February 7, 2024 • 29 mins
Paul McCartney found himself in a tricky place after The Beatles’ break up. What did his musical future look like without the three musicians he’d spent half of his life building a musical rapport with? McCartney’s other band, Wings, and an impromptu tour of UK colleges helped him find his footing.
“McCartney: A Life in Lyrics” is a co-production between iHeart Media, MPL and Pushkin Industries.
The series was produced by Pejk Malinovski and Sara McCrea; written by Sara McCrea; edited by Dan O’Donnell and Sophie Crane; mastered by Jason Gambrell with assistance from Jake Gorski and sound design by Pejk Malinovski. The series is executive produced by Leital Molad, Justin Richmond, Lee Eastman and Scott Rodger.
Thanks to Lee Eastman, Richard Ewbank, Scott Rodger, Aoife Corbett and Steve Ithell.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Paul Molldoin. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I mean, Wings was just the result of me asking
my spot, am I going to stop now that the
Beatles stopped? I mean, it's so wonderful, so successful. Do
I now stop and kind of look for something else
to do? But I thought, no, I like music too much,
(01:10):
so the whatever the something else is will be music.
So I was witting inter Us, did you find starting
a band?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And she said yeah, Well, she paused.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
She wasn't that quick, So yeah, I just thought, well,
we'll just start something that feels good and we'll build
it up like the Beatles did on the trouble being,
we'd have to make our mistakes in public this time around.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And Paul will done for a while.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the
greatest songwriters of the era and will.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You look at me? I'm going up to it. I'm
actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It was like going back to an old snapshot album
looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Band on the Run,
a single from Wing's third studio album, Band on the Run,
(02:47):
is McCartney's quintessential narrative songwriting in action. Split into two parts.
The first section of the song follows a band of
outlaws languishing in prison, stuck Insidey's.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Fa siends inside Forever.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Again, right a boy.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
That time, there were a lot of people who were
pretending to be desperados, pretending to be gangsters.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Outlaws was a word that came up a lot. Desperados
came up a lot. The thing is, you know, with
the plot situation, we were outside the law in a
very mild way. Right, So then we knew we were
doing this, So it spawned a lot of people talking
(03:56):
about themselves as desperados.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Despera, why don't you come to you know, sands.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
You've been out bad fances for so long now.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In nineteen seventy three, the same year as Band on
the Run, the Eagles released Desperado.
Speaker 7 (04:22):
Yeaprod.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Ah, you may get you.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
You're paining your.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Dear grading.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So outlaws were certainly in fashion at the time. HARKing
back to the long standing tradition of the American Western.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Reminds me of like Portch Castody and The Sundance Kid.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Yess's harder Now you gotta plan more, You gotta prepare.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
More guns and knives either bick.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I'm imagining it because of this, the sparadery thing.
I'm imagining this in America. No, no, not yet, not
to me and hard get the rules straightened down.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Rules and a knife fight no rules.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
As in many scenes from popular westerns like Butch Cassidy
and The Sundance Kid, the song sets up a band
of outlaws in a scene of captivity, dreaming about what
they would do were they to escape.
Speaker 7 (05:31):
Give I ever get out?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Not giving it all.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The way to rest charity.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Bind today.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
If I ever.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Get out of it, if we ever get out.
Speaker 8 (05:48):
On the run, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What does that mean? A bound of people who escaped
from a person or you could take it. That's abound
on a tour. So you know we are abound on
the run. And if you're playing singing it, you're getting
a double meaning. So everyone's looking for us, but we're
(06:15):
on the run and they're never gonna catch us. Will
the rain exploded with a mighty crash.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
As we really to the sun.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
There the first one set to the second one thereaving.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
On the run, Bad Run.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The rain exploded with a mighty cross. We followed to
the song and the first one said to the second one. There,
I hope you're having fun. So you know that's the
prison break and.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
A jailer man and sailor Sam searching everyone all the
bad on the run.
