paul mccartney
Paul McCartney is taking a trip back to the ‘70s for a new book, with Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run set to look at his post-Beatles band.
Scheduled for release on Nov. 4 via Liveright/W. W. Norton and Allen Lane/Penguin Press, the book is authored by McCartney and edited by historian Ted Widmer, featuring an in-depth personal account of the band, as told by McCartney, key players, and family members.
Wings was formed in 1971 by McCartney following the dissolution of The Beatles the previous year, the release of his self-titled debut album one week later, and the arrival of 1971’s Ram album with wife Linda. Recruiting Moody Blues co-founder Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell, the band would continue until 1981, releasing a total of seven studio albums, including four consecutive records that topped the Billboard 200.
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“I’m so very happy to be transported back to the time that was Wings and relive some of our madcap adventures through this book,” said McCartney in a statement. “Starting from scratch after The Beatles felt crazy at times. There were some very difficult moments and I often questioned my decision. But as we got better I thought, ‘OK this is really good.’
“We proved Wings could be a really good band. To play to huge audiences in the same way The Beatles had and have an impact in a different way. It was a huge buzz.”
A description of the book notes that it is “organized around nine Wings albums,” implying the narrative begins with 1971’s Ram and also includes 1976’s triple live record Wings over America. The volume also contains 150 black-and-white photographs, of which many are unseen, and focuses on many iconic stories of the band’s history, including how they “survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, appear unannounced at various university halls, [and] tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children.”
“Wings was about love, family, friendship and artistic growth, often in the face of tremendous adversity,” adds Widmer. “It was a joy to relive the madcap adventures of a special band, by listening to their stories, and compiling this oral history.”
Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run comes following a number of recent happenings for the group, including a 50th anniversary reissue of 1973’s Band on the Run and the long-awaited arrival of the live record and film One Hand Clapping in 2024. A 50th anniversary reissue of 1975’s Venus and Mars is also scheduled to arrive on March 21.
The new Paul McCartney box set includes more than 50 years of singles – 65 re-creations of previous 7-inch releases and 15 new ones, plus a book – in a wood crate that comes with straps to make it easier to lift. Have silly love songs ever weighed so much? It’s the ultimate way to preserve, and sell, a music format that was originally intended to be disposable.
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All told, The 7” Singles Box makes a solid case for McCartney as the auteur of the three-minute pop song. In The Beatles, McCartney helped remake the album as an ambitious art form – but he remains devoted enough to singles to keep a jukebox in his London office. By some measures, he’s the most successful singles artist of all time: The Beatles are No. 1 on Billboard’s ranking of the top-charting Hot 100 acts of all time and McCartney is No. 13 as a solo artist (including his work with Wings). When it came out, “Mull of Kintyre” was the best-selling single in U.K. history – and it may not even be one of the dozen best songs here.
Appropriately for its focus on singles, this set offers a refreshingly warts-and-all picture of McCartney’s post-Beatles career. (McCartney owns the rights to his solo recordings, so the decision was his, and it’s a good one.) At a time when most of his ’60s and ’70s peers are editing their legacies, McCartney includes everything, from the sublime (“Band on the Run,” “My Brave Face,” a live version of “Maybe I’m Amazed” and much more) to the silly (“Ode to a Koala Bear;” “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reggae,” the bass-heavy B-side of “Wonderful Christmastime”).
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The dig against McCartney is that he often didn’t live up to his genius, but maybe he just wasn’t always in the mood. Part of the point of Wings was that making music in the shadow of The Beatles was freighted by the kind of expectations that make it hard to make great pop singles. John Lennon and George Harrison both began their solo careers making music that was arguably more adventurous, but both of them also eventually got back to basics. McCartney certainly wasn’t afraid to be ambitious: One of these singles, previously unreleased as such, features the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Another is “We All Stand Together,” from the movie Rupert and the Frog Song. You get the sense that he got a kick out of both of them. So will many listeners.
More than any other major artist, McCartney proved that pop music could be both artistically ambitious and awfully silly – sometimes even both at once – and succeed on its own terms either way. Not all of these songs were received well when they were released, but many deserve another listen – especially as singles. So does the music McCartney continues to make. As big as this box is, “it doesn’t include my latest single,” McCartney writes in the foreword, “because I haven’t written that one yet.”
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