‘I loved mus to think of
HERE is Sir Paul McCartney as you’ve never seen him before. These previously unpublished pictures show Macca and his late wife Linda with Wings, the band he formed in the bitter aftermath of the Beatles split and which took him back to the top of the charts.
The relaxed, intimate snapshots were taken at recording sessions for the first two Wings albums, 1971’s Wild Life and 1973’s Red Rose Speedway, and at the live shows that followed.
“I had known nothing but the Beatles since I was 16,” Paul recalls. “Now I was in uncharted territory. And instead of worrying about it, we just thought, ‘Well, so what? No one’s got a map. We don’t need one! No one’s ever had a map for a band.
“I loved music too much to think of stopping.” Recruiting Linda on keyboards and backing vocals outraged fans who unjustly blamed her for breaking up the Fab Four.
“I was sitting in bed with Linda, turned to her and said, ‘Do you fancy being in a band?’” the star recalls. “She looked a little nonplussed and said, ‘Yeah, OK’.”
At the time Sir Paul explained: “She was the main help for me on the albums... She was there every day helping on harmonies. It’s like you write millions of love songs and finally when you’re in love you’d kind of like to write one for the person you’re in love with.
“All this business about getting Linda in the billing was just a way of saying, ‘Listen, I don’t care what you think, this is what I think. I’m putting her right up there with me’.”
Sir Paul first met New York photographer Linda Eastman at a Georgie Fame concert at Soho’s Bag O’Nails club in May 1967. “I knew I wanted to marry her about a year later,” he said. “We both thought it a bit crazy...and we also thought it’d be a gas.” They wed at Marylebone Register Office in March 1969.
He had taught Linda to play keyboards for his second solo album Ram before forming Wings with guitarist Denny Laine from the Moody Blues and US session drummer Denny Seiwell. He what he was doing. “When D said ‘Right, come on then!’” sleazy basement in the New his best Ringo Starr impress work, lots of tom-toms...”
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