PAUL MCCARTNEY AND STEVIE WONDER – "Ebony And Ivory"

“Ebony and Ivory/Can’t be justified environmentally” doesn’t have the same ring.

Don’t know this song other than by the horrified reaction it generates among nearly everyone – I had a brief look on Youtube (aiee) but got distracted fairly quickly by the awesome video to Say Say Say on the related videos list.

I’m with Dr C. I was six and a half at the time. And I was, for some reason, in love with pianos. As far as I could tell, this was a whole song about pianos! So I loved it: I remember it being one of the first songs I ever got dad to tape off the radio for me, and one of the first I ever learnt all the words to.

As I got a bit older I learnt to groan at the sentiment, but never fell out of love with the sumptuous, enveloping production (associating it in with the clunky bedroom demo sound of Wonderful Christmastime is criminal!). The best moment for me is the little solo, which feels playful and relaxed and utterly oblivious to the very existence of racial discord. 6/10 for me.

Just watched the video, I’d forgotten that they used SPECIAL EFFECTS to sit Stevie next to Paul at the piano, even though in reality they were on OPPOSITE SIDES OF THE ATLANTIC! (Or did they? I have a hazy memory of this being news at the time, and something I was impressed by. And there definitely appears to be a lot of suspicious bluescreening going on…but then towards the end when Paul’s playing his bass, his reflection on the back of Stevie’s synth looks pretty believable).

I liked this when I was nine, because of its obvious melodic charms, the effectiveness of the arrangement and the concision of the utopian sentiment. It was also surprisingly popular amongst us kids for a record made by two old men – maybe this was the influence of younger parents.

As a grown man, I obviously find this laughable, but at least in a genuinely funny way… One is a bit harsh, because I am glad that this record exists.

Weird that you should have mentioned school assemblies, Tom, because my memories of this record blur with a particular primary school assembly in which our headmaster Mr Clewer delivered a long sermon along similar lines.

Just like Paul, Mr Clewer wanted to point out that in order to play a perfect melody, you needed to play the black and the white notes TOGETHER! – an assembly prompted by a discovery that Mr Clewer had made the previous lunchtime whilst patrolling the school playground. You see, our school being a pretty much half-and-half multiracial school, we would play football and divide the teams according to black kids and white kids.

There was no more sinister motive in this than merely being able to discern which identically-dressed child was on which team. But by the time the news reached our apoplectic head, our self-devised system of team demarcation had turned into APARTHEID! in the SCHOOL PLAYGROUND! We had to promise never to play along race lines again, and from that day on, our lunchtime kickabout became a daily encounter between “England” and “Brazil”. You can probably guess how the teams divided up.

Back to the record – I seem to remember the video being filmed on horrible 80s video stock, the sort whose use didn’t stop Neighbours from becoming a soaraway success a few years later. That seems the perfect visual complement to what, on the record, must rank as one of the most hideous keyboard sounds of the 80s.

Well..1, I’m shocked. It is unbelievably trite but I can always find pleasure in McCartney’s melodic gifts. And they don’t desert him here. The production is rich and warm, and although I like “Take It Away” much better, the relaxed looseness of the solo works for me.

An inherent problem with duets is they so often sound forced, as both singers try to reconcile the desire to upstage – and simultaneously respect – the other.

This one is no exception – Stevie sounds like he’s phoned in his contribution. But it’s not quite as sick making as the McCartney-Jackson ‘banter’ we had to endure later in the year.

5, I think.

Macca and Stevie on cruise control, this one – you’re thinking, great that two musical giants got together, but couldn’t they have tried a little harder?

And Number 4 watch, “I Love Rock’n’Roll” by Joan Jett and the Blackhearts! Meanwhile on its way up to 5 was “We Have A Dream” by the Scotland World Cup Squad with John Gordon Sinclair out of Gregory’s Girl, which was little short of toe-curling: two hugely over-optimistic footy records in the top ten at the same time. Here, as much as I can remember it, is an alternative version of the England song that appeared in the RHC college magazine that month:

“We’re on our way
Here we are, bound for Spain
Hear them laugh
As we get off the plane
This time
Just like all the other times
This time
We’ll play with heart and soul
Maybe even scrape a goal
This time
Bugger it up together

We may be crap
But it’s still quite a lark
We’ll play the French
They’ll get hacked off the park
This time
Just like all the other times
This time
Why even catch the plane?
Soon be flying back again
This time
Luckily Ron’s retiring…”

I’m with Tom on the 1/10.

