- Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
- Band on the Run is Paul McCartney’s biggest hit album since the Beatles broke up, reaching the top of the album charts in the U.S. and the U.K.
Paul McCartney and Wings – Band on the Run (1973): While all four bandmembers in the Beatles have lucrative solo careers, they each also made music as part of a band: For many years, John Lennon and Yoko Ono called their revolving group of backing musicians the Plastic Ono Band; George Harrison was the main impetus behind the supergroup Traveling Wilburys; and Ringo Starr has toured with Ringo Starr and His All-Starr Band since 1989, releasing nine live albums along the way. Paul McCartney and Wings, Paul McCartney’s arguably more proper rock band when compared to the others, was together for a decade and is sometimes called simply Wings. Paul McCartney and Wings was formed in 1971 after the release of Paul McCartney’s second solo album Ram (1971) that is also credited to his wife Linda McCartney; the lead single from Ram, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” is Paul McCartney’s first #1 U.S. single apart from the Beatles.
While there has been considerable turnover in personnel over the years, the core of Paul McCartney and Wings is Paul McCartney, Linda McCartney, and Denny Laine, a cofounder of the Moody Blues who sang lead on their early hit song “Go Now”. The original lineup of Paul McCartney and Wings also includes drummer Denny Seiwell, who plays drums on Ram. One of the early successes by Paul McCartney and Wings is the theme song “Live and Let Die” from the James Bond film Live and Let Die (1973). At the time of its release, “Live and Let Die” was the most successful Bond theme song, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #9 in the U.K. “Live and Let Die” is the first rock song to be used as a Bond theme and also the first Bond theme to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Band on the Run is the third album by Paul McCartney and Wings and their first hit album. Immediately before the band left for Lagos, Nigeria to begin recording the album, lead guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell quit the band. Thus, as Wikipedia put it: “To make up for the departed band members, [Paul] McCartney would play drums and lead guitar parts, in addition to his contributions on bass guitar, with [Denny] Laine playing rhythm guitar and Linda [McCartney] adding keyboards.” This is not a major hardship for the group; Paul McCartney played all instruments and sang all vocals on his debut solo album McCartney (1970). Band on the Run has mostly driving rock music that is a departure from Paul McCartney’s earlier solo albums and also the Beatles albums to some extent. All three singles from Band on the Run were major hits in the U.K. and the U.S. alike: “Helen Wheels” (#10 U.S., #12 U.K.) – a takeoff on the name of the McCartneys’ Land Rover that they call “Hell on Wheels” – “Jet” (#7 U.S., #7 U.K.), and the title song “Band on the Run” (#1 U.S., #3 U.K.). “Band on the Run” runs over 5 minutes and has three sections with distinctive musical styles that depict a jailbreak by the bandmembers. Other favorites of mine on Band on the Run include “Bluebird”, “Let Me Roll It”, “No Words”, and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five”. The cover photograph shows nine people caught in a searchlight, even though there are only three bandmembers in Paul McCartney and Wings then; the other six are well-known celebrities, at least in Great Britain, that include actors James Coburn and Christopher Lee. Band on the Run is Paul McCartney’s biggest hit album since the Beatles broke up, reaching the top of the album charts in the U.S. and the U.K., as well as Canada, Australia, Spain, and Norway. This disk is the U.S. edition of Band on the Run that includes “Helen Wheels”, which was left off the British release; that is evidently the reason that “Helen Wheels” is omitted in the lyric sheets on the record sleeve. In 2012, this album was listed by Rolling Stone magazine at #418 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In 2013, Band on the Run was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.