February 6, 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, Scott Rodger and Paul McCartney.
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 myself,
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, so
(01:11):
the whatever the something else is will be music. So
I was wording interus did she find starting the band?
And she said yeah, Well, she paused, she wasn't that quick,
So yeah, I just thought, well, we'll just start something
(01:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Around, 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?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
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,
(02:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Stuck Insidi's fal sands inside Forever Never Again.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Right about that time, there were a lot of people
who were pretending to be desperados, pretending.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
To be gangsters. Outlaws was a word that came up
a lot. Desperados came up a lot. The thing is,
you know, with the pot 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
(03:54):
of people talking about themselves as desperados.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Desperado, why don't you come to you know, Sands, 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 2 (04:22):
Yeah, oh you made didn't know?
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Yeah, you're paining your.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
There 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 Patch Custody in The Sundance Kid. Yes,
guns and knives harder. Now, you gotta plan more, you
gotta prepare more guns and knives, neither brick And I'm
imagining it because of this DESPERADERI thing. I'm imagining this
in America. No, no, not yet, not to me and hard,
(05:09):
get the rules straightened down, rules and a knife.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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 2 (05:31):
Give I ever, get out? Not giving it all the
way to registered charity Bind today.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
If I ever get out.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Of it, if we ever get out on the run,
what does that mean? What does that mean? It means
a bound of people who escaped from a Perusian or
you could take it as a bound music on a tour.
(06:05):
So you know we are abound on the run and
if you're playing singing it, you're getting the double meaning.
So everyone's looking for us, but we're on the run
and they're never gonna catch us.
Speaker 7 (06:19):
Well, the rains exploded with a mighty crash as we
BALI to the sun. The first one said to the
second one, thereaving.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
On the run, bad run.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The rain exploded with a mighty crash. We fell into
the song, and the first one said to the second one,
there if you're having fun. So you know that's the
prison break and.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
The jail man and sailor Sam searching everyone all the bad.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
On the run.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
On the run, the song is focused on a band
of fight breaking out of jail and glevanting 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 band on the run from Beetle Down
Liards I mean wings was the next step after the words.
If I was going to continue, then how was it
going to do it? Well? How did the Beatles do it? Well?
They were just four little guys from Liverpool to no
ships and then they figured it out and they worked
(07:42):
out him. 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 a group of blind faith shirt which was
ginger and certain people are that Zeppelin. It was kind
of a little bit that, you know, it was handset,
(08:04):
hand picked, famous tuble or you just sort of getting
a bo and ask a couple of nuts to come along,
you know, and you don't fuss about it too much.
That's what we decided to do.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
WILLI UNDERTAKEO You Heavy Side.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Gone and a bell a drinking in a village, square down,
long run.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
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 2 (08:57):
Band Everybody wants to be in a band.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
That part of it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
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 to Denny Layne 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.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Since she Gotta Go.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
You see, So I knew Denny. We toured with the Moodies,
so any 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 auditioned
people for Ram and Jenny Sigel showed up out of that,
(10:01):
so that was it kind of thing, you know. Henry
McCollough was just somebody our roadies knew. So Crackles I
haven't come along with. And it was the next move
after the Beatles. The only philosophy behind us was to
not do Beatles songs, just to create something completely new.
(10:24):
So there hadn't been a girl in the Beatles. The
Beatles had known each other all their lives, so it
was all the opposite. This is like just a different
way of doing it.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
Really was falling as a desert world began to set
down in the town of searching for us everywhere because
we never will be.
Speaker 6 (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 unions and say can
we do a gig? Because you knew they had a
hole and they had people, so we would do that.
We charged fifty p on the door and the guy
(12:08):
I would come up with a big bag of fifty PCE,
showed up the night before, talked to a very amused
students union leader who didn't believe it me till he
came out of the vamp. Well you got a whold
and we played lunch down. Yeah, and then it was
just advertised to so we'll comment or music in the
(12:32):
whole wild and letting people showed up played fifty p.