Bill Bailey addressed the same issue with a similar metaphor 15 years later. His ‘Hats Off To The Zebras’ is one of my favourite ever comedy songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIeRw8NZbfs. The part about badgers is my favourite.

I always used to sing along to this pronouncing “arrrmony” the way the Wurzels did in “Combine Harvester”.

pianos are great, but if you are going to use them as a metaphor for the essential oneness of humanity you are morally obliged, I think, to find a melody in which the crucial word actually scans properly. ‘Pyaahnoh’, indeed. 1/10 on this basis alone.

Re 11 and 18: You’re both a bit harsh on Ron’s 22 – they did go out unbeaten, and stuffed the French (eventual semi finalists). Quite honourable, really. My main memory of this tournament was of Norman Whieside being younger than me and he was PLAYING IN THE WORLD CUP (I was 17 at the time). Mortality was creeping like a tube train up my spine, as Roger Waters might have put it.

Re 6: Agreed, but only because the squelchiness and DIY feel of Wonderful Christmastime was an embarrassment in ’79 but sounds charming and almost Hoxtonian in C21. The keyboard sounds on E&I didn’t raise an eyebrow in ’82 and, yes, the vocals were recorded in different continents. Couldn’t see the joins then but you sure as hell can now.

Maybe this is why excessive praise for Hollywood special effects makes me sniff derisively – give it 15 years, bub!

Wichita #28 – yes, fair play to Ron’s 22, although they peaked after 27 seconds and ran out of steam when they could have done with Kev and Trev being fully fit. It was the World Cup of Big Norm’s Northern Ireland beating Spain and Schumacher flattening Batiston (more about the Germans in the next entry). Also around this time we had the memorable TOTP where Steve Archibald appeared twice, for Scotland’s World Cup song and Spurs’ Cup Final song – good quiz question, that.

Re mortality – the first top-flight player younger than me was Tommy Caton, and he tragically died at 30.

And we’re both too talented to be singing this shite…

I seem to recall the one good thing about this tune was that it inspired Alexei Sayle’s “Pop Up Toaster” – which came out almost in time for the Comic Strip’s appearance at the Adelaide Festival Of Arts in 1982…which was just over 27 years ago this week …and during which a goodly bit of “The Young Ones” was written…which I can mention a day or two after French And Saunders Oz tour has sold out…and that’s about as good a thing that I can say about this song.

are we saving all the BARDO love for the forthcoming entry then?

i will now be singing “this time” for the remainer of the evening.

if this is world cup reminisciences, this was the first one i can remember (and i still think it’s the best england strip), specifically being in a baked potato shop in peebles (possibly even a spudulike) when robson scored after 23 seconds…

Piece of shit. I like how Stevie’s photo was just popped into the Paul-against-a-giant-faux-keyboard shot. Maybe it was because HE HAD AN AFRO IN 198X! (did he? or was that an old shot? didn’t the old lady have her camera in the studio?) Just wondering: did Stevie have a version of this little ditty “minus Paul” on HIS lp?

37, “McCartney’s whimsy” would make a terrific title for a Macca best-of. it would sell by the bucket load

This was pleasant enough to not jeopodise your breakfast but it seemed to me that it was very much the case of two major artists combining for a sure fire winner rather than a sincere plea for racial harmony, which I think was much better served by a record called “Black and White” by somebody called Greyhound, which my dad had knocking about the house. The bloke at the end of that record was rather threatening with his demands for peace and love at the fade, rather like when Mr T used to lose his rag with that nutter on the A-Team. The result was that there WOULD be racial harmony or else some fucker would get hurt.

I take great delight in pointing out to friend Waldo that he is older than the President of the United States. And about twice his body weight…

just shite really…..no excuses from either of them. I don’t think McCartney himself would even want to revisit it. However ‘Take It Away’ I like a lot.

Critic watch:

Bruce Pollock (USA) – The 7,500 Most Important Songs of 1944-2000 (2005)
Giannis Petridis (Greece) – 2004 of the Best Songs of the Century (2003)
Grammy Awards (USA) – Record of the Year Nominee