Speaker 7 (07:04):
Band on the run.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
The song is focused on a band of fighting laws,
breaking out of jail and gallivanting through the desert. However,
it was the other type of band that was more
familiar to McCartney.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's not a.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
Band on the run from Beetball down, is it? I
mean wings was the next step after the readers. If
I was going to continue, then.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
How was I going to do it?
Speaker 9 (07:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
How did the Beatles do it? Well? They were just
four little guys from Liverpool to No Ship and then
they figured it out and they worked out of it.
They did ten thousand hours and then suddenly they were
big and famous. So I thought, well, you're either try
and get yourself a super group, which what happened is
(07:54):
a group of blind faith sure, which was ginger and
certain people are that Zeppelin. It was kind of a
little bit that, you know, it was the hand sect,
hand picked famous table, or you just started getting a
bus and ask a couple of nights to come along,
you know, and you don't fuss about it too much.
(08:14):
That's what we decided to do.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
WILLI underdakeod you heavy side, you know.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Joba bell A dreaming in a village square, ring down around,
long run.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Around Like any good desperado. McCartney had to enlist his accomplices,
seeking out the best people for the job rather than
those with the most notoriety. With Linda by his side
on this adventure, he began to put together the new.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
Band Everybody Wants to Be in a band.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That part of it, I don't mean to know it's true.
It's a nice idea of nothing else.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
McCartney knew he wanted Denny Lane on guitar and backup vocals.
Denny Layne had been a core member of the Moody
Blues in the mid sixties. They had made it big
with their hit single Go Now Since She.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
Gotta Go.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
You, So I knew Danny.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We toured with the Moodies, so anyway, I got on
with him. So he's the first person I asked. Not
Linda was the first question, then Jenny, and then I
came to New York autitioned people for Ram and Jenny
Sargle showed up out of that. So that was it
(10:01):
kind of thing, you know. Henry McCollough was just somebody
our roadies knew quite less. I'ven't come along see, And
it was the next move after the Beatles. The only
philosophy behind it was to not do Beatles songs, just
to create something completely new. So there hadn't been a
(10:25):
girl in the Beatles. The Beatles had known each other
all their lives, so it was all the opposite. This
is just a different way of doing it.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Really was falling as the desert world began to set
in the town of searchin for us everywhere because we
were not wild.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Run.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Once the members of Wings fail into place, the group
became a literal band on the run. Throughout the early
nineteen seventies, they traveled all over England on an impromptu
concert tour, learning the ropes of performance as the Beatles
once did in Hamburg.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And you know, because the theory was to just plan
as you went along, I was quite chaostic in the beginning.
We would shove up at student juniors and say can
we do a gig? You knew they had a hole
and they had people, so we were doing that. We
charged fifty p on the door and the guy would
(12:08):
come out with a big bag of fifty ps. Showed
up the night before, talked to a very amused students
union leader who didn't believe me until they came out
of the vamp. Well you got a whold can we
play a lunch time? Yeah? And then it was just
advertised to show we'll comment or music in the whole
(12:32):
wild and then people showed up. I paid fifty P.
Well there's a big bag of coins, which I just
always wanted to be a Peter Sellers movie. One for You,
Two for Me, and everyone just took a handful of
coins and we went around Britain. We had eleven songs,
(12:54):
so we had to repeat some of them, and some
of the gigs must have been quite bad, you know,
because we didn't really know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
It's an amusing image, this former Beatle showing up to
play in a college cafeteria trying to hone the sound
of his new musical group. Despite McCartney being a seasoned professional,
the band still needed practice time, a.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Lot of limbering. Yeah, I mean well. And I had
a song called Wildlife rough earliest album when Linda had
the intro on keyboard, don't doom, Doom, Doom, Jim Jing,
don't sequence the chords. I mean, I said, there you Newcastle,
(13:41):
it's Newcastle City Hall. I s a song now, this
song called called Wildlife. Wildlife, want to want to through nothing.
