Red Rose Speedway:

Paul McCartney and Wings. Reviewed by Gordon Campbell.

This record just about clinches the suspicion (first derived from religious sources) that idolatry may be addictive. It seems that McCartney years to be a teenage idol all over again. Its hard to be too critical. What do you do after you've been a Beatle ? It must be hard for an ego as big as Mc-Cartney's to surrender the spotlights to some pipsqueak like Alice Cooper; but what is irritating is to see how callously he rides on the back of Beatle style and nostalgia to stay up there. Of all the Beatles he's changed the least, and even poor Ringo hasn't cashed in so blatantly on his past as Paul does here.

Ringo's solution actually has been to dabble in voyeurism. He's just finished a movie about Marc Bofan in which hundreds of teenage girls scream, tear their hair and wet their pants just like in the fab old days of Beatlemania. Ringo claims the experience was "tremendously exciting".

But back to McCartney. Twenty four cover photos of Mr McCreassure you gals out there that he's still as boyishly handsome as ever, "My Love" is in the bloated ballad style of "Winding Road" and "Yesterday" because Paul couldn't get a hit with the other Wings stuff. "Little Lamb" shows us his endearing childish simplicity endures despite fame and fortune, and who could resist "Sing Pigeon"?

Do you need a pal for a minute or two?/ Me too, me too, me too I'm a lot like you, or dazzling word plays like "weeping on a willow/ sleeping on a pillow/ leaping armadillo. Eat your heart out, John Lennon.

All the other tracks sound like endless reruns of "Why don't we do it in the road". On "Hold me tight". "Lazy Dynamite" and "Right Thing" the title phrases are repeated 17, 12 and 36 times respectively. And so it goes as faded charms are relentlessly flaunted; Mc Cartney is the Mac West of rock, an Old whore still trying to shake that money maker.

Of course I could be wrong. Maybe all this mindless repetition is really raw nitty gritty downhome folk simplicity. You'll have to check that out with Richard Best.