“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,”
The battered green Transit van parked in leafy St John's Wood, looked out of place among the sleek sports cars and Bentleys. Passers-by on that icy February morning 50 years ago might have suspected it belonged to burglars, attracted by the rich pickings in one of London's most exclusive neighbourhoods. But as the engine spluttered into life, a group of hippy types, accompanied by children and dogs, piled into the back. (Express)
Among them was Paul McCartney, the most famous musician on the planet, who was leaving his palatial home to hit the road in 1972 for the first time since 1966 on a "secret tour" with his new band Wings.
Their first gig was at Nottingham University for no better reason than the band needed a break from driving.
Parking outside the student union office, roadies Ian Horn and Trevor Jones were sent in to announce that there was an ex-Beatle outside looking for a gig.
One of the first people to see Wings was student Jim Jacobs, who had travelled up from Cirencester to visit his girlfriend there."We had no idea who it was until the moment they walked out on stage."
In fact, the band had only mastered a small handful of tracks from the maligned Wildlife album to perform live, so the show was fleshed out with classic rock and roll covers, including Long Tall Sally and Lucille.
"In between the various songs they went into little conferences to decide what they were going to play next," adds Jim. "They had no running order.
"Those [gigs] were mad," he said in a later interview. "We just made it up: 50p on the door, no hotels booked, no gigs booked, no nothing booked. Even the lowliest group through history has had a hotel booked for them, but we were just mad."
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.