I look over and Lender's just frozen. I want to
see things. She has heart of the country. So I
(14:03):
go over. Now the crowd kind of wondering whether this
is just a bit of theater. When I go over
and call the cords, Oh, sh you know, so, I mean, actually,
if this happeared a sketch, it would be quite funny.
So I go over, well, I can't remember the Bloody Cords,
(14:26):
don't you what? Luckily seeing either, and she suddenly remembered,
so she pushed me to one side and we started.
(14:50):
But those are the kind of chaotic moments were you know,
we nearly just didn't remember songs, or we'd played quite badly,
or we play stuff the audience didn't want to hear.
We kind of got away with it, but well, what
did you?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
There was a great deal of pressure on McCartney's new
band as the media made comparisons to the group that
had dissolved a few years earlier. McCartney himself wondered whether
Wings would be able to measure up.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
A lot of this is just happening in my own mind.
It's not what anyone's telling me. I'm automatically thinking, well,
the Beatles were great, so Wings is not going to
be as great. Mike from all along was after the Beatles,
who's going to be as good as them? You know?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Of course, and I.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Kind of knew it couldn't happen, but I thought, well, yeah,
but we can be not as good as the Beatles,
but we can be something else.
Speaker 9 (15:52):
That must have been hard in some way to feel
that from the outset.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah it was, but as I said, you know, I
was to continue. I had to tough it out.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
But I mean I had reserves of courage from the
Beatles having pennies thrown at them. Sure at Stroud Village Hall,
you know, so we'd had that, we'd had that bullshit.
So here it was again. The hardest thing I think
was with Linda in the group, who was a complete amateur.
(16:27):
And I said, well, so was George when he joined
the group. So was I, so was John, so was Rinko.
You taught her keyboards, and so I showed her a
few things on keyboard, and then she learned herself, and
she had a couple of lessons and stuff, and it
turned out that her strength wasn't necessarily the keyboard thing,
(16:49):
although she handled the job. It was more as a spirit.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
She was a great sort of cheerleader. She would get
crowds going.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
She did a lot of that, you know, so clap
your hands kind of thing, and in those days there
(17:22):
weren't many women in groups, so she was sort of
a pioneer in that aspect and listening back to the record,
she was damn good singer, even though she was amateur,
and people were looking for anything to damn her.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But we got through it.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
But it's going to think, well, of course, I mean,
the terrible fact is that human beings have a tendency,
you know, to whine about something, to find something.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I think we're very insecure as a race. As an animal,
I've often sort of seen so, like rabbits and things
in the garden or in the field.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I think they live a life of terror. Total they're
looking over the shoulders all the time, and I think
so are we. I'm not sure we're that different in
our way. We're looking over our shoulders, and that engenders
a not so generous spirit, dream a really square.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, it's always good to slack someone off, or
to see someone get slagged off. I think it's it's
another instinct that makes us feel not so bad. I
think it's a big instinct in us, and I think
that it's because we're insecure. So the more secure you get,
(19:04):
the more generous you can become, and.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Say said everyone on the.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Run.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
By nineteen seventy three, Wings was finding its groove, but
McCartney had yet to win back music critics since the
breakup of the Beatles. This third studio album, Band on
the Run, would be wings chance to establish themselves and
McCartney's chance to prove he still a long career in
(19:53):
front of him. When it came time to record, McCartney
was hoping to be inspired by a change of scenery.
Speaker 9 (20:01):
This was recorded in Legos.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
M h doesn't rule. I knew EMI had studios all
over the world, but I didn't know where they were,
so I asked for a list and they were in China, Rio, France.
You know Legos.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Well, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I love African music, speaking African music being there, but
we're not doing African music, but still being in the
land the African music come from. It will have some
sort of nice and lunch.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
As much as McCartney imagined Legos would be a good
backdrop for the life of musical Desperados, not all members
of the band felt the same. The night before they
were set to start recording, drummer Denny Sywell and guitarist
Henry McCulloch rang up McCartney to tell him they wouldn't
(21:18):
be coming.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I was like furious at first. It's like, what, you're
not coming to make next album? Well, that's not that's
not very bad luck. And I'm that kind of person.
