Tag Archives: Wings

The McCartney Legacy, Volume 1, 1969-73 – A Review

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Cool cover, huh?

That cover is a harbinger of what is contained inside.

Let’s get straight to the point – this is one of the best studies of Paul McCartney and his solo music you are going to find. Epic and essential, full stop.

The McCartney Legacy by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair is the first installment of what will become a multi-volume set. As its subtitle suggests, Volume 1 captures the life of McCartney in the years 1969-1973. That’s immediately following the dissolution of the Beatles, a period in which he had to recreate himself as both a person and a performer. In musical terms, this first volume takes us from the LP McCartney through to Band On The Run.

This book is a seriously in-depth and revealing exploration of McCartney’s creative and personal life. The thought and research that has gone into it is immediately evident. But it’s not scholarly and cold in tone (as some highly researched books can be). It’s actually a real page-turner! Kozinn and Sinclair write in a conversational and descriptive style that belies the hundreds of interviews, extensive ground-up research, and the thousands of never-before-seen documents they’ve trawled to give us a very approachable and personal story. They are very good storytellers and it is almost guaranteed that every couple of pages you will learn something you didn’t know about Paul McCartney and his music.

Kozinn and Sinclair initially set out to do a book about McCartney’s solo time in the studio, detailing recording dates, personnel, etc. – a bit like Mark Lewisohn’s 1988 book The Complete Beatles Recording Sessions, but looking at Paul’s solo career. However, following a couple of interviews with former Wings drummer Denny Seiwell and the discovery of a treasure trove of additional information that he had, the pair decided to change tack and broaden the scope of their book considerably.

Once you read this book you’ll have a renewed insight into the music McCartney created across this period. In fact with the clever connections the authors make and the stories they tell you’ll never be able to hear some songs in the same light again. Take for example ‘Another Day’. In late 1970 and early 1971 the song was being recorded and worked on as part of the preparations for the album Ram. But Paul, knowing that in February 1971 he had coming up a key court date in the messy ‘divorce’ proceedings that were under way with his former band mates, wanted a new single to be out and played on the radio to coincide with his and Linda’s court appearance. He settled on that single being ‘Another Day’ to send a subtle message that nothing could faze him. Despite his life and business dealings being publicly picked over, for him this was just another day: “It’s just another day, du-du-du-du-du, it’s just another daaaaaay!”

Alongside the copious information on every page there are many illustrative photographs and memorabilia scattered throughout as well, as are frequent breakout boxes containing the aforementioned dates detailing his recording sessions.

If this truly is the first of a multi-volume set, let’s hope that subsequent volumes arrive much faster than Lewisohn’s 2013 biography of The Beatles. Ten years later we are still waiting for Volume 2 of his epic…..

Kozinn and Sinclair however say they’re well under way with preparations for The McCartney Legacy Volume 2. It should be in stores in late 2024. It will cover the years 1974 – 1980. We can’t wait to read the next installment!

Volume 1 is getting rave reviews. The only criticism of it we’ve seen so far is that the font used is a bit small and spindly to read! (FYI it looks like a slight variation of a font called Brandon Text Light).

You can read a generous extract of The McCartney Legacy here to see if you like what you see.

If audio books are more your thing, here’s an extract from the Introduction, read by Simon Vance, to further whet your appetite:

The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 is published by Dey Street books (an imprint of Harper Collins).

It’s available in hardcover, paperback, e-book and, as mentioned, an audio book and audio CD:

The McCartney Legacy Volume 1 1969-73 is highly recommended.

Paul McCartney’s 7″ Singles Box

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Just as we recover financially from the Beatles’ Revolver re-issue and box set frenzy comes another *tempting purchase: a new box set of 80 7″ singles from Paul McCartney:

The 80 singles (containing 159 songs) are to be released December 2 and represent half a century of Paul’s musical life with releases dating from 1971 (‘Another Day’), right up to 2022 (‘Women and Wives’).

The box set features recreations of 65 singles – complete with their original B-sides (using restored artwork from 11 different countries) as well as 15 singles which have never before been released on 7”. These 15 singles are made up from tracks previously released on 12”, picture discs, CD singles & promos, digital downloads, music videos, two previously unheard demos, and a previously unheard 7” single edit (click here for the complete track listing).

As you can see in the video and images, the singles are housed in a custom wooden art crate designed and built in Derbyshire in the United Kingdom. It includes a 148-page book with a foreword by Paul McCartney, an essay by music journalist Rob Sheffield, plus extensive chart information, liner notes, and single artwork.

Each box will include a randomly selected exclusive test pressing of one of the singles, so in theory if you get a set only 37 other people in the world are likely to have the exact same box set.

