Latest / GARAGE TO STADIUMS Music History Podcast / The Story of Paul McCartney post-Beatles & Wings Part 1
Transcript
- Paul McCartney & Wings episode Garage to Stadiums [00:00:00] Dave Anthony: Welcome to Garage to Stadiums. Today's episode is the story of Paul McCartney. Before the stadium lights in the night Hood, there was a 15-year-old guitarist who blew away a restless band leader named John Lennon. When the band needed a bassist, the young guitarist named Paul was a team player and agreed to the ship and soon he and John were writing songs that would redefine popular music inside a band. The world would come to know as The Beatles. When that empire collapsed under tension and vision and exhaustion, the question wasn't whether McCartney had been successful. It was whether he would be successful again without the banner, without the brothers, without the myth. [00:00:42] Dave Anthony: What followed was not a smooth second act. It began as a retreat reinvention. A new band built from scratch, new personalities, new pressures, and eerily familiar fault lines would begin to appear on the horizon, create a friction. Fragile egos addictions. [00:01:00] Yet the songs kept coming, hits, misses and masterpieces all carrying the fingerprints of a man unwilling to fade quietly into history. [00:01:09] Dave Anthony: What you're about to hear is the story of what happens after you've already conquered the world and have to prove you can do it again. Here to tell the post Beatles story of Paul McCartney is Allan Kozinn the co-author of a two volume pair of books called The McCartney Legacy, a retrospective of Paul McCartney's career from the end of the Beatles onward. [00:01:33] Dave Anthony: Allan is best known for his 37 year tenure at the New York Times, covering classical music and what was called the Beatles desk. He currently contributes reviews for the Wall Street Journal. The first volume of his works on McCartney covers the year 1969 to 73. Volume two picks up from 74 to 1980. And Rolling Stone described the book as comprehensive, painstaking, dazzling, and a definitive chronicle The Weekend Mail the UK said of the book, the following quote. If the devil is in the detail, then the McCartney legacy is positively satanic. Allan joins us today from Portland, Maine. [00:02:16] Allan Kozinn: Welcome to Garage to Stadiums, Allan. Thanks Dave. Great to be here. [00:02:21] Dave Anthony: Your works on The Beatles and Paul McCartney are extensive and impressive. [00:02:27] Allan Kozinn: It's funny, I, I grew up studying classical music and most of my actual career was covering classical music for the New York Times, but I also grew up during that period when the Beatles were a current band, I saw them on the Ed Sullivan show, all of. All that stuff that people of my generation always say. [00:02:46] Allan Kozinn: And I got sort of obsessive about them, even though I was studying classical stuff and playing classical stuff and, and in writing about it, I always kept very close tabs on the Beatles world as a group. And then after they broke up as soloists, I was at the times, there was an instance where the chief pop critic wrote a review of a Beatles video production that. [00:03:10] Allan Kozinn: Wasn't actually what it claimed to be. So I sent him a note explaining what it was, and after that he said, listen, why don't you basically do the Beatles stuff? So I became the Times Beatle desk, basically. So that was fun. [00:03:25] Dave Anthony: Was there parallels between classical and the Beatles that kinda led you to make a pretty easy leap to the next lily pad [00:03:33] Allan Kozinn: As they got on to 1966, 1967 they began doing a lot of experimental stuff. That to me, was as fascinating as what classical composers were doing [00:03:48] Dave Anthony: To start to tell this story, it's important to start with Paul's personality and the Beatles empire nearing its end at the end of the 1960s. We all know [00:04:00] the success of the Beatles as pioneers of modern music. [00:04:02] Dave Anthony: Their popularity was enormous and among the Beatles, Paul was thought to be the cute one, the creative one. . Paul began dating British actress Jane Asher, way back in 1963 as the Beatles were becoming a major act. He even lived with Jane Asher's family from 63 to 66 when they offered him a room in the attic, and he wrote many of his famous tunes there. Before he ended up marrying Linda McCartney in 1969 [00:04:26] Allan Kozinn: Paul was at that point, the most eligible bachelor among the Beatles, the only bachelor among the Beatles. the rest were married and he was the