Description
Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, Wings recounts—now with a half-century’s wisdom—the musical odyssey of a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup. He was soon joined by his wife, American photographer Linda McCartney (keyboards and vocals), drummer Denny Seiwell, and guitarist Denny Laine; together they sowed the seeds for a new band that would later provide the soundtrack of the decade.
Organized chronologically around McCartney, RAM, and nine Wings albums, the narrative begins when a twenty-seven-year-old superstar, rumored to be dead, fled with his new wife to a remote sheep farm in Scotland amid a sea of legal and personal rows. Despite the harsh conditions, the Scottish setting gave McCartney time to create, and it was here where this new band emerged. Wings then follows the group as they play unannounced shows at university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, and eventually perform blockbuster stadium shows on their world tour, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the time.
With extraordinary recollections collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into an oral history by Ted Widmer, Wings transports the reader to the grit and glamour of the 1970s. Introduced with a personal, heartfelt foreword by McCartney, the volume contains 150 black-and-white and color photographs, many previously unseen, as well as timelines, a gigography, and a full discography.
An engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation, The Story of a Band on the Run tells the madcap story of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their humble beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. The Story of a Band on the Run emerges as a work of soaring originality that presents a new art form all its own.
Endorsements
“We made what seemed like an impossible dream come true.” — Paul McCartney