The set will be available to download (or stream), and two songs have already been made available. Both have only previously been available as a rare US promo 7″ single: ‘Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey’ (2022 Remaster – in Mono):

And ‘Too Many People’ (2022 Remaster – in Mono):

To summarise, the numbered, limited-edition box set collection of 80 x 7” singles contains:

  • Recreations of 65 singles/promos using restored original artwork from 11 different countries (including 2 from Australia!)
  • 15 singles never-before-released on 7” including singles previously released on 12”, picture discs, CD singles/promos, digital downloads, and music videos
  • 2 x previously unheard demos
  • 1 x previously unheard 7” single edit
  • 1 x EP 
  • 1 exclusive test pressing randomly selected from the manufacturing process
  • 148-page book containing foreword from Paul, essay by Rob Sheffield, recording notes, release dates, and chart information on each of the singles – each single included is shown on the attached insert, which will be packed into each box
  • Remastered and cut at Abbey Road Studios, London 
  • All housed in a two-piece, four-walled FSC-approved Redwood pine and Birch Ply wooden art crate manufactured in the United Kingdom.

* Tempting that is until you get to the checkout page! Being in Australia we pay a premium for our lousy exchange rate and for shipping. If Australians were foolish enough to shop at the UK Universal Music site we’d be looking at this box costing £614.99, plus shipping £99.99, making a grand total of £714.98. That is a staggering $1265.02 Australian Dollars on today’s exchange rate. The smarter move would be to go to the US Paul McCartney Store. There the box is US$611.98, plus $61.20 in import taxes. Shipping, apparently, is free. That makes a total of $1019.24 Australian Dollars. That’s a big difference…..but still a hell of a lot of money. 😦

Wild Life Gets 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master

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50 years ago, on December 7, Wings released their debut album Wild Life – recorded over an eight-day period at Abbey Road Studios in London.

Now it joins McCartney and RAM in getting the Limited Edition, 50th Anniversary Half Speed Master treatment:

Paul and Linda McCartney, Denny Seiwell and Denny Laine arrived at the studios on 25 July, 1971 to begin recording with engineers Tony Clark and Alan Parsons.

“They rehearsed for a while, sang some old songs, wrote some new ones and in time headed for the big city studios. In three days they had laid down most of the tracks and by the end of a couple of weeks the album was finished. In this wrapper is the music they made. Can you dig it?”, wrote Clint Harrigan for the original album’s back cover liner notes.

On PaulMcCartney.com Paul wrote: “Wild Life was about spontaneity: the opening track ‘Mumbo’ was recorded in one take. I’d read that Bob Dylan had just made a quick album and I really liked the idea, because we tended to take longer and longer to make records. The early albums by The Beatles hadn’t taken long and it seemed to me that Dylan was getting to that. I was a great admirer of his – and still am to this day – so I thought, well, if it’s good enough for him, let’s do it.”

The 50th anniversary edition of Wild Life is cut at half speed at Abbey Road using a high resolution transfer of the original 1971 master tapes. The Half Speed 50th will be released on February 4. It is available for pre-order now.

Grail Wings Picture Disc For Sale

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It’s not often you see one of these come onto the market, so it’s worth mentioning.

The UK online second-hand store eil.com currently has a Wings Back To The Egg vinyl picture disc for sale. This super-rare, 1979 UK original promotional-only picture disc is an exclusive in-house edition conceived by Paul McCartney’s company MPL Communications for distribution only to friends, family and label executives, and was never made available for retail sale.

Widely believed to be limited to just 200 copies, or fewer, this example comes from the archive collection of a retired music industry executive.

The picture record displays the same image on both sides. Only the printed matrix number at the end of the perimeter text differs from side one to side two. Here’s the rear cover:

It is a genuine original and near impossible to find, and comes with a cool £1,995.00 price tag. (That’s US$2,720.00, or around $3,640.00 Australian dollars).

Find out more at eil.com where there’s more detailed info and pictures.

Linda McCartney Retrospective – Aussie COVID Delay

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A couple of weeks ago the weekend edition of my local newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, carried this front page article in it’s lift-out arts section:

The article inside also appeared in sister paper, the Melbourne Age.

(click on the images above to see larger versions)

This was announcing something of a coup for the regional Art Gallery of Ballarat in Victoria in securing what was to be a fascinating exhibition of Linda McCartney photographs called Linda McCartney: Retrospective. The exhibition was one of the main attractions of a bigger event called the Ballarat International Foto Biennale, showcasing photography and photographers from around the world. The exhibit was set to run from August 24 through to October 24.