I won't go, Okay, God, I'm going to rethink this.
If I'm going somewhere, then I'm going I've noticed that
(21:42):
about me. I'd like to stick to the planet. So
then I actually deal with this in my mind. So
I just thought, well, screw you under to make this
the best Ruffle I've made to date since leaving the
Beatles before Welcome, and got Denny guitar, got Linda both us,
(22:06):
Denny vocals, me vocals. I'll drun right. I've drawn a
lot anywhere. It was crazy. The circumstances were just wild.
(22:41):
I didn't get anybody else might have given up because
the studio was only half built and we had to
figure it all out. But I had Danny Lyndon myself.
I had Jeff Emeric, who who's the Peatle's engineer.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Late one night, as Paul and Linda were walking in
an area of time they had been told to avoid,
some men hopped out of a car and mugged them
at knife point. They stole a couple of Linda's cameras,
some unfinished lyrics and the demo tips for the upcoming album.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
We've been walked what we did to listen because we
were just for others, so we just were walking later
now where we've been told not to walk.
Speaker 9 (23:28):
So in terms of reconstructing and you have to go
back to if not Square won something akin to it.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
We remember them well enough. I'm sure I had the
lyrics somewhat. We always think because your native was like
five Legos calls were so they will have re recorded
over them some decent music African or just chucked them
away as robbish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The band's trip to Legos, what with the half inished
studio and the unexpected mugging, wasn't quite what McCartney had imagined.
When Paul and Linda returned to England, they found a
letter at their home from the e m I chairman
warning them not to go to Legos because of a
cholera outbreak. The letter had arrived after they had left.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, looking back on extends like that, you block out
all the worst stuff and you remember all the cooso.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Despite the recording conditions, Band on the Run was a
runaway success upon the release of the album, Wings became
more secure not just as a follow up band to
the Beatles, but as a significant musical group in their
own right. The song band on the Run was one
(25:06):
of Wings's first hits, topping the charts at numbber one
in America and number three in the UK.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I was talking to a journalist once about Sergeant Pepper
going on about it as if he must admire it,
and he said, we'll tell you the truth. He said,
it was a band on the run for me. It's
more my generation on the run was his Sergeant Pepper, right,
So I certainly realized, oh yeah. And that has proved
to be a very interesting fact over the years that
(25:38):
there are some people who actually like what I did
with Wings better than the Beatles. There are some people
whose first thing they ever heard was you know, a
band on the run or jet or something that we did.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
With Wings, and I think for them that means a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
They have a special affection for that.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
His success of Wings was a testament to McCartney's entrepreneurial spirit,
as well as his willingness to deviate from rules and expectations.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You better run, you're worrying.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
It sounds a lot of argue, I think that you're
willating to.
Speaker 9 (26:43):
Well to borrow a phrase from yet sort of more naked.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know you didn't have to do that, right, you
really did know. It also says I'm mad, but that
just right. I could think of other ways to do it,
but I didn't like them, and so the only other
rules not do it. Okay, I'll do this way because
(27:08):
I like it. It's probably a good way because we
will learn, we will develop. By the time we're ready,
will be pretty good, and we'll have had some success
with the records here there and ever. So it was
only seventy sixth when we finally had Band on Us,
(27:29):
a big record. We then toured properly as Wings.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
That time.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Band on the Run the title track from Wings nineteen
seventy three album in the next episode.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Thanks sALS Salt Word, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, a cheerful song
about a serial killer inspired by an obscure French avant
(28:43):
garde play.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
NPL and Pushkin Industries.
Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Paul Molldoin. Before we get to
this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
can binge all twelve episodes of McCartney A Life and
Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
(00:35):
Find Pushkin Plus on the McCartney A Life and Lyrics Show,
pedge in Apple Podcasts, or at pushkin dot fm slash Plus.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I mean, Wings was just the result of me asking
my spot, am I going to stop now that the
Beatles stopped? I mean, it's so wonderful, so successful. Do
I now stop and kind of look for something else
to do? But I thought, no, I like music too much,
(01:10):
so the whatever the something else is will be music.
