The best post-Beatles album is all up to interpretation [even if the answer should unanimously be for George Harrison’s 1971 epic, All Things Must Pass], but the most important and powerful? Well no album is quite as deserving of that title as Wings 1973 breakthrough Band on the Run.
It’s hard to believe there was ever a time in which Paul McCartney had to fight to have his music be successful, that gold records and accolades used to have to be worked for in his first few years post-Beatle. Looking back at his output from these years one could almost understand: his now-unrestrained imagination was running wild through the grooves of each song. They were whimsical, bubblegum-y, they weren’t exactly what the world was in the market for at the time. Something likeRam, his greatest work, may have pioneered indie rock but he was fighting an uphill battle for songs like Heart of the Country to truly make a dent in the musical landscape of 1971. What could possibly put Paul McCartney right back in the heart of music?
Today marks the 50th anniversary of Band on the Run, Paul McCartney’s comeback and Wings breakthrough. The album is one that lives in a perfect state of sounding completely timeless yet quintessentially 1973. The title track itself is a mesmerizingly intricate song; it's hard to believe it’s a half century old. The fact Paul McCartney was able to make the catchiest melody of his career and only place it on the bridge of a song is a testament to his talent. This album is a testament to his talent.
A little Wings history lesson should be taught to understand how much more impressive this album is: the band was formed in 1971 as a quartet. You had Paul McCartney as the bassist, vocalist, and primary songwriter [amongst other bips and bops], Linda McCartney on keyboards, Denny Seiwell on drums, and Denny Laine on guitar. Two McCartneys and Two Dennys, in other words. Henry McCullough would be recruited as well, despite not being named Denny or married to the McCartneys. Their debut single Give Ireland Back to the Irish
was banned by the BBC, delighting McCartney. Their first album, Wild Life, was critically unremarkable. It’s a well balanced debut, very Ram-esque in sound, with the most alluring track to most being the album closer Dear Friend, a piece viewed as McCartney’s final say in the musical back and forth between himself and John Lennon. They would tour college campuses to perform, McCartney claiming this was to avoid the media. They released a few singles between Wild Life and it’s follow up: a cover of the nursery rhyme Mary Had A Little Lamb [more proof the world was not ready for Paul’s whimsy], Hi-Hi-Hi, their second banned single, and, maybe their most popular song, the James Bond theme Live and Let Die. Live and Let Die would even get the McCartneys' nominated for an Oscar, though they would lose.
Wings’ sophomore album would come in April of 1970, Red Rose Speedway, which was more or less critically panned as well. It had one big hit though, the ballad My Love - penned by Paul for Linda, one of a long list of his work dedicated to her. Linda would say the album was “unconfident”, being recorded by an unsure band. By all intents and purposes, Wings was a flop and McCartney had lost his spark as an artist in the public eye. All the other Beatles had had a successful album, and here was Paul, a singles artist. But, if there's one person not to doubt, it’s Paul McCartney, and he was sure as hell not gonna let another album fail on him.
Wings would whittle down to a trio the day before the sessions would begin for Band on the Run. Now it was the McCartneys and Laine, the three that would remain consistent throughout the bands entire decade together. The band would fly to Lagos, Nigeria to record, though they were unaware of the conflicts in the country at the time. The country had just ended a civil war in 1970 and the band traveled there whilst the country and its people were still recuperating from the war. Nothing was going right for this album so far, all of this without mentioning the fact McCartney was held at gunpoint and robbed of his only demo for the album's title track [meaning that the great version we hear on the record was recorded from MEMORY], and, of course, there was Beatles drama.
