Paul McCartney fans are still calling for the official release of “scrapped album”, Return to Pepperland.
While the legendary project is believed to be unfinished, longtime listeners of the Wings and Beatles member are hoping the album gets an official release. Bootleg versions of Return to Pepperland are available, though fans want McCartney to put out the album, which is believed to be a mash-up of three sessions. Some of the songs featured on Return to Pepperland released on later McCartney projects like Flaming Pie’s Beautiful Night. But fans on the r/PaulMcCartney subreddit are wanting a full release of the works, which saw McCartney work on song which were rejected from use in Rob Reiner film, The Princess Bride.
Alongside the rejected movie track are still-unreleased pieces like Return to Pepperland, Big Day, and Peacocks. These songs, along with a host of others, are often associated with the Return to Pepperland project, believed to be a play on The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. McCartney was joined in the studio by Billy Joel’s producer, Phil Ramone, and recorded a series of songs including Beautiful Night. Further recording sessions led to more songs being put down on tape, some of which are yet to be released.
A post to the Reddit page reads: “Why hasn’t Return to Pepperland been released? It’s a great album, and the title song is fantastic. Cuts have been released, but not the whole album. So why not?” Fans could only speculate on the reason for Return to Pepperland being prevented from official release.
Some of the songs featured on a cassette which is frequently issued in bootleg form featured songs produced by Trevor Horn of The Buggles. Those pieces from the Horn and Steve Lipson sessions would go on to form the base of McCartney’s eighth solo album, Flowers in the Dirt.
One fan wrote: “I could imagine Paul has albums and albums worth of material from each period of his life that hasn’t been finished or released. Paul does a lot of stuff (or doesn’t do) that I wonder about.
“Why didn’t he mention Elvis Costello once in his lyrics book? Not even just their songs together, his name isn’t anywhere! He mentioned Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Carl Perkins, practically everyone he’s collaborated with but not Elvis! Basically, I don’t think this is really something we fans can answer.
He took 50 years to release One Hand Clapping as an album. Why? Before Denny Laine died, him and Paul were talking about re-releasing Holly Days, why did that take so long, and why hasn’t it happened since Denny passed? Paul’s just a busy man. He has so much stuff he could release, and for all we know, he might be unsure what fans want and don’t really care for.”
Another suggested Return to Pepperland may not have been meant as an official project. They wrote: “It’s not known for sure if it was meant to be an album. It’s possible Paul just put together a collection of songs to show potential producers and someone leaked it. That’s probably why the songs got released over multiple albums instead of just one.”
A third user added: “The bootlegged album was a collection of scrapped songs and not necessarily an ‘an album’. However I agree that all of these songs need to be released or at least addressed.
“Same with a lot of the B-sides to singles that have never been reissued for streaming, such as Off The Ground Complete Works and all of those songs that never went to streaming from the deluxe promotional thing. There’s a lot of material that would be amazing for an archive collection album release, but I don’t think we will be getting any of that soon.”
A collection of Return to Pepperland songs can be found below.
