CLASSIC ALBUM
BAND ON THE RUN
PAUL MCCARTNEY AND WINGS
BATTLING TO PROVE HE COULD MATCH HIS BEATLES-ERA CREATIVITY, PAUL GATHERED LINDA AND HIS ONE REMAINING BANDMATE, PUT THEM ON A PLANE, AND MANAGED TO MOULD A TRIUMPH OUT OF CHAOS…
PAUL LESTER
The former Beatles produced some outstanding work in the Seventies, and right at the top of that list of post-Fabs classics, alongside George Harrison’s 1970 triple album All Things Must Pass and John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, also from 1970, is Band On The Run, the third album by Paul McCartney and Wings and the fifth long-player from McCartney since the Beatles’ Great Split.
It remains the high watermark of McCartney’s solo work, and it was the one that reaffirmed his reputation as a premier pop-rock craftsman, not to mention commercial force, following a tentative start to his solo career. And yet it was the album that almost didn’t happen, so beset was Band On The Run by difficulties.
Half the band left just as recording was about to commence in Lagos, Nigeria. When they got to the country in question, the studio wasn’t finished. Paul and Linda got mugged and could easily have been killed while they were there. The demo tapes for the album were stolen – and McCartney keeled over and nearly died from a bronchial condition induced by the stress of it all.
Oh, and they got threatened by musician Fela Kuti and his henchman because the Nigerian feared McCartney was “stealing” his music. Still, out of this chaos – indeed, arguably because of it – McCartney managed to make his Seventies masterpiece.
There were mixed feelings in the air in the run-up to Band On The Run’s release in December 1973. “I knew how to be in The Beatles. I just didn’t know how to be in a band after The Beatles,” McCartney said of that period in the early Seventies that found him playing the reclusive, bearded ex-rock star, married with a young family, including three children, and living on a remote Scottish farm. There had been those early University gigs that showed McCartney was willing to rebuild a performing unit of some merit, and the success of the Red Rose Speedway album and excellence of the attendant My Love single, suggested Wings might actually be in the ascendant.