WINGS

The erstwhile Fab and associates recount the history of his second backup band.

Remember when Paul was dead? If you’re of an age, you’ll remember that hoax. But Sir Paul, as he relates in his foreword to this oral history, really was feeling half past dead, “drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life make-over.” Newly married to Linda, McCartney retreated to a farm in Scotland and rode out the psychic storm, releasing the then-not-well-liked solo album Ram and trying to figure out what came next. As he and some of his assembled mates, as well as the eminently sensible Linda, recall, he decided that he wanted and needed to get up on stage; thus began his decade-long engagement with Wings. In this collection of sidelong glances and road tales, there are some expected truisms, as when Sean Ono Lennon says of Paul and John’s relationship, “They complemented each other like a plus and minus on a magnet.” The frontline, first-generation memories are more revealing, from McCartney’s account of his near–panic attacks on the Beatles’ breakup and redemption with surprise gigs with Wings around Britain to guitarist Denny Laine’s bitter parting from the group. Organized chronologically album by album, the narrative begins to wind down with McCartney’s imprisonment in Japan in 1980 for marijuana possession. As the musician allows, the bust forced the issue of whether Wings would continue (the rise of punk and New Wave also contributed to the band’s demise), but “the truth is that the inspiration had already begun to move elsewhere.” And though not disavowing the Wings years, having proved his point “that we could do something successful after The Beatles,” McCartney’s more given to mining his Beatles era than that second act, so that this book seems in some ways an afterthought.

Second-tier McCartneyiana, though fun for completists.