Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey-- WTF?

Cafe Society
1

I’m old and I like oldies, so I listen to oldies radio station. When this song came on, I remembered the “We’re so sorry, Uncle Albert” part. I remembered the “hands across the water” part and I sorta remembered all the tea and crumpets. Only, to hear the whole song played from beginning to end now that I’m an adult. . . wtf was Paul McCartney smoking?
Can someone explain this song to me?

2

You’re talking about a guy who loved making up fanciful characters, usually with some kind of historical bent, very Monty Python-esque. So it’s not really surprising, when you consider Sgt. Pepper’s band and all of the other wacky characters that McCartney thought up.

3

:smiley:

I asked the same thing a few years back, but I can’t seem to find the thread. The general consensus, IIR, was that Paul just likes to write fun lyrics to fit his music.

4

Probably inspired by Paul Simon’s wordsmithing.

5

Here we go. I wonder why a search for Albert didn’t find it… Maybe because of the ‘/’ symbol.

6

As AskNott said in the thread Khadaji linked to, “He’d write three or four unrelated riffs, and he’d duct-tape them together.” In the case of “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey,” it was only two, but what the hey. I hear it, and it’s the summer of 1971 again.

“Band On the Run” has three distinct snippets. We could name each after the first lyrics in each snippet: “Stuck inside these four walls,” “If I ever get out of here,” and “The rain exploded with a mighty crash.” You get the idea.

IMHO, it actually worked pretty well, when the snippets themselves were any good. Paul’s stuff didn’t go bad due to his overuse of snippets; it went bad due to Paul’s increasing across-the-board suckitude in the late 1970s.

7

But Band on the Run makes some sort of surreal sense. I always figured Paul saw an episode of The Monkees or maybe Head and wrote about a band on a weird drug trip adventure.

Uncle Albert seems to be made up of nonsense.

8

I think you’re forgetting the “Live a little, be a gypsy, get around” section. Plus the fact that the “Admiral Halsey” section itself combines two separate musical ideas (the “Hands across the water” refrain and the main “Admiral Halsey notified me” tune).

9

Drugs
It all just depends on the quality/quantity of the drugs Paul took.

10

From what I understand, lots and lots and lots of dope.