Sadly though it has all been postponed indefinitely due to the Delta strain of the COVID-19 virus putting the whole state of Victoria into a strict lockdown. Due to a separate outbreak it has also put Sydney (where I write this today) and many parts of the state of New South Wales also into lockdown……

It is all very disappointing. This would have been the first time this extensive look back at the career of Linda McCartney (1941-1998) would have been shown in Australia. Curated by Paul McCartney, along with his daughters Mary and Stella, Linda McCartney: Retrospective features more than 200 photographs, including images of the McCartney family, the 1960s music scene, and a series of prints from the McCartney’s time in Australia between 1975 and 1993 which have never been shown before.

From the exhibit website: “Linda McCartney’s photographic career spanned from 1965 to 1997, during which [she] bore witness to the evolution of pop and youth culture as we know it. Linda’s early portraits of the burgeoning New York 1960s music scene capture the vulnerability of future world conquering rock stars. Known for her portraits of Jimi Hendrix, The Rolling Stones and The Beatles, among many others, she was the first female photographer whose work was featured on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in 1968, with a portrait of Eric Clapton. Linda McCartney: Retrospective showcases some of the most iconic artists and moments from the 1960s music scene alongside intimate family portraits. The photographs capture the world as she experienced it, representing the people, places and landscape around Linda in her inimitable, spontaneous and experimental style.”

The exhibition that was to be shown here has some images exclusive to Australia, but the core works have been shown at Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery in 2019, and also last year at Liverpool’s Walker Art Gallery. This video give just a taste of what we’re missing:

See also lindamccartney.com for more.

The Ballarat International Foto Biennale site says “New Dates To Be Announced“, so……fingers crossed.

Wings Greatest – Strange Bulgarian Pressing

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There’s nothing we love more than discovering a strange or different pressing of a very well-known album – and this one, Paul McCartney and Wings’ Wings Greatest, fits the bill perfectly.

It’s the official Bulgarian release on the Balkanton label, and we were alerted to it by old friend Andrey – who helps maintain the fantasticly comprehensive The Beatles Get Back in the USSR site.

This copy of Wings Greatest is not only distinguished by its unusual labels (see below), but also the fact that it comes with one less song than every version we can find released anywhere else in the world. You can see that Side 1 is missing the track ‘Live and Let Die’. In every other market Side 1 has six tracks. In Bulgaria they got just five:Just to refresh your memory, here’s the US Capitol version of this 1978 compilation LP:

If you were browsing in a second-hand bin (and this LP comes up for sale a lot), you could very easily flip straight past the Bulgarian version without noticing that it’s actually quite rare.

We wonder if there was some sort of a licencing issue in Bulgaria with the song ‘Live and Let Die’ because it is from the soundtrack of the James Bond film of the same name? It would be part-owned by United Artists. Maybe that was it?

Now you can see on the rear cover in the place ‘Live and Let Die’ should be the words “Manufactured under licence by Balkanton in Bulgaria”.

(As usual, click on the images above to see larger versions)

My Love – McCartney’s Wings

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Back in 1973 when Paul McCartney and Wings released the vinyl single ‘My Love’, in most places around the world that’s how it was credited on the label: Paul McCartney and Wings.

For example, here’s the UK pressing:However, in a couple of territories they obviously didn’t get the memo detailing just how the band should be credited on the label.

We’ve just picked up a New Zealand pressing which is interesting for a couple of reasons. Number one is that it’s on the green Apple label. The other is the name of the band – McCartney’s Wings: Seems that this mistake may have been caused back in England when a few copies of ‘My Love’ also escaped into the public arena there with that very same band credit – McCartney’s Wings. Here’s a UK pressing that was probably quickly withdrawn and replaced with the proper band credit (seen on the UK pressing above):

And it looks like at least four other countries (Sweden, Israel, France and Venezuela) also stuffed up:In the rest of the world it is definitely Paul McCartney and Wings that performed ‘My Love’……..but we’re glad to have a unique New Zealand pressing now in the collection.

As usual, click on the labels to see larger versions. And if you know anything more on the back story to this one, please use the Comments section to let us know.

Mike McGear – ‘McGear’ LP

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Look what has just arrived from the UK:It’s the long-awaited 2019 re-issue of Mike McGear’s McGear LP.McGear was produced by Paul McCartney, and features him playing on various tracks too, along with the other members of Wings. It features songs co-written by McCartney and his brother Mike McGear, and was originally recorded in 1974.  This 180 gram re-issue LP comes in a replica of the original UK and US gatefold cover:

It joins a nice, original Australian pressing already in the collection. The Aussie version from 1974 came in a non-gatefold cover, and so all the credits, etc are located on the rear cover:

McGear is re-mastered and re-issued by Cherry Red Records. There’s also a 2CD, 1DVD box set available featuring lots of out-takes and other rarities.

