Day 182: Paul McCartney & Wings - Band on the Run
My post-Beatle exploration is still lacking severely, save from my obsession with George Harrison, so time to cover a bit of Paul McCartney. I’d heard the titular track from Band on the Run and obviously thought it was a good song, but I wasn’t particularly enamoured, at least not enough to listen to the whole thing. The album was recommended to me so I thought I’d give it a go.
Album cover courtesy of Apple Records
Band on the Run was Paul McCartney’s fifth album after the Beatles, and apparently that was his hail Mary: he had had limited success on his own, and despite being able to shift a lot of copies, critics thought he didn’t amount to much without the fab four. Linda McCartney says he viewed Band on the Run as his opportunity to prove himself, saying “Paul thought, ‘I’ve got to do it, either I give up and cut my throat or get my magic back.”
He made the simultaneously unwise and excellent move of recording the album in Lagos, imagining that he’d relax on the beach in the sunshine with a pint in his hand during the day and record at night. He, however, wasn’t aware that Lagos was undergoing a large outbreak of cholera and significant political instability following a civil war. His drummer and guitarist also left the group right before they were about to set off to Lagos, so he was left with just himself and his wife Linda, along with Denny Laine from the Moody Blues and former Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick.
Due to the changes in the lineup, McCartney played drums, lead guitar and bass guitar, Laine played rhythm guitar and Linda played the keyboard. The studio that they were using was apparently substandard and they’d arrived there during the tail end of the rainy season when heat and humidity were high, which they struggled with. Linda and Paul also got mugged at knifepoint and the muggers stole their demos and the lyrics they’d written, so the odds seemed to be stacked against them.
Paul McCartney also had a skirmish with Fela Kuti, who’d expressed anger that McCartney was coming to Africa to steal and appropriate African music. He phoned Fela Kuti and invited him to the studio to hear what he’d recorded to show that it wasn’t the case, and apparently they became fast friends afterwards.
The themes of the album are clearly running away and searching for freedom, and to some extent it sounds like McCartney found that in Nigeria, despite all the trouble he went through. It’s strictly speaking not a concept album, but from the first song, the theme of it is breaking free from imprisonment, presumably somewhat of your own making. McCartney seems to have achieved that. There’s a looseness and ease to every single part of the sound that does transport you somewhere else, the whole album just feels free. It kind of seems like he let go of some of the expectations that were foisted onto him of what he should be doing and did what it was he actually wanted to do.
One thing I don’t understand is how are these songs somehow so simple but so impactful. On paper, they don’t seem like they’d be anything too special, and yet somehow they are. Take for example “Let Me Roll It”: there’s a pretty prominent guitar riff and the lyrics “I can't tell you how I feel / My heart is like a wheel / Let me roll it / Let me roll it to you” repeat throughout the song, there’s not much else to it and yet it almost makes me cry. That’s probably McCartney’s superpower when it comes to writing, the ability to write something astonishingly simple that’ll still stop you in your tracks.
I don’t know what I expected, but I know I didn’t think I’d like it this much. I’m glad I listened to it, it’s a 9.5/10 that’s going into the rotation ASAP.