The drama is convoluted and hard to follow but the but what it boils down to in it’s simplest
form is that Allen Klein is a major douchebag. Klein was the former manager of The Rolling Stones from 1965 to 1969, was the reason for their lost money and exile from England, and was the catalyst for the legal proceedings against Richard Ashcroft and Bitter Sweet Symphony that left Mick and Keith as the bad guys in the eyes of the media for DECADES [even though they had absolutely nothing to do with any legal issues at all, but that’s a much longer story for a different day]. He was also one of the reasons for The Beatles breakup. To pin the break of the fab four on any one reason would be not only false but also would be discounting so much of the actual history the band went through together. However, Klein was the leading factor in McCartney’s leaving of the band. McCartney hated Klein from day one, the only Beatle listening to The Stones who were actively advising the band NOT to do business with the man they were actively trying to stop working with. McCartney claimed to have nightmares about Klein being a dentist and ripping all his teeth out of his head despite his protests, connecting these dreams to being about how doing business with Klein was wrong. His worries and concerns were dismissed by the rest of the band. John Lennon was the main push in the band working with Klein, George Harrison was agreeing with him for the most part, and for Ringo Starr to side with McCartney in a time where he looked crazy wouldn’t be the brightest idea. McCartney wanted Linda’s, who was his girlfriend of only a few months at this point, dad and brother [who were lawyers] to be who the band went with. He was told, in simple terms, that he was batshit insane to put all his eggs in one basket of working with his girlfriend's family based on the fact he had a bad dream on their choice. Pissing off McCartney, he refused to sign the paper’s allowing Klein to become the band’s manager, quit the band, and officially dissolved The Beatles partnership. McCartney would go on to have the Eastman’s be his manager for his entire solo career, and Linda’s brother remained his manager until his passing in 2022.
In 1973, right around the time McCartney was beginning work on Band on the Run, the rest of the band was embroiled in a lawsuit against Klein. Why? Because Klein was a shitty manager who was stealing more than he was making, being the bad omen both The Stones and McCartney warned about. Since McCartney’s name was nowhere on any legal papers for The Beatles and Klein he had absolutely no part in any of this. Lennon was even quoted as saying that Paul was… right. Paul had become the villain in a lot of Beatles circles since he left the band. That, coupled with his flop albums, and McCartney was not having a good start to the new decade. Things were turning around though, he was shown to be right on a major issue connected to the end of The Beatles, so if he could make a great, commercially successful album with Band on the Run, Paul McCartney would be back in business.
Band on the Run would go on to be the biggest hit of Wings’ career, if not McCartney’s post-Beatle work. The album was a perfect scale of everything that made McCartney so beloved: it was fun, it was musically genius, it was catchy, and it was quick. Band on the Run clocks in at 41 minutes, not wasting a second of that time. The cover became an iconic image, the sight of the McCartneys and Laine with some famous friends in a spotlight singling them out. A band that by all accounts had to escape to reach their full potential. It’s hard to pinpoint what makes the album just so good, nothing from the storied history or comeback feeling quite right. The whole thing feels too perfect to even have a backstory that leads us to its creation, it was always meant to happen when and where it did.
The title track is what opens the album, and it’s by all accounts a perfect song. It’s light, flowing through the story, before it gets to the gritty part of it. McCartney growling If we ever get out of here / Thought of giving it all away to a registered charity / All I need is a pint today / If we ever get out of here ; Band on the Run is equal parts fictional and autobiographical. The titular band is stuck living a life imprisoned, The rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun / The first one said to the second one there ‘I hope you're having fun’. In the fictional lens of this song a band of misfits is literally imprisoned, escaping into the day and never going back to their confines. In the autobiographical sense, this is McCartney’s comeback to the mainstream of music. Stuck in hiding due to the overwhelming assassination of his character over The Beatles disbandment and critical failures that wanted him to stay his Beatle self forever, In the town they’re searching for us everywhere / But we never could be found.
