Review: 'Wings'

The band Wings was an entity distinct from Paul McCartney the solo artist, but a lot of retrospective stuff released under the guise of Wings wasn't too dogmatic about that. 1978's Wings Greatest included a couple of singles released before Paul and Linda started playing with Denny Laine, the only other consistent member of the group. 2001's Wingspan included songs from before and after the actual Wings era. Even the recent Wings oral history plays loose with that distinction. 

Review: 'Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run'

As I recently noted, 2000's The Beatles Anthology did a very good job of imparting the story of John, Paul, George, and Ringo from the personal, not necessarily historically reliable, perspectives of John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Of course, the guys' stories did not end there, and for those who want to know what came next for Paul, at least, might justifiably expect the new oral history Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run to be a sort of unofficial sequel to The Beatles Anthology. After all, it is credited to Paul McCartney, just as the 2000 book was credited to Paul and the rest of his ex-bandmates, even though that book included the occasional comment from other players in The Beatles' story. 

Review: Paul McCartney & Wings' 'One Hand Clapping'

After releasing Band on the Run and finally getting a gold star from venomous critics, including the most venomous critic of all (Lennon), Paul McCartney was hot to keep riding that wave of good will. So he rushed into the studio with Wings to follow up with a live-in-the-studio session of covers and songs he'd already recorded and released with his current band, as a solo artist, and with his old band featuring that most venomous critic of all (Lennon).

Review: Wings' 'Band on the Run' 50th Anniversary Set

If there's a word that sums up Paul McCartney's work-approach with The Beatles, that word could be "perfectionism." That was one of the things that drove his band-mates up a tree when he insisted on take after take of things like "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da" and "Maxwell's Silver Hammer", although the cutesiness of those songs surely rubbed John, George, and Ringo the wrong way too. So it was a shock when McCartney began his solo career by bucking that perfectionism, if not the cutesiness. McCartney was a homemade, one-man-band record full of non-songs and only intermittent flashes of his perfect song craft, "Maybe I'm Amazed" being the most obvious example. If RAM suggested that the perfect old Paul was back, then Macca continued to confound with an album of jams with a new band called Wings, which he then followed with a Whitman's sampler of nutrient-free confectionary experiments he titled Red Rose Speedway.

Review: Wings' 'Wild Life', Half-Speed Mastered Vinyl Reissue

Paul McCartney couldn't catch a break after The Beatles broke up. While he attempted to reset his perfectionist aesthetic with McCartney, a rough collection of finished and inchoate songs on which he played all the instruments, critics ran him down for being sloppy, lazy, cute, and glib. Okay, they had a point, but when they continued to pile on when he allowed his inner perfectionist to reemerge, and he made the delightful RAM, so full of lively performances and well-crafted pop nuggets, it became clear that they had it in for Paul McCartney. So either as a means to fade into a combo to prove he wasn't the control freak his former bandmates painted him as or because he genuinely missed the camaraderie and collaboration of band-work, McCartney decided to put his name off to the side and form a new group. 

Review: Vinyl Reissues of 4 "Live" Paul McCartney Albums

(This post was updated on  August 2, 2019, to include details about Wings Over America)

Five years after The Beatles broke up—and nine after their final gig— Paul McCartney finally came to terms with his legacy and began performing songs from his Fab days again. The move thrilled audiences who finally got a chance to hear how never-performed favorites such as “Lady Madonna” and “The Long and Winding Road” might sound live. The Wings Over the World tour and its accompanying album (Wings Over America) and film (Rock Show) also made it clear that McCartney had the material, the chops, and the innate showmanship to be one of Rock’s greatest live acts. Sure all of his proto-hair metal “Oh yeahs!!!” were cheesier than the Velveeta factory, but all is forgiven when he starts pounding hell out of “Soily” or “Jet”. 

Universal Music is now reminding us of what a great ticket McCartney has been throughout the years with vinyl versions of four of his live discs. Naturally, Wings Over America leads this campaign, and it’s easily the best record here, collecting three LPs worth of great musicianship and showmanship with an emphasis on tracks from Wings’ two best albums: Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. McCartney’s willingness to share the spotlight with Jimmy McCulloch and Denny Laine, whose rendition of his old Moody Blues hit “Go Now” is as good as anything by the show’s main star, is charming and supports the argument that Wings really was an all-around good band and not just Paulie’s puppets.

As a show of support for the age of glasnost (“openness and transparency”) Gorbachev ushered in, Paul McCartney ensured that his latest album would be released in the Soviet Union. It was a live-in-the-studio recording of rock and roll classics he had already planned to put out in the UK with an album cover inspired by those that adorned rock albums bootlegged for the underground Russian market. He and a pickup band that included Mick Green of original British rockers Johnny Kidd and the Pirates fire through classics made famous by Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, Wilbert Harrison, Sam Cooke, and Paul’s idol Little Richard intended as a sort of rock and roll primer, as was Mick Carr’s liner notes explaining the origins of each song. McCartney titled it Choba B CCCP, Russian for Back in the USSR.

 

As a historical document, the album is pretty interesting. The introduction of what could be the greatest artistic product of capitalist society to the communists is a charming project, and at age 46, Paul proved he could still rip it up pretty well…though one hopes the folks who bought this disc were inspired to root out the original versions of its songs. Choba B CCCP is best when not inviting unfavorable comparisons with original versions, as when Paul transforms Duke Ellington’s jazz-pop standard “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” into a chunky New Orleans-style rocker.

Review: 'Paul McCartney and Wings: Rockshow'

When The Beatles retired from the stage in mid-1966, venues were getting bigger but bands had yet to adapt to the changing nature of rock shows. They were all still twanging through inadequate amps and chirping over inadequate sound systems. What a difference a decade made. No more Beatles. No more weak equipment. No more fumbling with how to meet the challenge of entertaining a stadium of 60,000 people.