A landmark account of Paul McCartney's triumphant musical reinvention in the 1970s and the rise
of one of the decade's most iconic bands This is the story in their own words of a band
that came to define a generation. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the madcap
history of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band from their humble beginnings in the early
1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500 000 words of interviews
with McCartney family and band members and other key participants with a cast of characters
including John Lennon Ringo Starr George Harrison Chrissie Hynde Mick Jagger and more
Wings recounts the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath
of The Beatles' breakup. Soon joined by his wife - American photographer Linda McCartney - on
keyboard and vocals drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Denny Laine McCartney sowed the seeds
for a new band that would provide the soundtrack to the decade. Organised chronologically
around McCartney RAM and nine Wings albums the narrative begins when a twenty-seven-year-old
superstar rumoured to be dead fled with his new wife to a remote sheep farm in Scotland amid
a sea of legal and personal rows. Being there gave McCartney time to create and was where this
new band emerged. Wings then follows the group as they play unannounced shows at university
halls tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children survive a robbery on the
streets of Nigeria and eventually perform blockbuster stadium shows on their world tour all
while producing some of the most enduring music of the time. With extraordinary recollections
collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into a genre-defining oral
history by Ted Widmer Wings transports the reader to the grit and glamour of the 1970s.
Introduced with a heartfelt foreword by McCartney Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
contains 150 black-and-white and colour photographs many previously unseen as well as
timelines a gigography and a full discography in an art form all its own.