The second song is a classic McCartney rocker: Jet. The song was said to be named after one of his dogs, with the story following his first meeting with Linda’s parents. I can almost remember the funny faces / That time that you told them you were gonna be marrying soon / Jet, I thought the only lonely place was on the moon. Though it may be hard to remember due in large part to his marriage in March of 1969 to Linda Eastman, Paul McCartney was once a major player, a slut whose only real competition could be Mick Jagger. For him to ask to marry Linda after being engaged previously [and broken up with on live television] had the capacity to raise eyebrows from her family. This man had nothing going for him in proof he would ever be a passable let alone good husband. I want Jet to always love me. Paul and Linda would eventually get married, have three children together [Paul even adopted Linda’s daughter, Heather, from her previous marriage], and they would be inseparable for the following 29 years. Paul claims the only 9 days he ever spent away from her in those years were when he was arrested in 1980 for bringing weed into Japan [though Linda would try to get arrested as well so they would go to jail together, because romance is never dead]. It's also worth the note that this song was incredibly feminist for it's time, taking a stance not only for women but calling attention to how alienating the experience of being a woman could feel often times.
The third track is the cute, sweet nothing number of Bluebird. The song is reminiscent of what would be found on one of the previous Wings albums, very lullaby-like. It’s inclusion and well reception on this album is also proof that no one hated Paul’s inclination to making “granny” music, just that most people could only deal with it in small quantities. The song is a simple love song, Touch your lips with a magic kiss and you’ll be a bluebird too / And you’ll know what love can do. It’s a nice bridge between the harder sounds of the songs around it.
The next track is the terribly catchy Mrs. Vanderbilt. The songs chorus of Ho, Hey ho! is one of McCartney’s simplest yet most successful earworms. The song can be interpreted as a bit of a fuck you to the doubters of his work, When your light is on the blink / You never think of worrying / What’s the use of worrying? / When your bus has left the stop / You’d better drop your hurrying / What’s the use of hurrying? It feels like McCartney is almost poking fun at all those who chose to critique his work to this point, that he doesn’t have to write politically driven pieces or lighting fast rifts to have his work mean anything to anyone. That’s not quite ever been his thing, so what’s the use of trying to do that now?
Side one closes on the bass-heavy wonder that is Let Me Roll It. McCartney is extraordinary at bass for someone who learned for the soul purpose of being at the front [when The Beatles first started he was one of their guitarists, than Harrison joined the mix and booted McCartney from his lead spot, and since it was Lennon’s band he chose to become the rhythm player, leaving no reason for a third guitarist. McCartney became the drummer for a short while, before learning bass to regain a spot at the front of the stage. The life of an attention whore is never boring, it seems.] and this is no exception. The bass is what gives this song it’s irresistible, timeless groove. The song feels nostalgic for things you never have to experience to miss, all due to the instrumentation alone. The lyrics are a common love song, You gave me something I understand / You gave me loving in the palm of my hand / I can’t tell you how I feel / My heart is like a wheel / Let me roll it to you. It’s just a perfect song, one that no one could ever have put into the world except for the McCartneys.
Between side one and side two I’ll include the fact that on every song on this album, Linda and Paul are both credited as the writers. People often aim to delegitimize Linda’s place in Paul’s musical career, claiming that he just put her name on there pointlessly. Linda is Paul’s longest collaborator, always getting her due diligence from him on their work together. She was the main writer for pieces such as Live and Let Die, C-Moon, and Seaside Woman. She was responsible for the catchy reggae bits that has made Live and Let Die so unique and beloved. I absolutely love how all over this album she is, as Wings was truly a step apart from any band due to her place in it. In the early 1970s, it was rare to see women working with the men of these bands, much less be a part of them. McCartney himself attested to this in his 2021 book The Lyrics, stating that Linda was a trailblazer for women in male-fronted bands at the time. She was a cheerleader on stage, and she added a unique twist to every song. Band on the Run was one of the first times that Linda wasn’t being maliciously tormented for her musical abilities, as critics and fans alike would often tear apart her voice and keyboard playing to mock the bands music. Linda was not a trained singer, and only learned piano at 29 from Paul teaching her. For that I say she does a phenomenal job, as anyone putting themselves out there like that deserves the praise, along with the fact she is talented in both categories. She shines on this album, through both her writing and vocal contributions. This album was really a big moment for women in rock, and I hope one day it’s seen as such. Linda McCartney did loads to push ahead women in rock and I hope one day she gets her roses for it. An absolutely amazing artist in every sense of the word.
