His early solo albums notwithstanding (1970's McCartney and 1971's Ram), one could hardly have blamed Paul McCartney for wanting to get back to basics within a band format. Following the break-up of the biggest pop group in the world (er, The Beatles, just in case you were wondering), the shaping of a cultural and youth revolution, the songs that changed and influenced pop music forever, McCartney decided to retreat temporarily from the usual pop world pattern, with its inherently self-destructive shape of tour/album/tour. It's likely he realised that anything he did after The Beatles would be lashed by the critics and lapped up by the public, and above all else it's likely he desperately wanted to shy away from the scary territory of The Next Big Thing.
So, as I say, you could hardly blame him for wanting to get back to basics, to the reason why he and John Lennon started The Beatles in the first place: to play music.
There was another reason, though, why McCartney chose to play live again in a different band format: although he felt he would probably never scale such heights again as The Beatles had achieved, he knew there was a distinct probability he'd be playing music in front of an audience who wouldn't scream through the songs. The impossibility of enjoying a live gig and audience had made itself apparent in the days of playing arenas such as Shea Stadium and the Hollywood Bowl, and the thought of actually hearing his own music as he played it appealed to him. And there was another reason still: fearful of becoming a former legend trading on his past glories, McCartney wanted to eschew the hype of promotion and production that naturally accompanied each and every Beatles release, as well as steering clear of the session-player mentality (note-perfect but largely creatively homogenous).
To this end, he opted to work alone or with his wife Linda, or with a carefully selected bunch of friends. The aim was to get away from expectations and preconceptions, to experiment, to walk from the shadow into the sunshine, to spread his . . . well, you get the picture.
Formed during the summer of 1971, Wings were officially introduced to the world at a fancy-dress party hosted by Paul and Linda at London's Empire Ballroom on November 8th of that year. (The band's name came to Paul after Linda had given birth to their daughter, Stella. "I was musing in the hospital, thinking of angels and things like that," he has said. "I thought of wings, and it seemed to be a good name for a band.") Featuring former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine and New York drummer Denny Seiwell, Wings worked on a batch of songs that were released a month after the introductory party. Announced with little or no fanfare, or as little as an ex-Beatle merited, this simplistic debut album, Wildlife, was received tepidly. In what has gone down in rock legend as the "University Tour", Wings, now augmented by Irish guitarist Henry McCullough, took their live show to 11 venues in British university towns (always a captive audience, said McCartney), starting in Nottingham in February 1972. Working from his home close to London, and at that time without a booking agent, McCartney's idea for the tour came about through wanting to circumnavigate the usual fripperies of rock-star itineraries.
Travelling in a small van, along with their children and pets, Wings headed north up the M1, far away enough from London to feel safe from cosmopolitan attention. The town of Ashby-de-la-Zouch was the first stop, but with no university or college there, the band moved on to Nottingham, where they startled the student union arts organiser by asking to play an unheralded gig. Told to come back the next day (the cheek!), Wings booked into a hotel, spent the night avoiding the stares of fellow guests, and made their debut some 12 hours later. The set consisted of 11 songs, some of which were repeated to extend the gig beyond 30 or so minutes. The admission price was 50p and, after the gig, the proceeds were distributed in the back of the van.
SUCH an inauspicious and egalitarian beginning could only be good for McCartney, enabling him to connect with real people once again. He says he could have traded forever on the legendary status of his former band by writing what would, for him, have been formulaic songs along the lines of Eleanor Rigby or Yesterday. Yet he decided against that, claiming it would have been the line of least resistance, despite promoters imploring him to stick in the odd Beatles tune as a sop to the fans.
"As time went by and the pressure was off," McCartney told Billboard recently, "I could nod and wink at The Beatles' stuff, so I could now do Yesterday on a Wings tour and it wouldn't hurt. But until we had enough Wings songs and an identity as a group, I didn't do any of that, even though the promoters were weeping. They'd say please finish with Yesterday, and I'd say no, we're not even gonna do it."
As the years went by, Wings and Paul McCartney did achieve a separate identity of sorts. Through varying line-ups and changes (with Denny Laine staying until the real end in 1979, although they officially disbanded in 1981), Wings certainly managed to alter the perception of McCartney as an adjunct to John Lennon. Although McCartney could never erase the critical appraisal of his post-Beatles work as politically and emotionally inferior to that of Lennon, the public voted with their money and sent the likes of Mull of Kintyre to the top of the charts for over two months in 1977.
Yet Mull of Kintyre and Pipes of Peace notwithstanding, there's clearly enough evidence on Wingspan, a new anthology of Wings and early solo work, to suggest that McCartney's ability to write mere "silly love songs" was based more on his inherent, God-given talent than a wilful, spiteful two fingers to the critics. While there's an argument to be made for forever banishing Mary Had A Little Lamb, Mull of Kintyre, Wonderful Christmas Time and We All Stand Together, it's important to bear in mind that they're the flipside of the likes of Another Day, My Love, Jet, Junior's Farm, Maybe I'm Amazed, Coming Up, Waterfalls and many more personal, ruminative and original songs.
Taken as a whole, McCartney's overtly humanistic, logical approach to songwriting - be it his reflective, mostly successful love songs; his attempts at politicisation (1972's Give Ireland Back To The Irish is, curiously, not included on the anthology, despite its number 16 position in the UK charts, while 1971's Back Seat Of My Car, which reached number 39, is there); or his not-at-all-ironic nursery-rhyme pop songs - prove not only that the man is honest to his craft and to himself but also that he refuses to adhere to any particular rules.
"Over the years, people have said: `Aw, he sings love songs, he writes love songs, he's so soppy at times,' " McCartney told Billboard. "I thought, well, I know what they mean, but people have been doing love songs forever. I like them, other people like them, and there's a lot of people I love. The nice pay-off now is that a lot of the people I meet, who are at the age where they've just got a couple of kids and have grown up a bit, settled down, they'll say to me: `I thought you were really soppy for years, but I get it now - I see what you were doing.' "
Now, of course, McCartney has long since consolidated his position as Britain's number-one Mr Thumbs-Up and is recognised as something of a latter-day, slightly dilettante Renaissance man. He has annoyed the film critics with his ventures into movie-making (Give My Regards To Broad Street); he has irked the serious classical music brigade with his Liverpool Oratorio and Standing Stone works; he has the art critics smirking at his painting. The Live Poets Society glosses over his contribution to the pop song lexicon (fact: there is no better pop lyric about the end of an affair than The Beatles' McCartneypenned For No One), while his private life with Heather Mills and designer daughter Stella is now the stuff of dentists' waitingroom magazine fodder.
He's not for standing still, either, which for a man a year shy of 60 is remarkable. Currently working on a new solo album and a Wings box-set of rarities, studio outtakes and previously unreleased live material, and having recently published a book of his lyrics and poems, Sir Paul McCartney can safely look back on his post-Beatles career and say with certainty that he has made a contribution. Mull of Kintyre, mind you, really will have to go - but apart from that, you could say he's done OK.
Wingspan: The Hits And History Anthology of Paul McCartney And Wings is released next Friday. Wingspan (produced and directed by his son-in-law, Alistair Donald) will be broadcast on Channel 4 in May.