As he prepares to release the 11th and 12th remastered, expanded editions from his back catalogue, he offers some thoughts on his controversial band and shares never-before-seen photos.
Newly mastered and never before released, ‘Best Friend’, a song which Paul had thoughts to John Lennon, comes as a live version recorded during the Wings European tour in 1972 at the Cine Roma in Antwerp, Belgium. The second offering comes in the form of ‘The Mess’, a live version recorded at The Hague, Netherlands, and that was the B-side to ‘My Love’ - the band’s #1 US hit single. Both tracks were omitted from the originally planned Red Rose Speedway double album, which now comes remastered in its full form, to be released December 7, 2018 via MPL/Capitol/UMe.
Listen to both tracks below:
'Best Friend (Live in Antwerp)':
'The Mess (Live at The Hague)':
"We were terrible. - Paul says about The Wings - We weren't a good group. 'Well, Linda can't play keyboards', and it was true. But you know, Lennon couldn't play guitar when we started. We knew Linda couldn't play, we didn't know each other, but we learned. We had some funny experiences. Looking back on it, I'm really glad we did it."
"People said to me, 'Get a big supergroup with loads of stars,' but for some mad reason I wanted to go back to square one and do it as we did in The Beatles,"
McCartney explained that the band helped him out of feeling "depressed" after the break-up of The Beatles in 1970. "I was depressed," he said. "It was very depressing. You were breaking from your lifelong friends, we used to liken it to the army – we had been army buddies for a few years, and now you weren't going to see them again.""Not knowing if I was going to continue with music, that was depressing." "So I took to the bevvies. I took to a wee dram. It was great at first, then I was a bit far gone. Suddenly I wasn’t having a good time, it wasn't working.
"Has your image affected your songwriting at all, your ego?"
PAUL: "No, I don't think so. I think the songwriting is just my songwriting. It just comes out. I think everything about your life affects your songwriting. You are just a vehicle and it all comes through you. So you know, if your vehicle is in a certain state you'll write that kind of a song, some of the time. It does actually affect me, but I really don't feel it affects me mightily. But it must do. Some people still say, 'I never thought you were like that.' I tell you who suffers from this too, and that's Linda. She's totally the opposite to her image. I don't know what people think of her. You meet lots of people. Tell me."
"People tend to say, 'Is she really that snobbish?' That's how she's often projected."
PAUL: "You know, it it's in your character to fake it, then you must fake it. There's no way you can give in. You can't change the spots-- whatever the expression is. But when you really get to meet somebody who's not reacting to a microphone or an interview, when you see them in their off-duty hours, that's when you find out what they're really about."
