Print
Email
Share
“Oo You” opens side B of the McCartney album, and despite the fact that it is such a great, bluesy little rocker, it isn’t discussed much. Strangely, I can’t seem to find any evidence that McCartney has ever performed it live. When searching for information on “Oo You”, sometimes you come up with things about the Beatles working on it together. While some of the songs on McCartney started out as Beatle jams, whatever you hear about this being one of those songs comes from mere speculation. In 2005 a online music store came up with the idea to make the album that the Beatles would have made if they stayed together. Part of this ensemble of covers and Beatles’ Anthology tracks was a brief interpretation of “Oo You”. That is where those rumors of it originally being recorded by the group come from.
Not surprisingly, “Oo You” started out as an instrumental track. McCartney’s opening suggestion of “More guitar” might lead you to think that someone else was playing the electric guitar on it, but like the tambourine, cowbell, and “aerosol spray” heard on the track, it was all Paul. Reportedly ad-libbed on the spot, it was written and recorded on the same day as the album’s previous track, “Man We Was Lonely”. However, it wasn’t completed until a tape echo was used to move the guitar’s feedback “from one side to another”. On that same date of February 12th, 1970, McCartney also worked on “Junk”, “Singalong Junk”, “Hot As Sun”, and “Teddy Boy”.
Even though it seems to be ignored by McCartney himself, “Oo You” is critically praised all over the internet as one of the album’s best “deep cuts”. As a testament to this, there are many amateur covers of it on YouTube.
