strategist Bill James, ...
remarked that the chorus of the song "Tiny Bubble" is "remarkably" similar to "
Piggies
"Piggies" is a song by the English rock band the Beatles from their 1968 album ''The Beatles'' (also known as "the White Album"). Written by George Harrison as a social commentary, the song serves as an Orwellian satire on greed and consumeris ...
", written by
George Harrison
George Harrison (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an English musician and singer-songwriter who achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles. Sometimes called "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian c ...
and released on the Beatles' 1968
self-titled double album (also known as the "White Album").
McCartney opened his tour in support of the album in April 2002. Titled the
Driving USA tour
The Driving World Tour was a concert tour by English musician Paul McCartney. It marked his first tour of the 21st century and of any kind since 1993's New World Tour. For the first time in nearly a decade, McCartney returned to the road follow ...
, it was a commercial success, with extensions being added to the itinerary around the world.
Track listing
All songs by
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
, except "Spinning on an Axis" and "Back in the Sunshine Again" co-written by
James McCartney
James Louis McCartney (born 12 September 1977) is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is the only son of singer, songwriter, and former Beatle Paul McCartney. He has contributed to solo albums by his parents, including ''Flaming Pi ...
.
#"Lonely Road" – 3:16
#"
From a Lover to a Friend
"From a Lover to a Friend" is a song by Paul McCartney, featured on his 2001 album ''Driving Rain''. It was released as a single and spent two weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #45. It also reached #6 on the Canadian Singles Chart. In th ...
" – 3:48
#"She's Given Up Talking" – 4:57
#"Driving Rain" – 3:26
#"I Do" – 2:56
#"Tiny Bubble" – 4:21
#"Magic" – 3:59
#"Your Way" – 2:55
#"Spinning on an Axis" – 5:16
#"About You" – 2:54
#"Heather" – 3:26
#"Back in the Sunshine Again" – 4:21
#"
Your Loving Flame" – 3:43
#"Riding into Jaipur" – 4:08
#"Rinse the Raindrops" – 10:08
#"
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
" (studio mix) – 3:34
#* ''Due to the last minute addition of "Freedom", it was not listed in the track list and thus appears as a hidden track. "Freedom" was recorded live during
The Concert for New York City
The Concert for New York City was a benefit concert, featuring many famous musicians, that took place on October 20, 2001 at Madison Square Garden in New York City in response to the September 11 attacks. Aside from performing for charity, the co ...
with later studio overdubs. There are some copies of the CD that were issued with an outerbox and a different cover and the track listings featured "Freedom" as an official track.''
iTunes exclusive track
#
"From a Lover to a Friend
"From a Lover to a Friend" is a song by Paul McCartney, featured on his 2001 album ''Driving Rain''. It was released as a single and spent two weeks on the UK Singles Chart, peaking at #45. It also reached #6 on the Canadian Singles Chart. In th ...
" – 5:26
#:* ''In 2007, upon adding McCartney's catalogue of music, the iTunes Store added one of David Kahne's two remixes of the song "From a Lover to a Friend" as an exclusive bonus track. This remix is the version released on CD-singles for this song and "
Freedom
Freedom is understood as either having the ability to act or change without constraint or to possess the power and resources to fulfill one's purposes unhindered. Freedom is often associated with liberty and autonomy in the sense of "giving on ...
"''.
Personnel
Personnel per booklet.
Musicians
*
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney (born 18 June 1942) is an English singer, songwriter and musician who gained worldwide fame with the Beatles, for whom he played bass guitar and shared primary songwriting and lead vocal duties with John Lennon. One ...
–
bass guitar
The bass guitar, electric bass or simply bass (), is the lowest-pitched member of the string family. It is a plucked string instrument similar in appearance and construction to an electric or an acoustic guitar, but with a longer neck and ...
,
acoustic guitar
An acoustic guitar is a musical instrument in the string family. When a string is plucked its vibration is transmitted from the bridge, resonating throughout the top of the guitar. It is also transmitted to the side and back of the instrument, ...
,
electric guitar
An electric guitar is a guitar that requires external amplification in order to be heard at typical performance volumes, unlike a standard acoustic guitar (however combinations of the two - a semi-acoustic guitar and an electric acoustic gui ...
,
classical guitar
The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...
,
vocals
Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...
,
Ludwig drums
Ludwig Drums is a United States musical instrument manufacturer, focused on percussion. The brand achieved significant popularity in the 1960s due to the endorsement of the Beatles drummer Ringo Starr. It is a subsidiary of Conn-Selmer.
Products ...
,
Fender Rhodes
The Rhodes piano (also known as the Fender Rhodes piano) is an electric piano invented by Harold Rhodes, which became popular in the 1970s. Like a conventional piano, the Rhodes generates sound with keys and hammers, but instead of strings, th ...
electric piano, knee slaps,
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...
*
Abe Laboriel Jr.
Abraham Laboriel Jr. (born March 23, 1971) is an American session drummer. He is the son of Mexican bass guitarist Abraham Laboriel, nephew of Mexican rocker Johnny Laboriel, and brother of record producer, songwriter, and film composer Mateo ...
