Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hi everyone, it's Paul Molldoin. Before we get to
Speaker 1: this episode, I wanted to let you know that you
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Speaker 1: Lyrics right now, add free by becoming a Pushkin Plus subscriber.
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Speaker 2: I mean, Wings was just the result of me asking myself,
Speaker 2: am I going to stop now that the Beatles stopped?
Speaker 2: I mean, it's so wonderful, so successful. Do I now
Speaker 2: stop and kind of look for something else to do?
Speaker 2: But I thought, no, I like music too much, so
Speaker 2: the whatever the something else is will be music. So
Speaker 2: I was wording interus did she find starting the band?
Speaker 2: And she said yeah, Well, she paused, she wasn't that quick,
Speaker 2: So yeah, I just thought, well, we'll just start something
Speaker 2: that feels good and we'll build it up like the
Speaker 2: Beatles did on the trouble being, we'd have to make
Speaker 2: our mistakes in public this time.
Speaker 1: Around, and Paul will done for a while.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I've been fortunate to spend time with one of the
Speaker 1: greatest songwriters of the era and will.
Speaker 3: You look at me?
Speaker 2: I'm going up to it. I'm actually a performer.
Speaker 1: That is Sir Paul McCartney. We work together on a
Speaker 1: book looking at the lyrics of more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty of his songs, and we recorded many hours
Speaker 1: of our conversations.
Speaker 2: It was like going back to an old snapshot album
Speaker 2: looking back on work I hadn't ever analyzed.
Speaker 1: This is McCartney, a life in lyrics, a masterclass, a memoir,
Speaker 1: and an improvised journey with one of the most iconic
Speaker 1: figures in popular music. In this episode, Band on the Run,
Speaker 1: a single from Wing's third studio album, Band on the Run,
Speaker 1: is McCartney's quintessential narrative songwriting in action. Split into two parts.
Speaker 1: The first section of the song follows a band of
Speaker 1: outlaws languishing in prison.
Speaker 2: Stuck Insidi's fal sands inside Forever Never Again.
Speaker 4: Right about that time, there were a lot of people
Speaker 4: who were pretending to be desperados, pretending.
Speaker 2: To be gangsters. Outlaws was a word that came up
Speaker 2: a lot. Desperados came up a lot. The thing is,
Speaker 2: you know, with the pot situation, we were outside the
Speaker 2: law in a very mild way. Right, So then we
Speaker 2: knew we were doing this. So it spawned a lot
Speaker 2: of people talking about themselves as desperados.
Speaker 5: Desperado, why don't you come to you know, Sands, you've
Speaker 5: been out bad fances for so long now.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, the same year as Band on
Speaker 1: the Run, the Eagles released Desperado.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh you made didn't know?
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're paining your.
Speaker 5: There grading.
Speaker 1: So outlaws were certainly in fashion at the time. HARKing
Speaker 1: back to the long standing tradition of the American Western.
Speaker 2: Reminds me of like Patch Custody in The Sundance Kid. Yes,
Speaker 2: guns and knives harder. Now, you gotta plan more, you
Speaker 2: gotta prepare more guns and knives, neither brick And I'm
Speaker 2: imagining it because of this DESPERADERI thing. I'm imagining this
Speaker 2: in America. No, no, not yet, not to me and hard,
Speaker 2: get the rules straightened down, rules and a knife.
Speaker 3: Fight no rules.
Speaker 1: As in many scenes from popular westerns like Butch Cassidy
Speaker 1: and The Sundance Kid, the song sets up a band
Speaker 1: of outlaws in a scene of captivity, dreaming about what
Speaker 1: they would do were they to escape.
Speaker 2: Give I ever, get out? Not giving it all the
Speaker 2: way to registered charity Bind today.
Speaker 5: If I ever get out.
Speaker 2: Of it, if we ever get out on the run,
Speaker 2: what does that mean? What does that mean? It means
Speaker 2: a bound of people who escaped from a Perusian or
Speaker 2: you could take it as a bound music on a tour.
Speaker 2: So you know we are abound on the run and
Speaker 2: if you're playing singing it, you're getting the double meaning.