Well it'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 membering. I mean well, and I had a
song called Wildlife rough earliest album when Linda had the
intro on keyboard, don't m m Jim Jim dun't secrets
the chords? I mean, I said, there you Newcastle, it's
(13:42):
Newcastle City Hall. A song now, this song called called Wildlife, Wildlife,
want to through, want to through nothing. I look over
and Lender's just frozen. I want to see things. She
hasn't heard of the country. So I go over. Now
(14:05):
the crowd kind of wondering whether this is just a
bit of theater. When I go over and the cords,
oh sh you on, So I mean, actually, if this happened,
a sketch would be quite funny. So I go over, well,
I can't remember the bloody Courts, don't you what. Luckily,
(14:30):
seeing either, she suddenly remembered, so she pushed her to
one side and we started. But those were the kind
(14:51):
of chaotic moments were you know, we nearly just didn't
remember songs, or we'd play quite badly, or we play
stuff the audience didn't want to hear.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
We kind of got away with it, but well, what
did you 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?
Of course, and I kind of knew it couldn't happen,
(15:45):
but I thought, well, yeah, but we can be not
as good as the Beatles, but we can be something else.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
That must have been hard in some way to feel
that from the outset.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah it was, but as I said, you know, I
was to continue. I had to tough it out. But
I mean I had reserves of courage from the Beatles
having pennies thrown at them at Stroud Village Hall, you know,
so we'd had that, we'd had that bullshit, So here
(16:19):
it was again. The hardest thing I think was with
Linda in the group, who was a complete amateur. And
I said, well, so was George when he joined the group.
So was I. So was John, so was Rinko.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
You taught her keyboards and I showed her a.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
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,
although she handled the job, It was more as a spirit.
She was a great sort of cheerleader. She would get
(16:59):
crowds going. She did a lot of that, you know,
so cap your hands kind of thing, and in those
(17:22):
days there 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. But we got through it.
Speaker 3 (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):
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 and think they live
a life of terror.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Spirit, ding a really square. I mean, it's always good
to slack someone off, or to see someone get slagged off.
(18:47):
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, the more generous you can become, and.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
Say said everyone all the.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
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 in a long career
(19:53):
in front of him. When it came time to record,
McCartney was hoping to be inspired by a change of scenery.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This was recorded in Legos. It 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. Well,
(20:24):
that sounds interesting. I love African music. I'll speaking African
music being there, but we're not doing African music, but
still being in the land the African music come from.
(20:44):
It will have some sort of nice and lunch.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
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, you're not
coming to make on that 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 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 plan, so
then I actually deal with this in my mind. So
I just thought, well, screw you, I'm going to make
this the best raffle I've made to date since leaving
the Beatles. Before Welcome, I got Denny guitar, got Linda
(22:05):
both us, Denny vocals, me vocals. I'll drun right. I've
drunk a lot anywhere. It was crazy. These circumstances were
(22:39):
just wild. I think 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's the People'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 walk 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 1 (23:28):
So in terms of reconstructing, if 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 the guys your native was
like five Legos calls were so they would have re
recorded over them some decent music Africa or just chucked
them away as robbish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The band's trip to Legos, what with the half finished
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 (24:22):
Yeah, looking back on exters like that, you block out
all the worst stuff and you remember all.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Piclso despite the recording conditions, Band on the Run was
a runaway success. Upon the release of the album, Wings
(24:54):
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 of Wings's first hits, topping the charts at numb
were one in America a 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 of the run was his Sergeant Pepper, right.
So I suddenly 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 with Wings, and I think for them that means
(26:00):
a lot. They have a special affection for that.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
He The success of Wings was a testament to McCartney's
entrepreneurial spirit, as well as his willingness to deviate from
(26:25):
rules and expectations.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You're it sounds a lot about you.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think that you're relating to well to borrow a
phrase from Yets sort of more naked. You know. I mean,
you didn't have to do that, right, you really did know.
It also says I'm mad, but that is right. I
could think of other ways to do it, but I
(27:00):
didn't like them, and so the only other rules not
do it. Okay, I'll do this way because I like it.
It's probably a good way because we will learn, we
will develop. By the time we're ready, we'll be pretty good,
(27:20):
and we'll have had some success with records here and
there and never So it was seventy sixth when we
finally had Band on Us a big record. We then
toured properly as Wings.
Speaker 6 (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 5 (28:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Its Well.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Seal Maxwell's Silver Hammer, a cheerful song about a serial
killer inspired by an obscure French avant garde play McCartney
(29:00):
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 myself,
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, so
(01:11):
the whatever the something else is will be music. So
I was wording interus did she find starting the band?
And she said yeah, Well, she paused, she wasn't that quick,
So yeah, I just thought, well, we'll just start something
(01:32):
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.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Around, 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?
Speaker 2 (01:57):
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,
(02:46):
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.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Stuck Insidi's fal sands inside Forever Never Again.
