Country Dreamer: Paul McCartney and Wings’ Band on the Run at 50

Paul McCartney wanted to be adventurous, so much so that a little research could have saved him some time.

McCartney was looking to record the next Wings album, which became Band on the Run, in some place beyond the usual London. EMI, his label, had a number of places with studio facilities to choose from — Rio de Janeiro, Bombay, Peking and Lagos, Nigeria.

He chose the latter, ready to put together the album, which was released 50 years ago today. From the get-go, the process of going somewhere that fit a 31-year-old white Englishman’s idea of “exotic” was beset with challenges.

The first happened before Wings left for Lagos, when lead guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell left the band at the end of rehearsals. Both were unhappy with where the music was going, with other things factoring in. McCullough tired of what he felt was McCartney being too controlling about his guitar playing, leaving after an argument with him. Seiwell felt he was being treated as a hired hand, rather than a member of the band, and left the night before they were scheduled to fly out.

Rather than find replacements (which would have created delays), McCartney took a three-piece Wings to Lagos: himself, his wife, Linda, and guitarist Denny Laine, who added drummer and lead guitarist (on most of the songs) to his workload. Knowing he was competent, but not exactly a virtuoso on the drums, he kept the parts simple.

If McCartney had looked into it, he would have noticed that EMI’s Lagos studio hadn’t been finished. Some equipment was put away. Other equipment was missing. There was no vocal booth. There was one eight-track tape recorder (and nothing else to record on). The mixing board was not usable. Recording engineer Geoff Emerick managed to get what they needed and make the necessary fixes.

Everyone settled into a routine, relaxing in the mornings at the country club they were staying in, then making the drive to the studio to spend the rest of the afternoon well into the night recording. Weekends were spent away from the studio.

Another thing that hadn’t been researched — conditions in Nigeria in 1973 were not the sunny, resort life McCartney had in his head. Rather, it was run by a military government after a 1970 civil war, so it was not the idyllic exoticism McCartney was expecting.

He and Linda discovered that when they went outside for a walk during a break in recording. A car pulled up next to them. McCartney naively thought they were being offered a ride, which he politely declined.

They were robbed at knifepoint, losing their valuables, but more important to the album: a notebook full of lyrics and cassettes with demos of the songs that had yet to be recorded.

Luckily, McCartney’s musical memory was strong and there were lyric sheets at the studio to trigger it.

He also had to deal with someone angry who had no criminal intent. Fela Kuti was suspicious, feeling that McCartney might be trying to do some musical colonization by making an “African” album.

Paul reassured him, playing enough of what had already been recorded to show him that it was a McCartney album, that this wasn’t his version of Graceland 13 years before it existed.

There was also a self-inflicted problem of a different sort. One night, McCartney started to lose his voice while recording. He found it difficult to breathe, a problem made worse by the hot temperature of the fresh air outside. Linda feared he was having a heart attack as he fainted. It turned out to be bronchial spasms caused by excessive smoking.

Through it all, the trio managed to get the album recorded over the course of six weeks, mostly at EMI except for “Picasso’s Last Words,” which they recorded at Ginger Baker’s studio in Ikeja (Lagos’ capital city) after he’d offered them the facility to record the whole album. Baker contributed percussion in the form of a tin can filled with gravel.

“If we would have stayed in London and gone to our normal studio, it could have been, might have been an okay album, might have been a good album,” McCartney said in 2010. “But the fact that we were in a strange place, with strange things happening, there was now only three of us in the band instead of five. We had to work ’round all these circumstances and we had to, like, incorporate all of this into the album. Now, suddenly we’re like forced to, no choice.”

The band returned to London to put some finishing touches on Band on the Run, transferring the songs to 16-track and doing some additional recording. McCartney himself got home to find a letter from EMI written before he left, but didn’t arrive until after. “It was funny because, when we got home, there was a letter from EMI that said, ‘Dear Paul, under no circumstances go to Lagos. There’s been an outbreak of cholera,'” he told the Metro in 2010.