Speaker 2: So everyone's looking for us, but we're on the run
Speaker 2: and they're never gonna catch us.
Speaker 7: Well, the rains exploded with a mighty crash as we
Speaker 7: BALI to the sun. The first one said to the
Speaker 7: second one, thereaving.
Speaker 6: On the run, bad run.
Speaker 2: The rain exploded with a mighty crash. We fell into
Speaker 2: the song, and the first one said to the second one,
Speaker 2: there if you're having fun. So you know that's the
Speaker 2: prison break and.
Speaker 7: The jail man and sailor Sam searching everyone all the bad.
Speaker 6: On the run.
Speaker 1: On the run, the song is focused on a band
Speaker 1: of fight breaking out of jail and glevanting through the desert. However,
Speaker 1: it was the other type of band that was more
Speaker 1: familiar to McCartney.
Speaker 2: It's not a band on the run from Beetle Down
Speaker 2: Liards I mean wings was the next step after the words.
Speaker 2: If I was going to continue, then how was it
Speaker 2: going to do it? Well? How did the Beatles do it? Well?
Speaker 2: They were just four little guys from Liverpool to no
Speaker 2: ships and then they figured it out and they worked
Speaker 2: out him. They did ten thousand hours and then suddenly
Speaker 2: they were big and famous. So I thought, well, you're
Speaker 2: either try and get yourself a super group, which what
Speaker 2: happened is a group of blind faith shirt which was
Speaker 2: ginger and certain people are that Zeppelin. It was kind
Speaker 2: of a little bit that, you know, it was handset,
Speaker 2: hand picked, famous tuble or you just sort of getting
Speaker 2: a bo and ask a couple of nuts to come along,
Speaker 2: you know, and you don't fuss about it too much.
Speaker 2: That's what we decided to do.
Speaker 7: WILLI UNDERTAKEO You Heavy Side.
Speaker 6: Gone and a bell a drinking in a village, square down,
Speaker 6: long run.
Speaker 1: Like any good desperado, McCartney had to enlist his accomplices,
Speaker 1: seeking out the best people for the job rather than
Speaker 1: those with the most notoriety. With Linda by his side
Speaker 1: on this adventure, he began to put together the new.
Speaker 2: Band Everybody wants to be in a band.
Speaker 4: That part of it.
Speaker 2: I don't mean to know it's true. It's a nice
Speaker 2: idea of nothing else.
Speaker 1: McCartney knew he wanted to Denny Layne on guitar and
Speaker 1: backup vocals. Denny Layne had been a core member of
Speaker 1: the Moody Blues in the mid sixties. They had made
Speaker 1: it big with their hit single go Now.
Speaker 5: Since she Gotta Go.
Speaker 2: You see, So I knew Denny. We toured with the Moodies,
Speaker 2: so any I got on with him. So he's the
Speaker 2: first person I asked. Not Linda was the first question,
Speaker 2: then Jenny, and then I came to New York auditioned
Speaker 2: people for Ram and Jenny Sigel showed up out of that,
Speaker 2: so that was it kind of thing, you know. Henry
Speaker 2: McCollough was just somebody our roadies knew. So Crackles I
Speaker 2: haven't come along with. And it was the next move
Speaker 2: after the Beatles. The only philosophy behind us was to
Speaker 2: not do Beatles songs, just to create something completely new.
Speaker 2: So there hadn't been a girl in the Beatles. The
Speaker 2: Beatles had known each other all their lives, so it
Speaker 2: was all the opposite. This is like just a different
Speaker 2: way of doing it.
Speaker 7: Really was falling as a desert world began to set
Speaker 7: down in the town of searching for us everywhere because
Speaker 7: we never will be.
Speaker 6: Run.
Speaker 1: Once the members of Wings fail into place, the group
Speaker 1: became a literal band on the run. Throughout the early
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, they traveled all over England on an impromptu
Speaker 1: concert tour, learning the ropes of performance as the Beatles
Speaker 1: once did in Hamburg.