Side two begins with Mamunia, written by the McCartneys after inspiration struck from a hotel they were staying at. Mamounia is Arabic for “safe haven”, McCartney liking its theme of rebirth. It might have been a bright, blue day / But rainclouds had to come this way / They’re watering everything they can see / A seed is waiting in the earth for the rain to come and give him birth/ It’s all he really needs to set him free / So next time you see rain / Don’t complain, it rains for you. The song is that trademark McCartney positivity that no one else has ever truly been able to tap into. He doesn’t go a realistic route, he is straight-forward in the ‘good day, sunshine’ mindset. It’s acoustic, it’s short, and it’s positive from head to toe. It’s a McCartney classic without the classic status.
No Words is very similar to Bluebird in the way of there isn’t much to say other than it’s a simple, cute love song. You wanna turn your head away and someone’s thinking of you / I wish you’d see it’s only me / I love you / No words for my love.
Helen Wheels was only released on North American copies of the album, but is about as serious as you can expect of it’s title. It’s a good rock song, and was first proof to many that Wings had it in them to be a leading rock band. Picasso’s Last Words is five minutes and forty-nine seconds of pure Paul McCartney perfection. The story goes that Paul snuck on the set
of the film Papillon, and ended up hanging out with its stars Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen. Hoffman was doubtful of McCartney’s songwriting abilities, believing he couldn’t write a song about just anything so he asked him to write a song about Pablo Picasso’s last words, as he had just died. The chorus of the song are Picasso’s exact words, hence the title: Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can’t drink anymore. The real interesting part of the song comes with McCartney’s inclusion other songs on the album. The Ho, Hey Oh's of Mrs. Vanderbilt, the chants of Jet! It’s mesmerizing to listen to, and would be the perfect closing track if we were talking about any band other than Wings, who naturally had a better one.
Nineteen-Hundred-Eighty-Five may just be my favorite song on the album. It’s so perfect words fail in trying to explain it. The lyrics mean nothing, they are only there to accentuate the building power of the music. The song reaches its climax with McCartney screeching as loud as possible as the songs instruments swell. The song ends as the album began, with the chorus of Band on the run… being used to play out the absolutely juggernaut it began. Needless to say, McCartney reclaimed his crown as the king of the popular song with this album. He put everything into this album, and it worked out for him. This would only be the sign of going up for him and Wings, who would go on to become one of the most commercially successful bands on the 1970s, selling out the same stadiums as Led Zeppelin and The Rolling Stones. Not to shabby for a guy who hadn’t seen true success since 1970 in the public eye.
The fiftieth anniversary of Band on the Run doesn’t just mark half a century of one of the greatest albums of all time. It also marks the return of Paul McCartney to the popular music sphere, the reign of Linda McCartney as one of the most important women of 70s rock, the reinvention of what it means to have a comeback. Band on the Run accomplished everything it had to and yet somehow more. To understand the scope of a piece of art this earth shattering is knowing that without it Paul McCartney may have lived his life as ‘that guy in The Beatles’, a scary place for the world’s most enduring and popular songwriter to live.
Band On The Run is a testement to the enduring willpower of Paul McCartney. Even after everything the press [and his former bandmates] said about him and his music, it never stopped him from creating what he wanted. Is this album a bit more palatable to the public than his other, more candy-coated, cavity-inducing pop albums? Yes! But it's still McCartney throwing everything at the wall in hopes that it would stick, which it all did. The ideas here are huge, so many tiny parts of songs could've easily been stretched out to make a hit and yet are nestled in an even more grand, expansive piece. That's the sign of a genius. A terribly presistent, insanely positive genius. 50 years ago today the world rediscovered the greatest genius of modern music, something that still seems insane to fathom.
Band On The Run is being reissued in early 2024 for it's 50th anniversary! More information here: PaulMcCartney.com
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