last hauled out. [00:04:36] Dave Anthony: Tell us about who Linda McCartney. What was her family background?. [00:04:39] Allan Kozinn: Lee Eastman was her father, and she had a brother John, and sister Laura. Lee and John were lawyers and. Lee was actually a pretty well-known entertainment lawyer, and he did a lot in music publishing. [00:04:57] Dave Anthony: He was originally born Leopold Epstein, [00:05:00] but changed his name to Lee Eastman when the Beatles manager, Ryan Epstein, no relation to Lee, died in August 1967, Paul eventually approached Linda Spa Lee for advice on who should manage the Beatles. Eastman began representing the Beatles. . [00:05:16] Allan Kozinn: Apart from publishing, the Eastmans were art collectors. They were very cultured people, and Paul was always a sucker for that, and so he fell right into that scene. Pretty easily. The thing is that in the family, Linda was like the black sheep. She was as a a young girl. She used to go to rock and roll shows in Brooklyn. She saw all of the people who were Paul's heroes. Buddy Holly, with [00:05:42] Example: Buddy Holland. And his crickets. [00:05:48] Example: You dunno what you, I be no boy. When you with, I thought my world can see that you [00:05:57] Allan Kozinn: and Little Richard and all of these [00:06:00] people in the late fifties and she came to the relationship knowing an awful lot of the music that Paul was into and having seen the original people playing it, which Paul in a lot of cases hadn't. [00:06:13] Allan Kozinn: Plus she was by then, she was a photographer. She started in 1966, photographing the Rolling Stones, and then got a lot of assignments, got cover assignments for Rolling Stone, took lots of pictures of Hendrix and basically everybody who was big at the time. And when she went to London and finally met Paul, she was there to photograph for a book called "Rock and Other Four Litter Words". [00:06:41] Allan Kozinn: She was doing the photography and someone else was writing it, and she arranged to get an invitation to a party Brian Epstein was having for the Sergeant Pepper album, which was about to come out. She actually had met Paul a few nights earlier at a club called The Bag of Nails in London, and so she saw him again at that party. So that's Linda [00:07:04] Dave Anthony: And Paul marries Linda on March 12th, 1969. At two weeks later, Lennon marries Yoko Ono, March 30th. Is it just a coincidence that they both married in the same month? Was this another aspect of their rivalry? [00:07:19] Allan Kozinn: I think it probably was a Kleincidence except that it, you could say it was in the air, but I don't think Paul was gonna get married just because John was getting married. 'cause John had been married before to Cynthia, and that didn't inspire Paul to marry anybody. There may have been, you know, there may be something to it. They both had found the women who they saw as their soulmates. [00:07:41] Dave Anthony: At the beginning of 1969, the Beatles began to consider a new management structure. Both Linda's father and another New York City native of accountant, Allen Klein, were both considered as candidates. John Lennon favored Klein because Lennon [00:08:00] was impressed that Klein knew and understood Lennon's lyrics and called Klein very intelligent and felt he was tougher and more street smart than the upper class Lee Eastman. McCartney wanted Eastman, but was outvoted three to one as George Harrison, and Ringo Starr sided with Lennon and Klein. So maybe the battle was more about Paul trying to bring in a family member an inlaw. [00:08:25] Allan Kozinn: Yeah, the, it's an aspect of that Allen Klein turned up at the end of his, what were the Let it be sessions or sessions, and John was completely taken with him and said, "Allen Klein's gonna do my stuff, whatever you guys want to do is fine with me". And then George and Ringo went with John on that at the. At the time the Eastmans were representing the Beatles. Legally, they weren't managing them, but they had an official position in the Beatles company. Paul felt that if [00:09:00] we're gonna have Allen Klein, who he had heard quite a lot about Allen Klein's reputation, and said to the others," listen, I, I don't think that he's gonna be good for us". I think basically he'll end up just taking everything we have" because in a certain way that's what he had done with the Rolling Stones. He renegotiated a contract with DECA for them, and then suddenly he owned their masters for everything up to Sticky Fingers. [00:09:29] Allan Kozinn: Sam Cook and other artists had similar experiences, and Paul had