Paul McCartney and Wings

• 1. Introduction

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  Paul McCartney and Wings formed in London in 1971, a band born from one of the strangest creative moments in rock history. McCartney was sitting in a hospital, praying while his wife Linda gave birth to their daughter Stella on the 13th of September 1971. The birth was complicated; both Linda and the baby nearly died. In that moment of fear and relief, the image of wings came to McCartney's mind. He named his new band accordingly.

  The world was watching McCartney closely then, and not warmly. After the Beatles broke apart in 1970, critics greeted his solo work with a mixture of dismissal and contempt. Some of his former bandmates' peers openly ridiculed the idea that his wife Linda, who had no prior experience as a musician, would play keyboards. The press sharpened their knives. A former Beatle, they implied, was wasting everyone's time.

  What followed over the next decade was a methodical, improbable rebuttal. Wings would place six singles at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, send five consecutive albums to the top of the US charts, and release what became, at the time, the biggest-selling non-charity single in UK history. How a band that critics loved to dismiss managed all of that, and why it ultimately fell apart, is a story about music, money, marriage, cannabis in Japan, and the particular pressures of life in the shadow of the most famous group that ever existed.

• 2. A Band Built in Defiance

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  Denny Laine received a phone call from McCartney that changed everything. Laine, a guitarist who had served in the Moody Blues, was working on a solo album when McCartney rang him. The exchange, as McCartney recalled it, was almost absurdly casual: McCartney asked what Laine was doing, Laine said nothing, and McCartney said, "Right. Come on then." Laine dropped his solo plans on the spot.

  The drummer recruited for the original line-up was Denny Seiwell, who had played sessions with McCartney during the recording of Ram in New York City. McCartney had auditioned a number of musicians there; guitarist David Spinozza was selected but later became unavailable due to other commitments, and Hugh McCracken stepped in. When it came time to form a proper band, McCracken declined the invitation but Seiwell accepted.

  McCartney's decision to keep Linda in the band was the flashpoint. He had insisted from the start of their marriage that she would be part of his musical life regardless of her background. Critics and even some fans found this baffling. In Roy Carr and Tony Tyler's 1975 book The Beatles: An Illustrated Record, the debut Wings album Wild Life was described as "rushed, defensive, badly timed, and over-publicized", showing McCartney's songwriting "at an absolute nadir just when he needed a little respect." That was the reception Wings was fighting from the very first day.

  McCartney's own position in the band was also unusual. He had defined himself publicly as a bass player even after leaving the Beatles, once explaining that by then he was "a bass player pretty much, who also happened to play guitar." He doubled on other instruments when needed, but the bass was where he anchored himself, and that choice shaped the sound Wings would develop.

• 3. Political Songs and Banned Records

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  On the 24th of January 1972, guitarist Henry McCullough joined Wings after a tryout. Within weeks, the band mounted an impromptu tour of UK university campuses, driving around in a van with no advance announcement. It was the first tour featuring a former Beatle since the Beatles disbanded, but Wings deliberately played no Beatles songs to signal that this was a new venture entirely.

  The first Wings single of that year, released in February 1972, was not a love song. "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" was a direct response to Bloody Sunday. The BBC banned it for its anti-Unionist political stance. Even without airplay, the single reached number 16 in the UK and number 1 in both the Republic of Ireland and Spain. The BBC's intervention had made the song more talked about, not less.

  McCartney's follow-up move was disorienting to observers. Wings released "Mary Had a Little Lamb", a children's song, which climbed into the UK top 10. Some critics read it as a sarcastic jab at the BBC ban. McCartney maintained it was a sincere attempt to record something for children. Then Wings released "Hi, Hi, Hi" in December 1972, which the BBC banned again, this time for alleged drug and sexual content. The B-side, "C Moon", was played instead. The A-side, banned as it was, peaked at number 5 in the UK.

  Those first months revealed something about how Wings would operate. McCartney was not interested in playing it safe. He was interested in making things that would land, whether or not establishment gatekeepers approved.

• 4. Lagos and Band on the Run

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  Near the end of the Red Rose Speedway sessions, in October 1972, Wings recorded "Live and Let Die", the theme for the James Bond film of the same name. The session reunited McCartney with Beatles producer George Martin. The song became a worldwide hit and a fixture of McCartney's concert performances for decades.

  The sessions for the next album came close to never happening at all. In August 1973, after a successful British tour, Henry McCullough and Denny Seiwell both quit without warning at the end of rehearsals. McCullough had grown tired of being told by McCartney exactly what to play on the guitar. Seiwell had long felt he was working for a flat wage without any formal financial arrangement. Both men were also unhappy about Linda's role in the group.

  With the band reduced to just the McCartneys and Laine, McCartney chose to record at EMI's eight-track studio in Lagos, Nigeria. The decision was partly logistical, partly bold. The equipment was primitive by the standards of what McCartney had worked with before. What came out of it was Band on the Run, which went to number 1 in both the US and the UK. The album included the rockers "Jet" and "Helen Wheels" and the title track, which critics compared favourably to the suite structure of side two of Abbey Road. "No Words" was the first Wings song on which Laine received a co-writing credit alongside the McCartneys. Critics who had spent three years dismissing McCartney largely reversed course. The album restored his reputation in a way that no amount of public argument could have managed.

• 5. The World Tour and Its Aftermath

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  Jimmy McCulloch, who had previously played with Thunderclap Newman and Stone the Crows, joined Wings after Band on the Run. The first full recording session with the expanded line-up took place in Nashville, at the farm of songwriter Curly Putman Jr. The visit produced the non-album single "Junior's Farm", which was Wings' last release on Apple Records. In a rare outcome for the era, both sides of that single separately charted in the US Billboard Top 20.