– drums,
tambourine
The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though ...
,
Roland
Roland (; frk, *Hrōþiland; lat-med, Hruodlandus or ''Rotholandus''; it, Orlando or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the ...
electronic percussion, Ludwig drums,
DW drums
Drum Workshop, Inc. (also known as DW Drums or DW) is an American drum kit and hardware manufacturing company based in Oxnard, California. Current products by DW include drum sets, snare drums, and hardware.
History
Drum Workshop was founde ...
,
electronic drums
Electronic drums is a modern electronic musical instrument, primarily designed to serve as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit. Electronic drums consist of an electronic sound module which produces the synthesized or sampled percussion sounds ...
,
backing vocals
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are use ...
,
African drum
Sub-Saharan African music is characterised by a "strong rhythmic interest" that exhibits common characteristics in all regions of this vast territory, so that Arthur Morris Jones (1889–1980) has described the many local approaches as const ...
samples,
accordion
Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...
*
Rusty Anderson
Rusty Anderson is an American guitarist and singer-songwriter who is best known for his work as the lead guitarist for Paul McCartney's touring band though he has worked with an extensive list of artists in addition to his own solo career.
Ca ...
– electric guitar,
pedal steel guitar
The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...
, acoustic guitar,
12-string electric guitar,
Vox bass guitar, backing vocals, percussion,
tampura
*
Gabe Dixon
Gabe Dixon (born December 7, 1977) is an American musician. Dixon began his career in the Nashville-based country band, Six Shooter. Between 1998 and 2010, he was the lead singer of The Gabe Dixon Band. Since the band's break-up, Dixon has worke ...
–
Wurlitzer electric piano
The Wurlitzer electronic piano is an electric piano manufactured and marketed by Wurlitzer from the mid-1950s to mid-1980s. Sound is generated by striking a metal reed with a hammer, which induces an electric current in a pickup. It is conceptua ...
, piano,
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...
, Fender Rhodes, backing vocals
*
David Kahne
David Kahne is an American record producer, musician, composer, and former record company executive.
Professional career
Kahne started his musical career as a working musician and soon became Director of A&R for America's first punk and new ...
– Roland
organ, electric guitar,
synths,
orchestra
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families.
There are typically four main sections of instruments:
* bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...
l samples, Wurlitzer, sampled
strings
String or strings may refer to:
*String (structure), a long flexible structure made from threads twisted together, which is used to tie, bind, or hang other objects
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''Strings'' (1991 film), a Canadian anim ...
*
James McCartney
James Louis McCartney (born 12 September 1977) is a British-American musician and songwriter. He is the only son of singer, songwriter, and former Beatle Paul McCartney. He has contributed to solo albums by his parents, including ''Flaming Pi ...
– percussion, electric guitar
* Ralph Morrison –
violin
The violin, sometimes known as a ''fiddle'', is a wooden chordophone (string instrument) in the violin family. Most violins have a hollow wooden body. It is the smallest and thus highest-pitched instrument (soprano) in the family in regular ...
* String quartet:
**
David Campbell –
viola
The viola ( , also , ) is a string instrument that is bow (music), bowed, plucked, or played with varying techniques. Slightly larger than a violin, it has a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of ...
** Matt Funes – viola
** Joel Derouin – violin
** Larry Corbett –
cello
The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a Bow (music), bowed (sometimes pizzicato, plucked and occasionally col legno, hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually intonation (music), t ...
*
Eric Clapton
Eric Patrick Clapton (born 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is often regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in ''Rolling Stone''s list of ...
– guitar on track 16
Production
*
David Leonard –
mixing
* David Kahne –
producer
* Paul McCartney – executive producer
* Mark Dearnley –
engineer
Engineers, as practitioners of engineering, are professionals who invent, design, analyze, build and test machines, complex systems, structures, gadgets and materials to fulfill functional objectives and requirements while considering the l ...
* Jaime Sickora – assistant engineer
* Kevin Mills – 2nd assistant engineer
*
Geoff Emerick
Geoffrey Ernest Emerick (5 December 1945 – 2 October 2018) was an English sound engineer and record producer who worked with the Beatles on their albums ''Revolver'' (1966), ''Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'' (1967) and ''Abbey Road'' ...
,
Paul Hicks – additional engineers
* Mark Dearnley, David Kahne – mixing
* Stephen Marcussen –
mastering
* Stewart Whitmore –
digital editing
Digital media is any media (communication), communication media that operate in conjunction with various encoded machine-readable data formats. Digital media can be created, viewed, distributed, modified, listened to, and preserved on a digital ...
* Norman Hathaway with Micha Weidmann, Donat Raetzo – design
* Paul McCartney, Heather Mills – photos
Charts and certifications
Weekly charts
Certifications and sales
References
External links
*
JPGR's Beatles site: Paul McCartney's ''Driving Rain''
{{Authority control
2001 albums
Paul McCartney albums
Parlophone albums
Albums produced by David Kahne
Albums recorded at A&M Studios