So I was witting inter Us, did you find starting
a band?
Speaker 3 (01:19):
And she said yeah, Well, she paused.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
She wasn't that quick, So yeah, I just thought, well,
we'll just start something that feels good and we'll build
it up like the Beatles did on the trouble being,
we'd have to make our mistakes in public this time around.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And Paul will done for a while.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the
greatest songwriters of the era and will.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
You look at me? I'm going up to it. I'm
actually a performer.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
That is Sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
of our conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
It was like going back to an old snapshot album
looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
figures in popular music. In this episode, Band on the Run,
a single from Wing's third studio album, Band on the Run,
(02:47):
is McCartney's quintessential narrative songwriting in action. Split into two parts.
The first section of the song follows a band of
outlaws languishing in prison, stuck Insidey's.
Speaker 4 (03:02):
Fa siends inside Forever.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Again, right a boy.
Speaker 5 (03:22):
That time, there were a lot of people who were
pretending to be desperados, pretending to be gangsters.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Outlaws was a word that came up a lot. Desperados
came up a lot. The thing is, you know, with
the plot situation, we were outside the law in a
very mild way. Right, So then we knew we were
doing this, So it spawned a lot of people talking
(03:56):
about themselves as desperados.
Speaker 6 (03:59):
Despera, why don't you come to you know, sands.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
You've been out bad fances for so long now.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
In nineteen seventy three, the same year as Band on
the Run, the Eagles released Desperado.
Speaker 7 (04:22):
Yeaprod.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Ah, you may get you.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
You're paining your.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
Dear grading.
Speaker 1 (04:39):
So outlaws were certainly in fashion at the time. HARKing
back to the long standing tradition of the American Western.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Reminds me of like Portch Castody and The Sundance Kid.
Speaker 6 (04:51):
Yess's harder Now you gotta plan more, You gotta prepare.
Speaker 5 (04:55):
More guns and knives either bick.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
And I'm imagining it because of this, the sparadery thing.
I'm imagining this in America. No, no, not yet, not
to me and hard get the rules straightened down.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
Rules and a knife fight no rules.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
As in many scenes from popular westerns like Butch Cassidy
and The Sundance Kid, the song sets up a band
of outlaws in a scene of captivity, dreaming about what
they would do were they to escape.
Speaker 7 (05:31):
Give I ever get out?
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Not giving it all.
Speaker 3 (05:35):
The way to rest charity.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Bind today.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
If I ever.
Speaker 4 (05:43):
Get out of it, if we ever get out.
Speaker 8 (05:48):
On the run, what does that mean?
Speaker 2 (05:51):
What does that mean? A bound of people who escaped
from a person or you could take it. That's abound
on a tour. So you know we are abound on
the run. And if you're playing singing it, you're getting
a double meaning. So everyone's looking for us, but we're
(06:15):
on the run and they're never gonna catch us. Will
the rain exploded with a mighty crash.
Speaker 7 (06:23):
As we really to the sun.
Speaker 4 (06:27):
There the first one set to the second one thereaving.
Speaker 7 (06:36):
On the run, Bad Run.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The rain exploded with a mighty cross. We followed to
the song and the first one said to the second one. There,
I hope you're having fun. So you know that's the
prison break and.
Speaker 4 (06:52):
A jailer man and sailor Sam searching everyone all the
bad on the run.
Speaker 7 (07:04):
Band on the run.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
The song is focused on a band of fighting laws,
breaking out of jail and gallivanting through the desert. However,
it was the other type of band that was more
familiar to McCartney.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
It's not a.
Speaker 8 (07:20):
Band on the run from Beetball down, is it? I
mean wings was the next step after the readers. If
I was going to continue, then.
Speaker 2 (07:32):
How was I going to do it?
Speaker 9 (07:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
How did the Beatles do it? Well? They were just
four little guys from Liverpool to No Ship and then
they figured it out and they worked out of it.
