Nearly 50 years after the release of his 1971 Ram album, Paul McCartney and two of the album's key players looked back on the legendary Manhattan sessions. To celebrate the 50th anniversary of Ram — which was billed to Paul & Linda McCartney — the album will be reissued May 14th as a limited edition half-speed mastered vinyl pressing.
McCartney, who recorded his first post-Beatles album, McCartney, all on his own, chose to bring the sessions to the “Big Apple” and record with top American session players. He recalled, “I’d had a little chance to kinda settle into my new circumstances with Linda, and now it was kind of a little bit easier to look at future plans, because my personal circumstances were a little more comfortable. So, I was able to take some time and start planning the kind of album I wanted next. And having done a homemade 'front parlor' album, I now wanted to kind of expand a little bit. I was ready to open my horizons.”
McCartney, who was working with outside musicians for the first time, shed light on how he would convey the tunes to guitarist's Dave Spinozza and the late-Hugh McCracken: “I would say: ‘These are the chords. I’d like you to do this riff here, and this is the speed of the song, and this is how the words go. I wouldn’t say: 'This is exactly what you have to play.' So, then within that framework people would then come up with their own ideas, and then once that was sounding okay you’d go and do a take.”