Speaker 4 (03:21):
Right about that time, there were a lot of people
who were pretending to be desperados, pretending.
Speaker 2 (03:32):
To be gangsters. Outlaws was a word that came up
a lot. Desperados came up a lot. The thing is,
you know, with the pot 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
(03:54):
of people talking about themselves as desperados.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Desperado, why don't you come to you know, Sands, 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 2 (04:22):
Yeah, oh you made didn't know?
Speaker 6 (04:29):
Yeah, you're paining your.
Speaker 5 (04:36):
There 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 Patch Custody in The Sundance Kid. Yes,
guns and knives harder. Now, you gotta plan more, you
gotta prepare more guns and knives, neither brick And I'm
imagining it because of this DESPERADERI thing. I'm imagining this
in America. No, no, not yet, not to me and hard,
(05:09):
get the rules straightened down, rules and a knife.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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 2 (05:31):
Give I ever, get out? Not giving it all the
way to registered charity Bind today.
Speaker 5 (05:42):
If I ever get out.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
Of it, if we ever get out on the run,
what does that mean? What does that mean? It means
a bound of people who escaped from a Perusian or
you could take it as a bound music on a tour.
(06:05):
So you know we are abound on the run and
if you're playing singing it, you're getting the double meaning.
So everyone's looking for us, but we're on the run
and they're never gonna catch us.
Speaker 7 (06:19):
Well, the rains exploded with a mighty crash as we
BALI to the sun. The first one said to the
second one, thereaving.
Speaker 6 (06:36):
On the run, bad run.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
The rain exploded with a mighty crash. We fell into
the song, and the first one said to the second one,
there if you're having fun. So you know that's the
prison break and.
Speaker 7 (06:52):
The jail man and sailor Sam searching everyone all the bad.
Speaker 6 (07:01):
On the run.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
On the run, the song is focused on a band
of fight breaking out of jail and glevanting 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 band on the run from Beetle Down
Liards I mean wings was the next step after the words.
If I was going to continue, then how was it
going to do it? Well? How did the Beatles do it? Well?
They were just four little guys from Liverpool to no
ships and then they figured it out and they worked
(07:42):
out him. 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 a group of blind faith shirt which was
ginger and certain people are that Zeppelin. It was kind
of a little bit that, you know, it was handset,
(08:04):
hand picked, famous tuble or you just sort of getting
a bo and ask a couple of nuts to come along,
you know, and you don't fuss about it too much.
That's what we decided to do.
Speaker 7 (08:17):
WILLI UNDERTAKEO You Heavy Side.
Speaker 6 (08:22):
Gone and a bell a drinking in a village, square down,
long run.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
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 2 (08:57):
Band Everybody wants to be in a band.
Speaker 4 (09:01):
That part of it.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
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 to Denny Layne 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.
Speaker 5 (09:21):
Since she Gotta Go.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
You see, So I knew Denny. We toured with the Moodies,
so any 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 auditioned
people for Ram and Jenny Sigel showed up out of that,
(10:01):
so that was it kind of thing, you know. Henry
McCollough was just somebody our roadies knew. So Crackles I
haven't come along with. And it was the next move
after the Beatles. The only philosophy behind us was to
not do Beatles songs, just to create something completely new.
(10:24):
So there hadn't been a girl in the Beatles. The
Beatles had known each other all their lives, so it
was all the opposite. This is like just a different
way of doing it.
Speaker 7 (10:35):
Really was falling as a desert world began to set
down in the town of searching for us everywhere because
we never will be.
Speaker 6 (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 unions and say can
we do a gig? Because you knew they had a
hole and they had people, so we would do that.
We charged fifty p on the door and the guy
(12:08):
I would come up with a big bag of fifty PCE,
showed up the night before, talked to a very amused
students union leader who didn't believe it me till he
came out of the vamp. Well you got a whold
and we played lunch down. Yeah, and then it was
just advertised to so we'll comment or music in the
(12:32):
whole wild and letting people showed up played fifty p.