Speaker 2: And you know, because the theory was to just plan
Speaker 2: as you went along, I was quite chaostic in the beginning.
Speaker 2: We would shove up at student unions and say can
Speaker 2: we do a gig? Because you knew they had a
Speaker 2: hole and they had people, so we would do that.
Speaker 2: We charged fifty p on the door and the guy
Speaker 2: I would come up with a big bag of fifty PCE,
Speaker 2: showed up the night before, talked to a very amused
Speaker 2: students union leader who didn't believe it me till he
Speaker 2: came out of the vamp. Well you got a whold
Speaker 2: and we played lunch down. Yeah, and then it was
Speaker 2: just advertised to so we'll comment or music in the
Speaker 2: whole wild and letting people showed up played fifty p.
Speaker 2: Well it's a big bag of coins, which I just
Speaker 2: always wanted to be a Peter Sellers movie. One for You,
Speaker 2: Two for Me, and everyone just took a handful of
Speaker 2: coins and we went around Britain. We had eleven songs,
Speaker 2: so we had to repeat some of them, and some
Speaker 2: of the gigs must have been quite bad, you know,
Speaker 2: because we didn't really know what we're doing.
Speaker 1: It's an amusing image, this former Beatle showing up to
Speaker 1: play in a college cafeteria trying to hone the sound
Speaker 1: of his new musical group. Despite McCartney being a seasoned professional,
Speaker 1: the band still needed practice time, a.
Speaker 2: Lot of membering. I mean well, and I had a
Speaker 2: song called Wildlife rough earliest album when Linda had the
Speaker 2: intro on keyboard, don't m m Jim Jim dun't secrets
Speaker 2: the chords? I mean, I said, there you Newcastle, it's
Speaker 2: Newcastle City Hall. A song now, this song called called Wildlife, Wildlife,
Speaker 2: want to through, want to through nothing. I look over
Speaker 2: and Lender's just frozen. I want to see things. She
Speaker 2: hasn't heard of the country. So I go over. Now
Speaker 2: the crowd kind of wondering whether this is just a
Speaker 2: bit of theater. When I go over and the cords,
Speaker 2: oh sh you on, So I mean, actually, if this happened,
Speaker 2: a sketch would be quite funny. So I go over, well,
Speaker 2: I can't remember the bloody Courts, don't you what. Luckily,
Speaker 2: seeing either, she suddenly remembered, so she pushed her to
Speaker 2: one side and we started. But those were the kind
Speaker 2: of chaotic moments were you know, we nearly just didn't
Speaker 2: remember songs, or we'd play quite badly, or we play
Speaker 2: stuff the audience didn't want to hear.
Speaker 1: We kind of got away with it, but well, what
Speaker 1: did you There was a great deal of pressure on
Speaker 1: McCartney's new band as the media made comparisons to the
Speaker 1: group that had dissolved a few years earlier. McCartney himself
Speaker 1: wondered whether Wings would be able to measure up.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is just happening in my own mind.
Speaker 2: It's not what anyone's telling me. I'm automatically thinking, well,
Speaker 2: the Beatles were great, so Wings is not going to
Speaker 2: be as great. Mike from all along was after the Beatles,
Speaker 2: who's going to be as good as them? You know?
Speaker 2: Of course, and I kind of knew it couldn't happen,
Speaker 2: but I thought, well, yeah, but we can be not
Speaker 2: as good as the Beatles, but we can be something else.
Speaker 3: That must have been hard in some way to feel
Speaker 3: that from the outset.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was, but as I said, you know, I
Speaker 2: was to continue. I had to tough it out. But
Speaker 2: I mean I had reserves of courage from the Beatles
Speaker 2: having pennies thrown at them at Stroud Village Hall, you know,
Speaker 2: so we'd had that, we'd had that bullshit, So here
Speaker 2: it was again. The hardest thing I think was with
Speaker 2: Linda in the group, who was a complete amateur. And
Speaker 2: I said, well, so was George when he joined the group.
Speaker 2: So was I. So was John, so was Rinko.
Speaker 3: You taught her keyboards and I showed her a.