heard about this and he warned the others. [00:09:36] Allan Kozinn: Now, from Paul's point of view, it wasn't necessarily Klein or the Eastmans. There were other people they talked to. There were other people that Paul recommended, other British businessmen. John went to meet some of them and wasn't impressed. But in a way, the others took it that way because there's a 1970 interview with George where George [00:10:00] says, listen, three of us wanted to do one thing and one of us wanted to do something else, and the problem is that the three of us don't have to go home to it every day. [00:10:09] Allan Kozinn: So that was a pretty clear indication that they at least felt that Paul was pushing the Eastmans. And you could understand why. If you're in a partnership, you don't want one person's in-laws as your manager. As we discussed in our Beatles Grass Stadiums episode, the precipitous decline of the Beatles was not helped by the fact that the other three Beatles, other than Paul signed a contract with American accountant Allen Klein, giving him management control of their company. [00:10:40] Dave Anthony: Apple Corp was a game changing moment for Paul because up until now, big decisions always required unanimity rather than a simple vote. Every member used to have a veto, not this time. McCartney's words seem to sum up this period perfectly, "That was the night we broke the Beatles, and it never came back after that one". [00:11:02] Dave Anthony: In the Beatles episode, we talked about John having a heroin addiction. We talked about a bunch of tumultuous activity towards the 68, 69 period. One of the things that came through was Paul, he's got a controlling nature in the studio, telling people how to play various licks. [00:11:22] Dave Anthony: How much of this war between the three Beatles and Paul do you think was payback for Paul's controlling nature of the studio? [00:11:29] Allan Kozinn: Yeah, I don't think so. The controlling nature in a way. He probably had that more than the others, but. John and George when they were doing their songs probably were in control too. [00:11:43] Allan Kozinn: There were different musicians come in many different forms, and some are just completely collaborative and will bring in an idea and then let anybody contribute to it anything they want. And some people like all know what they want and they want the others [00:12:00] to contribute specific things. I think the battle between them really was mostly about Allen Klein. [00:12:09] Dave Anthony: John Lennon lets it be known that he wants to leave the Beatles in September, 1969, but he's convinced by a Klein to keep it quiet while Klein is negotiating a new Beatles contract with the record distributor, EMI, who was the distributor for the Beatles' own Apple records, which the group had started back in 1968. [00:12:30] Dave Anthony: This battle rages on as Paul has tried to prepare to release his first album on Apple Records. Paul wants to release his album in April, but it's contractually tied to Apple. But Apple has several Beatles related albums being released. The Hey Jude compilation, Ringo solo albums and the Let It Be All. [00:12:51] Dave Anthony: John and George write Paul a letter telling him they're bumping his album release date to not conflict with the release of Let It Be. [00:13:00] Ringo hand delivers the letter to Paul and Paul goes ballistic shouting at Ringo and throws him out of the house. Next Paul McCartney walks away from the wreckage of the Beatles to release his first album and the world responds [00:13:17] Announcer: Garage to Stadiums telling the stories of how our music legends have moved from obscurity to global fame. [00:13:28] Dave Anthony: Paul calls John and tells him I'm leaving on April 9th, 1970, and proceeds to quit the Beatles. Also, in April of that year, Allen Klein starts to play a major role in the album, Let it Be, which was released after the Beatles breakup, and this causes major friction as Klein hires Phil Spector. He was famous for lush productions called "The Wall of Sound", to overlay major orchestration over the songs that Paul and others wrote. [00:13:57] Dave Anthony: Paul is furious. [00:14:00] Paul's first album simply entitled McCartney and containing the classic. Maybe I'm Amazed is released in April, 1970. He goes to number one in the US and number two in the uk. It several songs are about Linda, including the lovely Linda. [00:14:43] Dave Anthony: Linda provides backing vocals on the Alden. Is he following Lenin's lead of including his spouse here purposely or subconsciously? [00:14:51] Allan Kozinn: Paul