LAMONT’S MUSIC NOTES-FEB 18, 2020…FORTY SIX YEARS AGO PAUL MCCARTNEY AND WINGS RE-RELEASED THE SINGLE ‘JET’ WITH ‘LET ME ROLL IT’ AS THE B-SIDE IN AMERICA. NOW I SAY RE-RELEASED BECAUSE IT WAS FIRST ISSUED ON JANUARY 28, 1974, AND THE SINGLE’S B-SIDE WAS ‘MAMUNIA,’ ANOTHER TRACK FROM THE ALBUM ‘BAND ON THE RUN.’ ‘JET’ WAS HUGE FOR MCCARTNEY, GOING TOP TEN WITHIN’ 6 WEEKS. INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH, WHEREAS MOST OF THE ALBUM ‘BAND ON THE RUN’ WAS RECORDED IN LAGOS NIGERIA, ‘JET’ WAS ACTUALLY RECORDED IN LONDON AFTER THE GROUP RETURNED FROM THE DISASTROUS TRIP. INSTRUMENTATION IN THE SONG INCLUDED A MOOG SYNTHESIZER. IT WAS USED FOR THE BASS LINE IN THE VERSE AND IS SIMPLY LINDA MCCARTNEY HOLDING DOWN THE ROOT NOTE.
ACCORDING TO MCCARTNEY, THE SONG’S TITLE WAS INSPIRED BY HIS LABRADOR RETRIEVER NAMED ‘JET.’
“We’ve got a Labrador puppy who is a runt, the runt of a litter. We bought her along a roadside in a little pet shop, out in the country one day. She was a bit of a wild dog, a wild girl who wouldn’t stay in. We have a big wall around our house in London, and she wouldn’t stay in, she always used to jump the wall. She’d go out on the town for the evening, like Lady and the Tramp. She must have met up with some big black Labrador or something. She came back one day pregnant. She proceeded to walk into the garage and have this litter… Seven little black puppies, perfect little black Labradors, and she’s not black, she’s tan. So we worked out it must have been a black Labrador. What we do is if either of the dogs we have has a litter, we try to keep them for the puppy stage, so we get the best bit of them, and then when they get a bit unmanageable we ask people if they want to have a puppy. So Jet was one of the puppies. We give them all names. We’ve had some great names, there was one puppy called Golden Molasses. I rather like that. Then there was one called Brown Megs, named after a Capitol executive. They’ve all gone now. The people change the names if they don’t like them.” — Paul McCartney, Paul McCartney: In His Own Words
THIS IS FANTASTIC….PAUL MCCARTNEY AND WINGS REHEARSING THE TRACK IN THE STUDIO
