Wings

Main
Albums / Singles
Articles

A band in name only, Wings were Paul McCartney's solo vehicle for much of the 1970s. After releasing two excellent, underrated solo albums (McCartney and Ram), McCartney decided that he needed a more permanent band lineup. Basically, this meant wife Linda on keyboards, Denny Laine playing guitar, and a changing roster of others. Cut the same year as the endlessly creative Ram, Wild Life was the only album credited solely to Wings (as opposed to "Paul McCartney and...). It's an odd hodgepodge of an album, but it did contain the unheralded track "Tommorrow" (why this didn't become a key McCartney song is anybody's guess) and "Dear Friend," a heartfelt, darkly cinematic ballad directed at John Lennon. Redrose Speedway was a much weaker album, but it did contain the syrupy smash hit "My Love," the great "When the Night," and a cute song about a pigeon. Sensing that things were a bit amiss with Wings in general and his career in particular, McCartney released Band on the Run, one of the key mainstream rock albums of the 1970s. A massive success, it catapulted McCartney back to the top and made Wings stadium sensations around the world. McCartney kept the Wings moniker going for a few more albums, each of which contain at least one good cut (which, truth be told, is a tad underwhelming for one of the great musical minds of the 20th Century). McCartney disbanded Wings for good in 1979, but since his solo career continued unabated no one really noticed that the band wasn't around anymore.