Speaker 2: Few things on keyboard, and then she learned herself, and
Speaker 2: she had a couple of lessons and stuff, and it
Speaker 2: turned out that her strength wasn't necessarily the keyboard thing,
Speaker 2: although she handled the job, It was more as a spirit.
Speaker 2: She was a great sort of cheerleader. She would get
Speaker 2: crowds going. She did a lot of that, you know,
Speaker 2: so cap your hands kind of thing, and in those
Speaker 2: days there weren't many women in groups, so she was
Speaker 2: sort of a pioneer in that aspect, and listening back
Speaker 2: to the record, she was damn good singer, even though
Speaker 2: she was amateur, and people were looking for anything to
Speaker 2: damn her. But we got through it.
Speaker 3: But it's going to think, well, of course, I mean,
Speaker 3: the terrible fact is that human beings have a tendency,
Speaker 3: you know, to whine about something, to find something.
Speaker 2: We're very insecure as a race. As an animal, I've
Speaker 2: often sort of seen so like rabbits and things in
Speaker 2: the garden or in the field and think they live
Speaker 2: a life of terror.
Speaker 8: Total they're looking over the shoulders all the time, and
Speaker 8: I think, so are we. I'm not sure we're that
Speaker 8: different in our way. We're looking over our shoulders, and
Speaker 8: that engenders a not so generous.
Speaker 2: Spirit, ding a really square. I mean, it's always good
Speaker 2: to slack someone off, or to see someone get slagged off.
Speaker 2: I think it's it's another instinct that makes us feel
Speaker 2: not so bad. I think it's a big instinct in us.
Speaker 2: And I think that it's because we're insecure. So the
Speaker 2: more secure you get, the more generous you can become, and.
Speaker 7: Say said everyone all the.
Speaker 6: Run.
Speaker 1: By nineteen seventy three, Wings was finding its groove, but
Speaker 1: McCartney had yet to win back music critics since the
Speaker 1: breakup of the Beatles. This third studio album, Band on
Speaker 1: the Run, would be wings chance to establish themselves and
Speaker 1: McCartney's chance to prove he still in a long career
Speaker 1: in front of him. When it came time to record,
Speaker 1: McCartney was hoping to be inspired by a change of scenery.
Speaker 2: This was recorded in Legos. It doesn't rule. I knew
Speaker 2: EMI had studios all over the world, but I didn't
Speaker 2: know where they were, so I asked for a list
Speaker 2: and they were in China, Rio, France. You know Legos. Well,
Speaker 2: that sounds interesting. I love African music. I'll speaking African
Speaker 2: music being there, but we're not doing African music, but
Speaker 2: still being in the land the African music come from.
Speaker 2: It will have some sort of nice and lunch.
Speaker 1: As much as McCartney imagined Legos would be a good
Speaker 1: backdrop for the life of musical Desperados, not all members
Speaker 1: of the band felt the same. The night before they
Speaker 1: were set to start recording, drummer Denny Sywell and guitarist
Speaker 1: Henry McCulloch rang up McCartney to tell him they wouldn't
Speaker 1: be coming.
Speaker 2: I was like furious at first. It's like, you're not
Speaker 2: coming to make on that album. Well that's not that's
Speaker 2: not very bad luck. And I'm that kind of person.
Speaker 2: I won't go, Okay, God, I going to rethink this.
Speaker 2: If I'm going somewhere, then I'm going I've noticed that
Speaker 2: about me. I'd like to stick to the plan, so
Speaker 2: then I actually deal with this in my mind. So
Speaker 2: I just thought, well, screw you, I'm going to make
Speaker 2: this the best raffle I've made to date since leaving
Speaker 2: the Beatles. Before Welcome, I got Denny guitar, got Linda
Speaker 2: both us, Denny vocals, me vocals. I'll drun right. I've
Speaker 2: drunk a lot anywhere. It was crazy. These circumstances were
Speaker 2: just wild. I think anybody else might have given up
Speaker 2: because the studio was only half built and we had
Speaker 2: to figure it all out. But I had Danny Lyndon myself.