Well it'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 membering. I mean well, and I had a
song called Wildlife rough earliest album when Linda had the
intro on keyboard, don't m m Jim Jim dun't secrets
the chords? I mean, I said, there you Newcastle, it's
(13:42):
Newcastle City Hall. A song now, this song called called Wildlife, Wildlife,
want to through, want to through nothing. I look over
and Lender's just frozen. I want to see things. She
hasn't heard of the country. So I go over. Now
(14:05):
the crowd kind of wondering whether this is just a
bit of theater. When I go over and the cords,
oh sh you on, So I mean, actually, if this happened,
a sketch would be quite funny. So I go over, well,
I can't remember the bloody Courts, don't you what. Luckily,
(14:30):
seeing either, she suddenly remembered, so she pushed her to
one side and we started. But those were the kind
(14:51):
of chaotic moments were you know, we nearly just didn't
remember songs, or we'd play quite badly, or we play
stuff the audience didn't want to hear.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
We kind of got away with it, but well, what
did you 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?
Of course, and I kind of knew it couldn't happen,
(15:45):
but I thought, well, yeah, but we can be not
as good as the Beatles, but we can be something else.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
That must have been hard in some way to feel
that from the outset.
Speaker 2 (15:57):
Yeah it was, but as I said, you know, I
was to continue. I had to tough it out. But
I mean I had reserves of courage from the Beatles
having pennies thrown at them at Stroud Village Hall, you know,
so we'd had that, we'd had that bullshit, So here
(16:19):
it was again. The hardest thing I think was with
Linda in the group, who was a complete amateur. And
I said, well, so was George when he joined the group.
So was I. So was John, so was Rinko.
Speaker 3 (16:35):
You taught her keyboards and I showed her a.
Speaker 2 (16:38):
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,
although she handled the job, It was more as a spirit.
She was a great sort of cheerleader. She would get
(16:59):
crowds going. She did a lot of that, you know,
so cap your hands kind of thing, and in those
(17:22):
days there 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. But we got through it.
Speaker 3 (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):
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 and think they live
a life of terror.
Speaker 8 (18:11):
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.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Spirit, ding a really square. I mean, it's always good
to slack someone off, or to see someone get slagged off.
(18:47):
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, the more generous you can become, and.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
Say said everyone all the.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
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 in a long career
(19:53):
in front of him. When it came time to record,
McCartney was hoping to be inspired by a change of scenery.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
This was recorded in Legos. It 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. Well,
(20:24):
that sounds interesting. I love African music. I'll speaking African
music being there, but we're not doing African music, but
still being in the land the African music come from.
(20:44):
It will have some sort of nice and lunch.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
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, you're not
coming to make on that 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 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 plan, so
then I actually deal with this in my mind. So
I just thought, well, screw you, I'm going to make
this the best raffle I've made to date since leaving
the Beatles. Before Welcome, I got Denny guitar, got Linda
(22:05):
both us, Denny vocals, me vocals. I'll drun right. I've
drunk a lot anywhere. It was crazy. These circumstances were
(22:39):
just wild. I think 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's the People'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 walk 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 1 (23:28):
So in terms of reconstructing, if 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 the guys your native was
like five Legos calls were so they would have re
recorded over them some decent music Africa or just chucked
them away as robbish.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
The band's trip to Legos, what with the half finished
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 (24:22):
Yeah, looking back on exters like that, you block out
all the worst stuff and you remember all.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Piclso despite the recording conditions, Band on the Run was
a runaway success. Upon the release of the album, Wings
(24:54):
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 of Wings's first hits, topping the charts at numb
were one in America a 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 of the run was his Sergeant Pepper, right.
So I suddenly 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 with Wings, and I think for them that means
(26:00):
a lot. They have a special affection for that.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
He The success of Wings was a testament to McCartney's
entrepreneurial spirit, as well as his willingness to deviate from
(26:25):
rules and expectations.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
You're it sounds a lot about you.
Speaker 2 (26:39):
I think that you're relating to well to borrow a
phrase from Yets sort of more naked. You know. I mean,
you didn't have to do that, right, you really did know.
It also says I'm mad, but that is right. I
could think of other ways to do it, but I
(27:00):
didn't like them, and so the only other rules not
do it. Okay, I'll do this way because I like it.
It's probably a good way because we will learn, we
will develop. By the time we're ready, we'll be pretty good,
(27:20):
and we'll have had some success with records here and
there and never So it was seventy sixth when we
finally had Band on Us a big record. We then
toured properly as Wings.
Speaker 6 (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 5 (28:22):
Thanks.
Speaker 6 (28:29):
Its Well.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Seal Maxwell's Silver Hammer, a cheerful song about a serial
killer inspired by an obscure French avant garde play McCartney
(29:00):
A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
NPL and Pushkin Industries.
Host
Paul McCartney
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