The Oboe in McCartney’s Songs After 1970

My books set out to prove how McCartney’s musical imagination consitently pushes the composer outside the norms of three-minute pop song. This been facilitatated by the input of number of skilled orchestrators and arrangers.

Although the oboe is a classically-based instrument that is on the periphery of pop music, it does feature in a few high-profile songs. For example, The Stereophonics scored a hit in 2001 of the Rod Stewart hit Handbags and Gladrags. It begins with an almost regal-sounding oboe that ascends from Bb4 to F5 and then hits Bb5:

Dear Friend (1971)

The oboe no doubt figured in George Martin’s orchestral arrangements on Ram such as The Back Seat of My Car. However, the only clear passage for solo oboe in the 1970s can be heard in the track Dear Friend (1971). Here, the orchestrator Richard Hewson gives the oboe a sequentially-falling passage at 3:32 that helps to link the chords of F minor and C minor.

We All Stand Together (1984)

Moving into the 1980s, McCartney scored a massive hit with We All Stand Together, which was part of an animated short that ran before the film Give My Regards to Broad Street in 1984. Although the main feature flopped, Rupert and the Frog Song went on to be the biggest-selling VHS video in the 1980s. We All Stand Together was orchestrated by George Martin and within the score, the solo oboe can be clearly identfied playing the theme at 3:20:

It is interesting to note that Martin studied oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London between 1947 and 1950. His oboe teacher was Margaret Eliot (1914-2011), who married Dr Richard Asher in 1943. One of their three children was Jane Asher (1946-), who went on to be become McCartney’s girlfriend in the 1960s.

Golden Earth Girl (1993)

Moving into the 1990s, the solo oboe plays a prominent in Golden Earth Girl on McCartney’s 1993 Off The Ground Album. The oboe here is played by Gordon Hunt and the arrangement was by Carl Davis, with whom McCartney had recently collaborated on The Liverpool Oratorio.

Somedays (1997)

In the 1990s George Martin was one more recruited to work on the arrangements for Flaming Pie (1997). The track Somedays includes a haunting chamber ensemble for classical guitar, oboe, cor anglais, flute, alto flute, harpsichord, cello, violin and viola. The cor anglais is the lower-pitched cousin of the oboe and sounds a perfect fifth lower than its written pitch. It is fingered in essentially the same way as the oboe.

At 1:51 you can hear an expressive counter-melody played by the cor anglais that reaches down to F#3, near the bottom of its range. At 2:52 a high staccato passage is played by the solo oboe. Listening to both these examples gives an insight into the contrasting characteristics of both instruments:

Flaming Pie was written and recorded in the testing circumstances of Linda McCartney’s battle with cancer.

Ecce Cor Meum (2006)

The oboe is one of the most expressive and plaintive of all the orchestral woodwinds. McCartney has since incorporated the instrument into some of his classical works such as Ecce Cor Meum.

Now listen to the solo oboe here and try not to shed a tear!