McCartney to Reissue Professor Longhair’s “Live On The Queen Mary”

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Back in 1975 when Paul McCartney and Wings wanted to launch their new album Venus and Mars they did it in style. They threw a huge party on board the famous cruise liner, the Queen Mary at Long Beach in California. The ship was (and still is) permanently moored there as a floating hotel, museum, function centre and tourist attraction.

Among the 200 guests on board were George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Marvin Gaye, The Faces, an Everly Brother (Phil), The Jackson Five, Dean Martin, Tony Curtis, Cher, and Monkees Mickey Dolenz and Davey Jones. The party was the first time McCartney and Harrison had been seen in public since the Beatle break-up.

Much of the Venus and Mars album was recorded in New Orleans at Allen Toussaint’s Sea Saint Studios and clearly Paul and Linda had soaked up a lot of the atmosphere of that quintessentially musical town. The launch party therefore saw musical performances from some Crescent City greats like Lee Dorsey, Ernie K-Doe, and Chocolate Milk, as well as The Meters – and the amazing, legendary Professor Longhair.

McCartney had the forethought to have their gigs recorded, and in 1978 the Professor Longhair’s set was released as the album Live On The Queen Mary, co-produced by McCartney.

Now comes news that it is being officially reissued by McCartney’s MPL on the Harvest label across digital platforms, on CD and on newly remastered 180gram vinyl LP – in both standard and deluxe packaging:

The deluxe vinyl edition comes with a bonus double A-Side 7″ single featuring ‘Tipitina’ and ‘Mess Around’, and what appears to be a publicity folder featuring images of Professor Longhair and a facsimile letter signed by Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine. (As usual click on images to see larger versions).

Live On The Queen Mary will be released on April 5 and is now available for pre-order here.

(BTW – The Meters Queen Mary launch party set was also recorded, and has previously been released as Uptown Rulers: The Meters Live on the Queen Mary.)

Two New McCartney Box Set Downloads

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As he has done in the past (for example with Flowers In The Dirt, Venus and Mars, etc.), Paul McCartney has just made available for free download two additional tracks not included in his two current Archive Collection box sets, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway.

For fans and completists who simply must have everything officially available, these additional downloads when offered are welcome little “Easter Egg” extras to add to the materials in the box sets.

The reason behind why these two tracks didn’t quite make the final cut is explained at paulmccartney.com:

“When MPL began the research for Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, they had a good idea of what they would find in the audio archives. But, you can never be quite sure. The paperwork for the release was in good order, but often the more you look, the more gems you’re able to find. So, to make sure no stone went unturned, Paul’s audio team spent weeks listening to several days’ worth of material. Eventually this was whittled down to Paul’s preferences and what made sense for the story being told.

And sometimes you just end up having too many songs! So, as a thank you from us to you, we are happy to offer fans free downloads of two of those songs that did not make the final tracklisting…”

The first track is ‘Dear Friend (Orchestra Up)’. It’s an alternate version that comes from the Wild Life sessions:

“When Paul instructed arranger Richard Hewson about how to score the touching ‘Dear Friend’ – a note to former songwriting partner, John Lennon – he suggested it should sound, “as if there was an orchestra just over the hill. It wasn’t in your face. And when you’re at the top of the hill, there it is, full blown”. As often happens with a song, a number of mixes of ‘Dear Friend’ were done, to get the tone just right and, in this case, one of those mixes featured the orchestra playing a more prominent role.

For the release of Wild Life, it was decided to go with a version where the orchestra is a little more subtle, and today we’re happy to let you hear how it could have sounded.”

The other is ‘Hands Of Love (Take 2)’ from Red Rose Speedway:

“One of the – many! – highlights of Red Rose Speedway is the 11-minute medley that closes the release. Paul has mentioned previously how he enjoys writing medleys as it’s a challenge to make them fit together (it’s not always easy to go from one key to another, a certain amount of musical gymnastics are involved!). But even though a medley may be comprised of a number of songs, it doesn’t mean they’re recorded in one go. Often they’re pieced together after the recording. It’s a fascinating and chin-stroking process. The version of ‘Hands Of Love’ used in the medley of Red Rose Speedway was cut from the original tape and mixed with the other tracks to make the medley. However, we found the original tape had alternate takes, and this was our favourite.”

To get these downloads you’ll need to register as a user on the official Paul McCartney website, then go to his Download page and follow the prompts.