It was upon that return that McCartney began to grasp what they had.

“I think when we got back to England, the fact that we’d made it abroad and Lagos and you’ve played the tapes in England.And they sound different, cause they’ve been made in a different environment,” he told ITV, adding that as they made tweaks in London, “it started to get kind of raw, but professional, which was a nice mix.”

There were other key additions in London. Saxophonist Howie Casey, who’d go on to be in Wings’ touring band, dubbed his part. McCartney was a fan of producer Tony Visconti’s work with T. Rex, which led to him doing the string arrangements for Band on the Run.

There may have been a bit of an English stiff upper lip “Carry on and make this album” attitude through all that happened in Lagos, but there was also the reality that the band and McCartney himself, hadn’t been received as well since the Beatles’ breakup.

Wings also needed to find its sea legs. It was still a relatively new band. Linda, who was not a trained musician, had to learn on the fly. Even if McCartney wouldn’t line up to slag his prior work, Band on the Run has the sound of a man with something to prove.

But rather than being defensive, it often sounds relaxed and even playful, as if in the midst of the (often self-induced) chaos, he was letting his natural gifts take over.

The last touch would be the cover, a photo taken in late October by Clive Arrowsmith (based on an idea that came to the McCartney’s at home one night) at a park in London. Six celebrities, including actors James Coburn and Christopher Lee, joined Wings, all dressed as escaping convicts under a spotlight.

The shoot proved a challenge, as Arrowsmith later detailed. “On the day I hired a spotlight from the lighting company which, unfortunately, was not powerful enough for the job. This meant that everyone had to be very still for over 2 seconds for the picture to be sharp,” he said. “Two seconds may not sound like a long time, however, they did have a party before the shoot and everyone was very much the worse for wear, but still enjoying each other’s company to say the least. Trying to get everyone to stay still and play the part of escaping prisoners was proving extremely difficult, amid the laughter, jokes and substance haze.”

The first single from Band on the Run wasn’t on the album, at least in pressings outside North America. “Helen Wheels” was recorded in Lagos, but not to be part of the final record. At a Capitol exec’s urging, it was included here and eventually part of subsequent reissues on CD (initially as a “hidden track”).

It’s a loose, engaging rocker, basically McCartney’s driving song, named after the nickname he and Linda had given their Range Rover.

An actual getaway inspired “Picasso’s Last Words (Drink to Me)”, which sprang from a holiday the couple had taken in Jamaica the previous year. While there, they ran into Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman, who were filming Papillon in the area. They’d have dinners at the homes where each was staying.

McCartney was playing guitar during a visit to Hoffman’s house. “He happened to say, ‘Could you write a song about anything?” McCartney said in a 2010 ITV documentary. “I said, ‘Well, maybe. You know, try me’ kind of thing. And he pulled out this article on Picasso, who’d just died. And it said, ‘Picasso’s last words were ‘Drink to me. Drink to my health.’ Well, the article didn’t sing, but a short time later. I picked up a guitar and made something up. That became the song.”

On record, the song starts with a folky swing, before interspersing it with bits of other songs from the album and strings. Depending on where the chorus hook reappears, it can be sweetly harmonized or sung as if all involved had already consumed pints at the local pub. If not as seamless, it sounds as if Paul was getting back in touch with his latter Beatles trick splicing of songs together again, joyfully experimenting.

“Jet” is an even better rocker than “Helen Wheels,” on the list of best songs he wrote, Beates or otherwise. It is terrifically catchy, with nice backing vocals from Laine and Linda. And Paul dove headfirst into the lead vocal, a reminder that he could drop the twee and deliver.

Speaking of pub sing-alongs, “Mrs. Vandebilt” shares some DNA with “Another Day,” only with an insistent, practically shouted chorus (“Ho! Hey, Ho! Ho! Hey Ho!”). But it also injects other elements into the mix, revealing some of that playfulness.