They did ten thousand hours and then suddenly they were
big and famous. So I thought, well, you're either try
and get yourself a super group, which what happened is
(07:54):
a group of blind faith sure, which was ginger and
certain people are that Zeppelin. It was kind of a
little bit that, you know, it was the hand sect,
hand picked famous table, or you just started getting a
bus and ask a couple of nights to come along,
you know, and you don't fuss about it too much.
(08:14):
That's what we decided to do.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
WILLI underdakeod you heavy side, you know.
Speaker 7 (08:22):
Joba bell A dreaming in a village square, ring down around,
long run.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Around Like any good desperado. McCartney had to enlist his accomplices,
seeking out the best people for the job rather than
those with the most notoriety. With Linda by his side
on this adventure, he began to put together the new.
Speaker 8 (08:57):
Band Everybody Wants to Be in a band.
Speaker 2 (09:01):
That part of it, I don't mean to know it's true.
It's a nice idea of nothing else.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
McCartney knew he wanted Denny Lane on guitar and backup vocals.
Denny Layne had been a core member of the Moody
Blues in the mid sixties. They had made it big
with their hit single Go Now Since She.
Speaker 6 (09:22):
Gotta Go.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
You, So I knew Danny.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
We toured with the Moodies, so anyway, I got on
with him. So he's the first person I asked. Not
Linda was the first question, then Jenny, and then I
came to New York autitioned people for Ram and Jenny
Sargle showed up out of that. So that was it
(10:01):
kind of thing, you know. Henry McCollough was just somebody
our roadies knew quite less. I'ven't come along see, And
it was the next move after the Beatles. The only
philosophy behind it was to not do Beatles songs, just
to create something completely new. So there hadn't been a
(10:25):
girl in the Beatles. The Beatles had known each other
all their lives, so it was all the opposite. This
is just a different way of doing it.
Speaker 4 (10:35):
Really was falling as the desert world began to set
in the town of searchin for us everywhere because we
were not wild.
Speaker 7 (10:52):
Run.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Once the members of Wings fail into place, the group
became a literal band on the run. Throughout the early
nineteen seventies, they traveled all over England on an impromptu
concert tour, learning the ropes of performance as the Beatles
once did in Hamburg.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
And you know, because the theory was to just plan
as you went along, I was quite chaostic in the beginning.
We would shove up at student juniors and say can
we do a gig? You knew they had a hole
and they had people, so we were doing that. We
charged fifty p on the door and the guy would
(12:08):
come out with a big bag of fifty ps. Showed
up the night before, talked to a very amused students
union leader who didn't believe me until they came out
of the vamp. Well you got a whold can we
play a lunch time? Yeah? And then it was just
advertised to show we'll comment or music in the whole
(12:32):
wild and then people showed up. I paid fifty P.
Well there's a big bag of coins, which I just
always wanted to be a Peter Sellers movie. One for You,
Two for Me, and everyone just took a handful of
coins and we went around Britain. We had eleven songs,
(12:54):
so we had to repeat some of them, and some
of the gigs must have been quite bad, you know,
because we didn't really know what we're doing.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
It's an amusing image, this former Beatle showing up to
play in a college cafeteria trying to hone the sound
of his new musical group. Despite McCartney being a seasoned professional,
the band still needed practice time, a.
Speaker 2 (13:19):
Lot of limbering. Yeah, I mean well. And I had
a song called Wildlife rough earliest album when Linda had
the intro on keyboard, don't doom, Doom, Doom, Jim Jing,
don't sequence the chords. I mean, I said, there you Newcastle,
(13:41):
it's Newcastle City Hall. I s a song now, this
song called called Wildlife. Wildlife, want to want to through nothing.
I look over and Lender's just frozen. I want to
see things. She has heart of the country. So I
(14:03):
go over. Now the crowd kind of wondering whether this
is just a bit of theater. When I go over
and call the cords, Oh, sh you know, so, I mean, actually,
if this happeared a sketch, it would be quite funny.
