Paul McCartney & Wings

Band On The Run (50th Anniversary Edition) CAPITOL

Macca’s mega-selling third post-Beatles album gets throroughly de-belled and de-whistled.

Reissued on vinyl and in Dolby Atmos, with the usual interference from Giles Martin, the most famous Wings album is also available unharmed for the cognoscenti, and for the curious with an ‘underdubbed’ disc. “This is Band On The Run in a way you’ve never heard before,” McCartney says, accurately. And it’s true that nobody at the time thought: “You know what would be good? We should take all those extra bits and those orchestral overdubs off this album we’ve spent months making, so it sounds like a load of demos, and we should put it out like that.”

But these are the end times when even records with all the Beatles on can be fiddled about and tinkered with until the wheels come off, and even though there’s a ton of stuff in the vaults that would be welcomed by billions of fans we get just tentative shavings off of things we already own. Although the instrumental version (i.e. backing track) of 1985 is nice.

Not that this is a disaster, particularly. This is a Paul McCartney (& Wings) album, one of his best, and the 10 songs here are always worth hearing, even if they were wearing eye patches and a trouser suit.

Band On The Run is often touted as Macca’s best solo record, because it is tuneful, confident and coherent, something his previous 1970s releases had often failed to be. That title is always up for debate (aka Memory Almost Full is the best one), but Band On The Run is an album full of high points, including the beautifully assembled title track, the incredible glam rush of Jet, and the fantastic it’s-aboutJohn-or-is-it Lennonesque screamer Let Me Roll It. The rest is mostly quite nice, but McCartney’s ‘quite nice’ is most people’s ‘completely astonishing’.

Add to all that the back story – half the band leaving; a trip to Lagos; mugging; Nigerian musician and political activist Fela Kuti ranting; victory in the face of adversity – and you have a classic album, with all that entails. Fifty years later, mix it nicely, do a few different formats, and take the orchestra off all the tracks, and you have a Special Edition. Is it essential? No. Would it be better with some proper rarities and surprises? Yes. Are EMI going to do this with every McCartney album? Hopefully not. Is it a good package? Yes.