You have to give credit to Paul McCartney for following his artistic whims, regardless of what others might think. He had to understand forming a new band after the breakup of the group widely considered to be the greatest ever would lead to unfair and unflattering comparisons.
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Nonetheless, that’s just what he did in 1971 forming Wings, the band that would ultimately become one of the most successful of the ‘70s. But it took a rocky start before they could get to that point.
Post-Beatles Paul
Paul McCartney started making music again not long after The Beatles split as a way of coping with his grief over the situation. His low-key, DIY solo album McCartney hit shelves in April 1970, an occasion McCartney used to announce to the world the Fab Four’s dissolution. In 1971, he came back with Ram, an album credited to him and wife Linda that featured more of the ornate production emblematic of his work with his former group.
McCartney missed the give-and-take and camaraderie of being in a group. That’s largely what he was trying to recapture on the Get Back/Let It Be project, which only ended up driving home the point there was no turning back the pages with The Beatles. With a new group, he could try it again with a fresh start.
His first call went to Denny Laine, the former lead singer of The Moody Blues whom McCartney had known since they were kids. Denny Seiwell, who played drums on Ram, was also enlisted. When efforts to recruit another guitarist to join Laine failed, they went forward as a four-piece (Paul, Linda, Laine and Seiwell). The name Wings came to Paul while he was praying for Linda as she was giving birth to daughter Stella.
A Wild Beginning
For whatever reason, Paul McCartney decided the first Wings project should be something spontaneous and unfussy. He later said Bob Dylan’s quick process for making his album New Morning served as the inspiration. It’s a decision McCartney would later come to regret.
Rehearsals took place in the summer of 1971 at McCartney’s home studio in Scotland. The quartet then headed to Abbey Road in London in late July. Although sessions took a couple of weeks, most of the recordings were done in three days, with the rest of the time allotted for mixing.
In fact, many of the songs that would show up on the first Wings album, entitled Wild Life, were first takes. Some were made up in the studio on the spot. With the exception of “Dear Friend,” a tender ballad aimed at quashing the public feud between McCartney and John Lennon, the songs were generally frivolous and lighthearted.
Rough Reviews
At the time, very few people—especially when it came to music critics—were in the mood for a McCartney project that wasn’t going for broke. The fact it came with a new band attached to it, a band that wasn’t The Beatles, only heightened the vitriolic response. Wild Life took a beating in the press.
To his credit, McCartney kept his head down and stuck to his intuition that there was something worthwhile in going forward with his new band. He later admitted he should have made the debut album a more focused affair, considering the attention it was inevitably bound to receive. Listening to it now, Wild Life isn’t any masterpiece, to be sure, but it’s still a fun, amiable record.
Wings dusted themselves off. They began playing live, and eventually started to see better results from their studio output once McCartney started to take a bit more care with the writing and recording. By the middle of the decade, they were one of the biggest bands in the world, quite the leap from such humble beginnings.
Photo by Gijsbert Hanekroot/Redferns
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