definitely liked the idea that John had of collaborating with his wife. Obviously the [00:15:00] kind of collaboration is completely different. You know, Yoko was an avantgarde and was pushing John in that direction, and Linda was sort of a rock and roll girl and was, and Paul was still. [00:15:13] Allan Kozinn: Leading what was going on. She was providing backing vocals and things like that. So it's a different kind of collaboration, but you may be right about there being an influence. I think possibly John working with Yoko was inspiring to Paul in terms of wanting Lin in the band. Two [00:15:33] Dave Anthony: weeks after McCartney's first album is released, the Beatles released Let It Be. [00:15:37] Paul McCartney: Speaking words of wisdom, let it be, [00:15:41] Dave Anthony: and it goes to number one in the US knocking out Paul's first album, and it goes to number one in the UK as well. Then more Beatles. Paul interaction is Paul Viles, a lawsuit against John George Ringle and Apple Corp to dissolve the Beatles 1967 partnership agreement [00:16:00] and the bitterness spills over into the press in the first of a two part lenon interview in Rolling Stone. [00:16:08] Dave Anthony: John is very critical of Paul musically calling his album Rubbish and says insulting things about Paul in the Eastman fail. [00:16:17] Dave Anthony: The next album that Paul and now Linda McCartney released in June, 1971 called Ram As too many people, too many. That was your first mistake. [00:16:48] Dave Anthony: It's top five worldwide in February of 1971. And in keeping with the war raging on the Beatles front lines, Paul Times the single to be released on the same day [00:17:00] as the hearing begins and Paul appeared in high court. [00:17:03] Dave Anthony: That's an interesting segue to the my next question, which would be, hmm. Too many people, the solo on that Ram album has references to John as part of their musical war. [00:17:15] Dave Anthony: They broke songs back and forth a little bit. John, particularly other songs were also interpreted on that album as being attacked on John or The Beatles. What's your view of this battle? You talk about all wanting to be liked, yet he does kind of dip his fingers in the mud here to sling it at John, seemingly. [00:17:31] Dave Anthony: What is your view on that? Yeah, Paul didn't do it quite as much as John did, and when he did, it was a little more subtle. Too many people is basically just saying too many people going underground and. Telling you what you should believe, but you should believe what you wanna believe. John's response to that, how do you sleep? [00:17:53] Allan Kozinn: is, Really far more vicious. The only thing you done was [00:18:00] yesterday. [00:18:15] Allan Kozinn: . The only thing you've done was yesterday and since you're gone, you're just another day, which is a reference to his first solo single and it, and Paul's was a little more sub rosa than John's. Some of the things on Ram that John took as attacks weren't even necessarily meant as attacks. [00:18:34] Allan Kozinn: For instance, in the sort of play out of backseat of my car, he says, we believe that we can't be wrong now. That sort of fits into the song itself, which is basically just about a guy and a girl who want to run away from their parents, drive down to Mexico and make out in their car. But John took it as we believe that we can't be wrong and you [00:19:00] are wrong. [00:19:00] Allan Kozinn: So that's an interpretive thing that may not have actually been there in Paul's writing. [00:19:06] Dave Anthony: that Ram album also As Uncle Albert. Albert Admiral Halsey, which went to number one in the us, number two in the uk. [00:19:13] [00:19:29] Dave Anthony: It actually won a Grammy, but with that RAM album there was a lot of negative reviews. Despite these achievements, McCartney was very sensitive of bad reviews of his albums. Did that surprise you in your research, given that he was already a legend in the songwriting department? [00:19:47] Allan Kozinn: Yeah, it didn't surprise me because all creators are sensitive to reviews. [00:19:52] Allan Kozinn: I've talked to a great many over the years and one, one thing I found is that the more a composer or [00:20:00] performer says, I don't read reviews, the more obsessed they are with their reviews. Paul likes to, not that everybody doesn't. In a way, Paul really likes that and he has a, a public. Creative life and he wants what he puts out there publicly to be liked. [00:20:18] Allan Kozinn: And so when it gets a bad review, and certainly in, in a lot of cases, people were scathing in some of