In April 1971 came word that the other Beatles had decided to grant McCartney his freedom from the partnership. Ironically, the New York sessions for "Ram" had made McCartney hanker for the musical closeness of The Beatles. From “Man on the Run” by Tom Doyle,
To this end, in August 1971, Seiwell and another musician who shared his first name, Denny Laine, ventured to High Park. Laine knew McCartney from the days when his former band, The Moody Blues, and The Beatles were managed by the late Brian Epstein's NEMS Enterprises and rode tour buses together. McCartney was looking for a vocal foil to replace Lennon, if not exactly a songwriting partner, and had approached Laine with the idea of starting a band.
Seiwell and Laine were both put on a £70 weekly retainer — a decent working wage for the early 1970s — with the casual understanding that there would be more to come in the future. Inside Rude Studio, and outside when the weather permitted, the band, including a pregnant Linda on keyboards, quickly moved from jamming rock'n'roll standards to picking their way through McCartney's latest, half-finished songs. Laine was impressed that Paul was "just a farmer who plays guitar" and "not a Beatle anymore."
Enthralled by his new group, McCartney blocked out a week in August at Abbey Road and the band nailed eight songs, five of them on the first take. He also toyed with band names ranging from the half-decent (Turpentine) to the dreadful (The Dazzlers). In the end, the name of the new group was to come to him in a moment of acute panic.
In mid-September, Linda went into labor and required an emergency cesarean section. Hurried into a waiting room, McCartney, in a green surgical gown, found himself alone, "praying like mad" for his wife and unborn child. Into his racing thoughts came an image of an angel's wings, striking him with its simple, calming beauty. The drama over, he found himself with a second biological daughter, the future fashion designer Stella Nina, and a name for his new band: Wings.
After disappearing in Scotland, the newly extended McCartney family resurfaced in London in early November for a party to unveil the band and its new album, "Wild Life," for a handpicked group of guests that included Elton John and members of Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Faces.
Five days later, the first shot of the quartet appeared on the cover of Melody Maker, along with the headline "Wings Fly!," but the album crashed and burned. "Wild Life" was met with a colossal wave of disappointment. For those weaned on the mini-symphonies of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and "Abbey Road," "Wild Life" sounded like half-finished scraps, and by Beatles standards, the album bombed, prompting EMI to cancel the release of the proposed double A-side single "Love Is Strange" and "I Am Your Singer."
Still, the photograph that appeared on the front of "Wild Life" seemed to say it all: McCartney was now just a member of a band. In the pastoral scene, the barefoot members of Wings balance on a horizontal branch a few feet above a stream. McCartney stands knee-deep in the river, strumming an acoustic guitar, too distant from the camera for anyone other than the sharp-eyed to recognize him as Beatle Paul.
As Wings splashed around in the country, the glitter-and-glue stomp of glam rock was fast becoming the soundtrack of the times, making The Beatles, and their solo efforts, seem hopelessly passe. In an effort to toughen up his new band's sound, McCartney decided to expand Wings to a five-piece by drafting a lead guitarist, Irish road-worn rocker Henry McCullough.
Three years earlier, during Joe Cocker's star-making set at Woodstock, McCullough had been part of the backing Grease Band that had performed a gritty version of Lennon & McCartney's "With a Little Help From My Friends."
The five members of Wings quickly bonded in rehearsals, although there were already murmurs of dissent within the ranks over Linda's role in the band. McCullough even brazenly suggested to McCartney that the band get a "proper" piano player. McCartney instantly rebuffed the guitarist, but it seemed sometimes he wasn't entirely convinced that having his wife in the band had been such a great idea. Once, in a moment of irritation, he threatened to replace her with Billy Preston, the American keyboard player who had done such a fine job augmenting The Beatles during "Let It Be."
Later, a little uncharitably, he would admit that Linda had been "absolute rubbish" when she'd started playing. Linda herself was ambivalent about the prospect of being a touring musician, but McCartney wanted her there, and so there she was.
They gathered on the pavement for one last photograph before leaving. Out in the road at the front of the Cavendish Avenue house they stood, a scruffy assemblage of longhairs. At its center were the McCartneys and their daughters, along with the Seiwells — Denny's wife, Monique, holding baby Stella. To their right were brother-in-law roadies Ian Horne and Trevor Jones. To their left, McCullough and Laine, the latter pulling a comically vacant Stan Laurel face. Behind them stood a green Transit van and an Avis rental three-ton lorry stuffed with their equipment.
McCartney was at last getting his wish — as expressed to the uninterested Beatles during their dying days — of embarking on a low-key tour of small venues or civic halls. The plan for this upcoming jaunt was a similar one, if far looser. Everyone was to pile into the vehicles and take off up the motorway, heading for university towns in search of somewhere to play. By not announcing shows beforehand, he could keep one step ahead of the press.
In effect, he thought, he could outrun his critics.
And so, on the morning of Feb. 8, 1972, this strange coterie set off, destination unknown. "We were," says McCartney, with barely disguised pride, "a bunch of nutters on the road."
Arriving at the university campus in Nottingham around five o'clock, the Wings touring party sent Jones ahead into the building to scout the location. Finding the school's social secretary, Elaine Woodhams, at the bar, he told her that he was with Paul McCartney's new band and they were looking for somewhere to play a spontaneous gig.
Suspecting a practical joke, Woodhams was led out to the van. The door slid open to reveal McCartney, turning the social secretary's expression into a goldfish gape. A gig was duly arranged for the following afternoon and announced in a scrawl on the blackboard in the bar: "Entrance — 50p." (approximately 20 U.S. cents in 1972). The word that the ex-Beatle was to break his concert silence quickly filtered through the campus. "It was a big deal for them," says McCullough. "But it was a bigger deal for us."
One of the most satisfying elements for McCartney in all of this was being handed the band's agreed half-share of the door profits at the end of the gig, a bag of 50-pence coins, which he then evenly distributed among the musicians. It was the first time in 10 years that McCartney had seen any cash after a show, and he enjoyed the working musician's dignity-of-labor aspect of it, feeling like "Duke Ellington divvying out the money" to his band.
For the most part, though, McCartney successfully managed to give both the media and his detractors the slip. Back in London, his assistant Shelley Turner playfully fielded calls from journalists fishing for the next destination. "They have taken a lot of sandwiches with them," she offered coyly. "They could turn up anywhere."
A week into the excursion, Linda talked to Melody Maker about how the tour was going and, specifically, how her eldest daughter was coping with the rock'n'roll road life. The McCartneys, she said, had given Heather "the choice of school or coming with us, and she chose the latter." Linda added, "I mean, this is an education in itself, isn't it?"
