McCartney seems to think anything gay didn’t sell well

Crap.

It was one thing when only Beatards spewed shit like that at SHF, but now even McCartney himself is spreading this lie.  

RAM is not a "progenitor" of indie pop.  For one thing, there is absolutely nothing "indie" about it, and not much of it can be called "homespun".  It was an expensive, major-label production with hired-gun studio musicians and smothering arrangements, with strings and horns and whatnot. The New York freakin' Philharmonic is on it! Lo-fi? If anything, it is a reaction to McCartney's lo-fi homemade qualities, providing the fancy arrangements he thought the critics wanted and found lacking on his debut. It was recorded at a hot New York studio, and it was an attempt to further a more "Beatley" sound. 

Part of the ethos of indie pop is that it consists of baroque arrangements on a low budget, such that anyone could conceivably make it in his bedroom using pretty much anything that could make noise.  RAM is mostly flyweight, whimsical, semi-finished doggerel he wrote in Scotland and then burdened with an enormous production job the fey little pseudo-folk songs don't deserve.

I realize some Maccaheads find tremendous comfort in this annoying album, much as they might find comfort in a bowl of Cap'n Crunch and Saturday morning cartoons.  Which is fine, I don't begrudge them that I guess.  But insisting that this album is important to the development of indie pop is condescending and patronizing, and kind of stupid, the kind of thing people who never have listened to indie music would claim.

I might be willing to call The Left Banke a progenitor of indie pop, although as with most indie music, the Velvet Underground's shadow looms large too.  Beat Happening deserves a lot more credit for inventing it than McCartney does.  Heck, even Brian Wilson does.  XTC?  Big Star's Sister Lovers? The C86 bands?  The most that can be said about RAM is that a couple of doofy Maccatarded johnny-come-lately indie musicians retrospectively fell in love with the damn record in the 90s, well after "indie pop" was a thing, and decided fruity little half-formed songs were legit.  I will also concede that RAM was influential in the creation of one track on Imagine.

Once upon a time, back in the late 1970's, when everybody with taste hated McCartney, I used to stick up for the guy.  For this, I got no reward and was met with derision every time, but I kept arguing there was a place for his music.  His awful 80's albums wound up silencing me forever; even I couldn't defend them and didn't want to.  But now, new Maccatards are unwilling to accept their hero as a mildly engaging, lightweight, flawed singer/songwriter with a couple of good songs per album, and have to turn him into Superman, the handsome Man of Steel, inventor of all subgenres of rock music (including heavy metal!!) who keeps on offering up classic album after classic album without any diminishment of talent as the old man pushes 80.

Personal to Macca: hey dude, if your music is so good, you wouldn't have to hype it to death.  And if you're so smart, you'd know "Mumbo" isn't a blues...or anything, really.

I've long maintained the only influential solo Beatles album was Plastic Ono Band, which Kurt Cobain, Oasis, and Elliott Smith were fans of.  Not that I would call it a "progenitor" of anything either. And even that was mostly an early-90's thing.

Sigh.  I keep getting older, but my anti-RAM crusade only becomes more necessary with each passing year.

Antiram, I'm with you, like 98% of the time, including when you go against the grain of what the majority seem to hold. It is often because that majority have become victim of group think, regardless of apparent political or peer affinity.

However, you're never going to convince me that RAM is shite, because I think it's actually the best thing Macca did in his long and not altogether distinguished 'fading matinee idol' solo career.

BTW I thought this long before it became a favourite, so I haven't been swayed by consensus. It's a fruitless crusade. You're not going to convince me otherwise!

^^^ I bought that book in my peak Beatard year of 1977, and it's still one of only 2 Beatle books I have shelf space for (with Revolution in the Head). I think my 12-year-old self was very lucky to find such a skeptical take (on Ram and all the solo stuff) in the first Beatle book I stumbled on.

C’mon, antiram…

Do you really think Paulie wrote that?

It’s just breathless hyperbole – written by some schlub at UMG – designed to lighten the wallets of Maccatards everywhere.

Or, more simply put: Marketing 101.

Of course, it’s ridiculous to say “Ram” has anything to do with indie-pop, but it takes real chutzpah to claim that inhaling the smoke of smoldering menthol-coated tobacco into one’s lungs is actually “country fresh”. 

I believe that.  But I also believe that for a lot of Beatard poaters, they do take it seriously and their life really does revolve around it.

On this we agree.  And aside from Chappers (oh, happy Chappy day btw!), let's not forget the guy who almost murdered Harrison too (and would have succeeded if Olivia hadn't cracked him over the head with a lamp, which for my money earns her the title Beatle Wife of the Millennium).  No wonder Ringo and Paul shy away from autographs these days.