So I go over, well, I can't remember the Bloody Cords,
(14:26):
don't you what? Luckily seeing either, and she suddenly remembered,
so she pushed me to one side and we started.
(14:50):
But those are the kind of chaotic moments were you know,
we nearly just didn't remember songs, or we'd played quite badly,
or we play stuff the audience didn't want to hear.
We kind of got away with it, but well, what
did you?
Speaker 1 (15:09):
There was a great deal of pressure on McCartney's new
band as the media made comparisons to the group that
had dissolved a few years earlier. McCartney himself wondered whether
Wings would be able to measure up.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
A lot of this is just happening in my own mind.
It's not what anyone's telling me. I'm automatically thinking, well,
the Beatles were great, so Wings is not going to
be as great. Mike from all along was after the Beatles,
who's going to be as good as them? You know?
Speaker 3 (15:42):
Of course, and I.
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Kind of knew it couldn't happen, but I thought, well, yeah,
but we can be not as good as the Beatles,
but we can be something else.
Speaker 9 (15:52):
That must have been hard in some way to feel
that from the outset.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
Yeah it was, but as I said, you know, I
was to continue. I had to tough it out.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
But I mean I had reserves of courage from the
Beatles having pennies thrown at them. Sure at Stroud Village Hall,
you know, so we'd had that, we'd had that bullshit.
So here it was again. The hardest thing I think
was with Linda in the group, who was a complete amateur.
(16:27):
And I said, well, so was George when he joined
the group. So was I, so was John, so was Rinko.
You taught her keyboards, and so I showed her a
few things on keyboard, and then she learned herself, and
she had a couple of lessons and stuff, and it
turned out that her strength wasn't necessarily the keyboard thing,
(16:49):
although she handled the job. It was more as a spirit.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
She was a great sort of cheerleader. She would get
crowds going.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
She did a lot of that, you know, so clap
your hands kind of thing, and in those days there
(17:22):
weren't many women in groups, so she was sort of
a pioneer in that aspect and listening back to the record,
she was damn good singer, even though she was amateur,
and people were looking for anything to damn her.
Speaker 3 (17:38):
But we got through it.
Speaker 9 (17:40):
But it's going to think, well, of course, I mean,
the terrible fact is that human beings have a tendency,
you know, to whine about something, to find something.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I think we're very insecure as a race. As an animal,
I've often sort of seen so, like rabbits and things
in the garden or in the field.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
I think they live a life of terror. Total they're
looking over the shoulders all the time, and I think
so are we. I'm not sure we're that different in
our way. We're looking over our shoulders, and that engenders
a not so generous spirit, dream a really square.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
I mean, it's always good to slack someone off, or
to see someone get slagged off. I think it's it's
another instinct that makes us feel not so bad. I
think it's a big instinct in us, and I think
that it's because we're insecure. So the more secure you get,
(19:04):
the more generous you can become, and.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Say said everyone on the.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Run.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
By nineteen seventy three, Wings was finding its groove, but
McCartney had yet to win back music critics since the
breakup of the Beatles. This third studio album, Band on
the Run, would be wings chance to establish themselves and
McCartney's chance to prove he still a long career in
(19:53):
front of him. When it came time to record, McCartney
was hoping to be inspired by a change of scenery.
Speaker 9 (20:01):
This was recorded in Legos.
Speaker 2 (20:04):
M h doesn't rule. I knew EMI had studios all
over the world, but I didn't know where they were,
so I asked for a list and they were in China, Rio, France.
You know Legos.
Speaker 3 (20:24):
Well, that sounds interesting.
Speaker 2 (20:27):
I love African music, speaking African music being there, but
we're not doing African music, but still being in the
land the African music come from. It will have some
sort of nice and lunch.
Speaker 1 (20:58):
As much as McCartney imagined Legos would be a good
backdrop for the life of musical Desperados, not all members
of the band felt the same. The night before they
were set to start recording, drummer Denny Sywell and guitarist
Henry McCulloch rang up McCartney to tell him they wouldn't
(21:18):
be coming.