  Venus and Mars, recorded partly in New Orleans and released in 1975 as Wings' first album on Capitol Records, reached the top of the charts. It contained the US number 1 single "Listen to What the Man Said", which featured Dave Mason of Traffic on guitar and Tom Scott on saxophone. During those sessions, drummer Geoff Britton quit and was replaced by Joe English, who won the job at a secret audition.

  The Wings Over the World tour ran from late 1975 through September 1976. It began in Bristol, moved to Australia, then Europe, then the US, with Madison Square Garden and Boston Garden among the stops, and finished with a four-night run at Wembley Empire Pool in London. A horn section of four musicians, Tony Dorsey, Howie Casey, Thaddeus Richard, and Steve Howard, was added to the stage act. One of the Seattle concerts was filmed and later released as the concert feature Rockshow in 1980. The US leg also produced the triple live album Wings over America, which became the fifth consecutive Wings album to reach number 1 in the United States.

  Released midway through the tour, Wings at the Speed of Sound was a deliberate attempt at a group record. Each of the five band members sang lead on at least one track. Both singles, "Silly Love Songs" and "Let 'Em In", were nevertheless sung by McCartney, and the former went to number 1 in the US.

• 6. Mull of Kintyre and the Money Behind the Music

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  Both McCulloch and Joe English departed in 1977. McCulloch later joined Small Faces and died of morphine and alcohol poisoning in 1979. English later founded the Christian-oriented Joe English Band after playing with Chuck Leavell's group Sea Level.

  Their exit cleared the way for Wings to release a song that neither of them appeared on. "Mull of Kintyre" was a McCartney-Laine ballad about the Scottish coastal area where McCartney had made his home in the early 1970s. Released ahead of Christmas, it dominated the charts in Britain, Australia, and many other countries. It became the first UK single to exceed 2 million in sales, surpassing the Beatles' own "She Loves You". By 2002, it ranked fourth on the official all-time best-sellers list for the UK. In the US, however, it barely registered; the B-side, "Girls School", got most of the American airplay and barely crept into the top 40.

  The financial arrangement around that song became one of the fractures that would eventually break the band. Laine co-wrote "Mull of Kintyre" with McCartney but was paid a flat fee for his contribution rather than receiving a share of royalties. When the single became a phenomenon, Laine received nothing beyond what he had already been paid. He had also been employed as a contract writer on a song that earned millions. The bitterness this created ran deep and did not fade.

  After the Concerts for the People of Kampuchea in London in 1979, a UNICEF benefit, a live recording of the McCartney II track "Coming Up" captured in Glasgow became Wings' sixth US number 1.

• 7. Japan and the Collapse

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  Paul McCartney and his family arrived in Japan on the 16th of January 1980 for a planned 11-date concert tour. Almost 100,000 tickets had been sold. McCartney was arrested immediately upon landing at New Tokyo Airport, where customs found 219 grams of marijuana hidden in his luggage, with an estimated street value of 600,000 yen. Wings' music was banned from Japanese television and radio stations within hours. Japanese promoters estimated the potential loss to be well over 100 million yen. The other band members, except Linda, left Japan and returned to England on the 21st of January. McCartney spent ten days in jail before being released without charge on the 25th of January and deported.

  Back in England, McCartney opted to release his solo album McCartney II rather than rebuild Wings around a new tour. Denny Laine responded by releasing a single called "Japanese Tears" and putting together a short-lived Denny Laine Band with drummer Steve Holley before releasing a solo album of the same name that December.

  By the time rehearsals for a new Wings album began in October 1980, it was clear to everyone involved that McCartney's newest songs did not suit the band. He and George Martin, who was to produce the album, decided to use session musicians instead. In November 1980, Holley and guitarist Laurence Juber were told they would not be needed. Juber later said he could see the "writing on the wall" and relocated to New York.

  Laine stayed for sessions in Montserrat in February 1981, but his relationship with McCartney had grown openly strained. Beyond the royalty dispute over "Mull of Kintyre", Laine's wife and the McCartneys did not get along. In April 1981, Laine announced he was leaving, citing the absence of touring plans. McCartney did not officially acknowledge Wings had ended until 1982, while promoting the release of Tug of War.

• 8. What Wings Left Behind

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  Wings placed twelve singles in the UK top 10 and fourteen in the US top 10. All 23 of their singles reached the US top 40, including both sides of "Junior's Farm"/"Sally G" charting separately. Five consecutive Wings albums topped the US charts. By the early 1980s, the former Beatle who had been written off as lightweight had outlasted his old bandmates commercially: John Lennon had stepped away from music from 1975 for five years to raise his son Sean; George Harrison had largely stopped performing live; Ringo Starr was writing and recording in Los Angeles but rarely appeared on stage. Author Robert Rosen wrote that by 1980, Lennon was envious enough of McCartney's continuing success to plan his own return to recording.

  The internal debate about whether Wings was ever a "real band" ran through the group's history and continued afterward. Henry McCullough said flat out that it was not. Laurence Juber, Wings' third lead guitarist, offered a different perspective in an interview: "I was a sideman, but the job assignment very much included considering myself a part of the band... In all its incarnations Wings sounded like a band, not like a solo McCartney project."

  Linda McCartney continued performing with her husband until her death in 1998. A posthumous compilation, Wide Prairie, featured seven Wings songs she had written or co-written. Founding member Denny Laine died on the 5th of December 2023, at the age of 79. In 2024, One Hand Clapping, a live-in-studio album recorded in 1974 that had never been officially released, finally came out.