1882

Song facts

This song dates back to 1970 when it was first recorded as demos around the time of the McCartney album. Two demos have been made available – and are described in the following way on “chained and perfumed” blog:

The first “1882” demo is predictably the less complete of the two. It’s a simple Paul-on-piano track and some of the eventual lyrics aren’t yet present but the vocals are very strong. […] If the first version is only a Macca warm up, he’s absolutely on fire in the second. He’s brought Linda in for some backing vocals and she, too, vocalizes the guitar bits. The results are amazing. This may be the among the last gasps of Paul’s knack for marrying his extreme pop sensibilities and his more oddball tendencies—not to mention the last gasp of the hippie dippy style of songs that he’d been writing since he was in India in 68—before reinventing himself as the stadium-rock monster that he and Wings would become within a few years time.

It is supposed that a studio version was recorded in January 1972, but this one hasn’t surfaced yet. The song was then covered during the “Wings Over Europe” tour, and presented as “from our next LP“. Indeed, “Red Rose Speedway” was initially planned as a double album, on which 1882 would have been available in live rendition, recorded during the concert in The Hague; some studio overdubs had been added on this live recording. However, the song has been removed from the final Red Rose Speedway album, and has remained unreleased.

Regarding the lyrics of the song, here is how the blog IAMAPHONEY describes them:

[…] The lyrical content of the song is quite unusual. Some would fault McCartney’s lyrics because of the way he separates common expressions in order to fit the melody, but there is every reason to believe that this was intentional. Saying “You’ll be tarred, you’ll be feathered” and “You’ll be drawn, you’ll be quartered” is like saying, “You’ll be fine, you’ll be dandy.”

Unlike many McCartney songs, this one does have a cohesive story. McCartney sings about an impoverished boy and the consequences he faced for stealing a loaf of bread from the big house upstairs. Many impoverished boys flooded into London in 1882. […]

First demo + live Rotterdam 1972

Live La Hague 1972

Last updated on May 4, 2019

Lyrics