Birth of a feather
Early Wings. Light and airy, or paper thin? By Jim Irvin.
PAUL McCARTNEY has cried “Back to basics!” at several points in his career, usually during times of stress. When The Beatles collapsed in acrimony, with everyone looking in his direction, Paul retreated to Scotland and cut a debut solo album, McCartney, with the barest of resources. Soon afterwards he was in New York cutting the more elaborate follow-up, Ram, credited to Paul & Linda McCartney. But Macca, 29, wanted to be in a band again, so decided he would form one with Linda, Ram drummer Denny Seiwell and old mate Denny Laine, once of The Moody Blues. Suddenly, they had cut most of their debut album, Wild Life – in three July days at Abbey Road – found a name, Wings (Paul thought about angels while Linda was recovering from delivering Stella in September 1971), had a dull single, Give Ireland Back To The Irish, banned everywhere, released the album in December, and by early 1972 were touring universities in a van and singing Mary Had A Little Lamb on Top Of The Pops. All of which was a let-down compared to the glories of The Beatles, the public unenamoured by Macca’s desire for simplicity and regrouping. But approached now, stripped of its context and the weight of contemporary expectation, Wild Life is a weirdly evocative, affecting work. It starts with a wordless jam, followed by a halfwritten ditty, a sweet cover of Love Is Strange, the melancholy title track, and ends with four strong ballads, including one of Paul’s finest, Dear Friend, a criminally underappreciated epic, directed at John Lennon. Wings turn from tentative to splendid, before your very ears, in just 40 minutes. If Wild Life was sketchy, follow-up Red Rose Speedway was doodles rendered in invisible ink. A baffling Number 1 album that nobody liked, it seemed the “Wings is a band” conceit had been quickly abandoned, courtesy of Linda’s cover image of solo Paul gagged by a rose. Apart from anaemic A-side My Love, it all sounded like anaemic B-sides, and closed with an Abbey Road-style mash-up of four scraps that may be the most tedious stretch in all of McCartney. “Paul McCartney’s music tends to crumble under prolonged examination,” noted Lenny Kaye diplomatically in a contemporary Rolling Stone review. McCartney practically agreed in a more recent interview: “After I had heard Wild Life,I thought, Hell, we have really blown it here. And the next one, Red Rose Speedway,I couldn’t stand.” Amazingly, Speedway started as a double album which, in the new and breathtakingly packaged deluxe reissues of these two albums (MPL/Capitol/ UME), has been restored. It turns out to be a more entertaining object, its appeal lying in the sprawling variety: bits of reggae, country, live jams and orchestral embellishments. Macca bottled it, though, and his single-disc edit dropped songs written and performed by Linda and Denny, and decent things that subsequently became actual B-sides: I Lie Around, The Mess and Mama’s Little Girl. Why four sides of undercooked whimsy should work better than two, I’m not sure, but Dylan’s Self Portrait springs to mind. There’s no song as striking as Dear Friend; the closest, Little Lamb Dragonfly, co-produced with George Martin, spoilt by a vocal like Macca’s singing into a shoe box. Wild Life, the album, gets a generous, personal ★★★★, Red Rose Speedway merits only ★★ at best, but the deluxe packs are quite stunning, each with a gorgeously illustrated, deftly written book, plus folders of documents, scripts, Polaroids and paraphernalia accompanying many bonus discs of rough mixes, attendant singles, rarely seen TV shows and other delights. Super-serving super-fans, these expensive but terrific presentations deserve ★★★★★.
“A baffling Number 1 album that nobody liked.”