Speaker 2 (21:19):
I was like furious at first. It's like, what, you're
not coming to make next album? Well, that's not that's
not very bad luck. And I'm that kind of person.
I won't go, Okay, God, I'm going to rethink this.
If I'm going somewhere, then I'm going I've noticed that
(21:42):
about me. I'd like to stick to the planet. So
then I actually deal with this in my mind. So
I just thought, well, screw you under to make this
the best Ruffle I've made to date since leaving the
Beatles before Welcome, and got Denny guitar, got Linda both us,
(22:06):
Denny vocals, me vocals. I'll drun right. I've drawn a
lot anywhere. It was crazy. The circumstances were just wild.
(22:41):
I didn't get anybody else might have given up because
the studio was only half built and we had to
figure it all out. But I had Danny Lyndon myself.
I had Jeff Emeric, who who's the Peatle's engineer.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
Late one night, as Paul and Linda were walking in
an area of time they had been told to avoid,
some men hopped out of a car and mugged them
at knife point. They stole a couple of Linda's cameras,
some unfinished lyrics and the demo tips for the upcoming album.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
We've been walked what we did to listen because we
were just for others, so we just were walking later
now where we've been told not to walk.
Speaker 9 (23:28):
So in terms of reconstructing and you have to go
back to if not Square won something akin to it.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
We remember them well enough. I'm sure I had the
lyrics somewhat. We always think because your native was like
five Legos calls were so they will have re recorded
over them some decent music African or just chucked them
away as robbish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The band's trip to Legos, what with the half inished
studio and the unexpected mugging, wasn't quite what McCartney had imagined.
When Paul and Linda returned to England, they found a
letter at their home from the e m I chairman
warning them not to go to Legos because of a
cholera outbreak. The letter had arrived after they had left.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, looking back on extends like that, you block out
all the worst stuff and you remember all the cooso.
Speaker 1 (24:46):
Despite the recording conditions, Band on the Run was a
runaway success upon the release of the album, Wings became
more secure not just as a follow up band to
the Beatles, but as a significant musical group in their
own right. The song band on the Run was one
(25:06):
of Wings's first hits, topping the charts at numbber one
in America and number three in the UK.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
I was talking to a journalist once about Sergeant Pepper
going on about it as if he must admire it,
and he said, we'll tell you the truth. He said,
it was a band on the run for me. It's
more my generation on the run was his Sergeant Pepper, right,
So I certainly realized, oh yeah. And that has proved
to be a very interesting fact over the years that
(25:38):
there are some people who actually like what I did
with Wings better than the Beatles. There are some people
whose first thing they ever heard was you know, a
band on the run or jet or something that we did.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
With Wings, and I think for them that means a lot.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
They have a special affection for that.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
His success of Wings was a testament to McCartney's entrepreneurial spirit,
as well as his willingness to deviate from rules and expectations.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
You better run, you're worrying.
Speaker 3 (26:37):
It sounds a lot of argue, I think that you're
willating to.
Speaker 9 (26:43):
Well to borrow a phrase from yet sort of more naked.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
You know you didn't have to do that, right, you
really did know. It also says I'm mad, but that
just right. I could think of other ways to do it,
but I didn't like them, and so the only other
rules not do it. Okay, I'll do this way because
(27:08):
I like it. It's probably a good way because we
will learn, we will develop. By the time we're ready,
will be pretty good, and we'll have had some success
with the records here there and ever. So it was
only seventy sixth when we finally had Band on Us,
(27:29):
a big record. We then toured properly as Wings.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
That time.
Speaker 1 (28:14):
Band on the Run the title track from Wings nineteen
seventy three album in the next episode.
Speaker 6 (28:22):
Thanks sALS Salt Word, Maxwell's Silver Hammer, a cheerful song
about a serial killer inspired by an obscure French avant
(28:43):
garde play.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
McCartney. A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
NPL and Pushkin Industries.
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