Speaker 2: I had Jeff Emeric, who's the People's engineer.
Speaker 1: Late one night, as Paul and Linda were walking in
Speaker 1: an area of time they had been told to avoid,
Speaker 1: some men hopped out of a car and mugged them
Speaker 1: at knife point. They stole a couple of Linda's cameras,
Speaker 1: some unfinished lyrics and the demo tips for the upcoming album.
Speaker 2: We've been walk what we did to listen because we
Speaker 2: were just for others, so we just were walking later
Speaker 2: now where we've been told not to walk.
Speaker 1: So in terms of reconstructing, if you have to go
Speaker 1: back to if not Square won something akin to it.
Speaker 2: We remember them well enough. I'm sure I had the
Speaker 2: lyrics somewhat. We always think the guys your native was
Speaker 2: like five Legos calls were so they would have re
Speaker 2: recorded over them some decent music Africa or just chucked
Speaker 2: them away as robbish.
Speaker 1: The band's trip to Legos, what with the half finished
Speaker 1: studio and the unexpected mugging, wasn't quite what McCartney had imagined.
Speaker 1: When Paul and Linda returned to England, they found a
Speaker 1: letter at their home from the e m I chairman
Speaker 1: warning them not to go to Legos because of a
Speaker 1: cholera outbreak. The letter had arrived after they had left.
Speaker 2: Yeah, looking back on exters like that, you block out
Speaker 2: all the worst stuff and you remember all.
Speaker 1: Piclso despite the recording conditions, Band on the Run was
Speaker 1: a runaway success. Upon the release of the album, Wings
Speaker 1: became more secure, not just as a follow up band
Speaker 1: to the Beatles, but as a significant musical group in
Speaker 1: their own right. The song band on the Run was
Speaker 1: one of Wings's first hits, topping the charts at numb
Speaker 1: were one in America a number three in the UK.
Speaker 2: I was talking to a journalist once about Sergeant Pepper,
Speaker 2: going on about it as if he must admire it,
Speaker 2: and he said, we'll tell you the truth. He said,
Speaker 2: it was a band on the run for me. It's
Speaker 2: more my generation of the run was his Sergeant Pepper, right.
Speaker 2: So I suddenly realized, oh yeah, And that has proved
Speaker 2: to be a very interesting fact over the years, that
Speaker 2: there are some people who actually like what I did
Speaker 2: with Wings better than the Beatles. There are some people
Speaker 2: whose first thing they ever heard was, you know, a
Speaker 2: band on the run or jet or something that we
Speaker 2: did with Wings, and I think for them that means
Speaker 2: a lot. They have a special affection for that.
Speaker 1: He The success of Wings was a testament to McCartney's
Speaker 1: entrepreneurial spirit, as well as his willingness to deviate from
Speaker 1: rules and expectations.
Speaker 3: You're it sounds a lot about you.
Speaker 2: I think that you're relating to well to borrow a
Speaker 2: phrase from Yets sort of more naked. You know. I mean,
Speaker 2: you didn't have to do that, right, you really did know.
Speaker 2: It also says I'm mad, but that is right. I
Speaker 2: could think of other ways to do it, but I
Speaker 2: didn't like them, and so the only other rules not
Speaker 2: do it. Okay, I'll do this way because I like it.
Speaker 2: It's probably a good way because we will learn, we
Speaker 2: will develop. By the time we're ready, we'll be pretty good,
Speaker 2: and we'll have had some success with records here and
Speaker 2: there and never So it was seventy sixth when we
Speaker 2: finally had Band on Us a big record. We then
Speaker 2: toured properly as Wings.
Speaker 6: That time.
Speaker 1: Band on the Run the title track from Wings nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy three album in the next episode.
Speaker 5: Thanks.
Speaker 6: Its Well.
Speaker 1: Seal Maxwell's Silver Hammer, a cheerful song about a serial
Speaker 1: killer inspired by an obscure French avant garde play McCartney
Speaker 1: A Life in Lyrics is a co production between iHeartMedia,
Speaker 1: NPL and Pushkin Industries.