Nobody accused McCartney of being a bluesman, wannabe or otherwise. But “Let Me Roll It” has some of that feel. It really plays as Paul having fun making a song in John Lennon’s style circa 1969/1970. He later said it wasn’t his intent, but it’s hard not to hear John’s Abbey Road in the way the riff stutter stops or his Plastic Ono in the echoed vocals.

It’s a love song lyrically, but given how the artist and a good portion of his audience enjoyed weed in 1973, one can read a second meaning into it. In any event, it’s a cracking song that’s remained a fixture in his live sets to this day.

Now, McCartney didn’t abandon twee, either. He couldn’t help himself.

“Bluebird” has some pleasant harmonies that help it to remain a more modest pleasure than annoying. “Mamunia” may have lyrics that are the most incidental on the album, but also has nifty bass work to keep it from evaporating completely and the vocals were arranged nicely. It does go on too long, however.

One wishes some of that space had been utilized to stretch out “No Words”, which left too much unexplored. To this day, it feels more like trailer music for a rock song that leaves you wanting to hear the whole thing.

Band on the Run wasn’t a concept album, but the title song makes it feel like it was (and even if it were, it’s not like Sgt. Pepper stuck to the theme much more).

It’s a testament to McCartney’s writing in how well the song’s various parts flow — the languid opening with synths (“Stuck inside these four walls/Sent inside forever”), the guitar-centered album rock of the second section (“If I ever get out of here”) before it gives way to the epic strings that herald the heart of the song, with its mix of acoustic and twangy electric guitars and the moments where we finally hear the memorably catchy chorus. If Paul had already come up with memorable solo material, most notably “Maybe I’m Amazed,” it was clear from the opening notes that he wasn’t afraid of sounding more overtly Beatlesque.

“Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five” was a song that sat around for a while. McCartney knew he had something with the opening line, but that’s all he had. The key turned out to be an insistent Fats Domino-influenced piano part which drove the whole affair. He also was willing to sing with grit again which pushed it higher.

The song takes a turn into a more percussive, urgent outro where McCartney forgoes words vocally and the keyboards become more insistent. The Visconti-arranged orchestra comes in, bringing the song to its climax with one emphatic note. That chorus hook of “Band on the Run” immediately takes over for the coda fadeout.

If much of the album was a showcase for McCartney, Linda and Laine handled the harmonies well. And as Paul did for himself as a drummer, he didn’t ask Linda to do too much on keyboards, leaving the whole thing well-calibrated.

Visconti was a smart choice. He reportedly came up with the string arrangements in three days (deadline crunch for the artist, you know). They give emphasis and accents perfectly.

Indeed, 1973 was a busy year for McCartney. He’d released Red Rose Speedway earlier that year, as well as the theme song for that year’s James Bond movie, “Live and Let Die.”

The latter was, if not completely in sound, an artistic step that led to Band on the Run, with its varied sections, committed vocals and seamless synthesis of rock and pop songcraft.

Still, the final result wasn’t greeted as warmly initially as one would expect given its status in the succeeding years. It was actually dropping a bit on the charts before “Jet” and “Band on the Run” took off as Top 10 singles in 1974. The album would reach the No. 1 spot, finishing as one of the year’s top three albums in both the U.K. and U.S.

There’s a certain amount of irony in Wings truly finding its footing after 40-percent of their members quit. McCartney, given the circumstances, had to have a bit of “I’m going to show you” to the two who’d left, to fans who’d been disappointed by his more recent output and even to himself.

There’s a feeling of freedom, as if McCartney felt empowered to use all the shades in his palette again. The drama behind the scenes didn’t seep into the vinyl grooves even a bit, although he wisely learned his lesson about recording tourism, sticking to London, Los Angeles and New Orleans for his next album.

A half-century later, if Band on the Run is not McCartney’s best post-Beatles work, it has to be in any such discussion. Cannily crafted and performed with audible enthusiasm, it showed that Paul was a master pop songwriter, if not your first choice of travel planner.

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Kara Tucker

Kara Tucker, after years of sportswriting, has turned to her first-love—music. She lives in New York City with her partner and their competing record collections.

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