For his next album, Ram, he buffed his image as a pastoral hippie, groping his livestock on the cover—in the words of Wings dude Denny Laine, “a farmer who plays guitar.” But Ram was mostly recorded in NYC, in a top-dollar studio during nine-to-five business hours, with two sidemen he’d never met before. It was a professional approach to music designed to sound unprofessional. It worked, too, with Hugh McCracken playing that great guitar break in “Too Many People.” (My favorite McCracken solo, except maybe Steely Dan’s “Hey Nineteen.”)