the reviews. There was a British critic named Charles Shar Murray, who. Reviewed Venus in Mars and his, his article was titled something like, what Do You Say to a Beatle Who's Done a Rubbish album? Or something like that. [00:20:40] Allan Kozinn: And that bothered Paul so much that he mentioned it in an interview as late as 2015, and that was in 1975. So it didn't surprise me that bad reviews bothered him. [00:20:53] Dave Anthony: Linda was credited with co-writing six songs on the album, and many of these early songwriting efforts by Paul are [00:21:00] credited to Linda as well. You probably have a view on that and why that happened. It was less about probably her songwriting ability and probably more about money. [00:21:10] Allan Kozinn: That's very possible. He's never admitted that. And, and it's very possible that Linda did contribute to these songs. But the thing is, in practical financial terms, Paul was signed to Northern Songs publisher, which basically it signed him and John as a partnership, Lenon McCartney. And so the royalties were split between Northern Songs, Lenon and McCartney. [00:21:39] Allan Kozinn: Paul wrote with Linda, then that means there'd be Paul's songwriting royalties, but also Linda would be getting a songwriting royalty. So they would be getting a bit more that way than if it was just Paul on his own. Mm-hmm. Uh, so there, there is that possibility. And the [00:22:00] problem was that even though Paul sued the others to get out of Apple in 1971. [00:22:07] Allan Kozinn: It took until 1975 for that to be settled, and all of Paul's royalties or recording royalties went into Apple, and that includes the albums he made on his own and the albums he made with wings. So he wasn't getting that money. So getting the publishing royalties arranged in a way that would bring in a bit more was probably. [00:22:32] Allan Kozinn: A useful thing for him because he was basically paying wings, salaries, and he was paying for the equipment and the details of the touring that Wings was doing. He was underwriting that, so he needed, he needed an income stream from somewhere since his recording Royals, he were going to Apple. Mm-hmm. So, very complicated. [00:22:54] Allan Kozinn: You need like an MBA to sort this through some of this stuff. Paul [00:23:00] decides to expand into a band and begins interviewing various musicians. What is his friend? Danny Lane, who is in the band The Moody Blues. [00:23:20] Dave Anthony: Another is Denny Swell. Paul Decides on the band name Wings. , what's the significance of the name Wings. [00:23:28] Allan Kozinn: What he said was they were thinking of a name at the time that Linda was in the hospital having their second daughter, Stella, actually the third daughter, because Linda had a daughter from a previous marriage who Paul adopted, so that was now his daughter and Mary. [00:23:47] Allan Kozinn: And then Stella was the third of their four children, and it was a difficult birth. And he was out in the waiting room and saw some image of an [00:24:00] angel and saw the wings, and somehow Wings struck him as a great name for a group. And so. They became wings. There were all kinds of ideas that were rooted about before he came up with wings, like Paul McCartney, blues band and stuff like that, which it wasn't really a blues band, so it wouldn't have made sense. [00:24:20] Allan Kozinn: There were a lot of names that were kind of silly and, and Wings really does have a ring to it. So [00:24:28] Dave Anthony: became Wings. This new formation, which includes Paul Linda Denny Lane and Denny Sal. Start recording the next album at EMI London. Denny's are told they're equal partners in the new unnamed band, but that needed to be worked out with the Eastons. [00:24:44] Dave Anthony: For the time being, they're paid 70 pounds a week and no contract, just a handshake. In December, 1971, the next album is released and it's now under the name Wings called Wild Life and it contains [00:25:00] the song's, dear Friend and Wildlife, the title track. [00:25:10] Paul McCartney: The animals in a zoo, [00:25:15] Paul McCartney: you're freezing so hot. A lot of political nonsense in the air. [00:25:23] Dave Anthony: There was negative reviews in general, including from George Harrison who called the album Kby. It included some unfinished songs from the RAM sessions, but dear Fred, is an Olive Bridge sold to John Lennon. [00:25:37] Paul McCartney: it True . [00:25:57] Dave Anthony: Release of the album was also delayed to Paul's [00:26:00] insistence that no Apple Corp logo appear on the album, which was disputed by EMO and Apple. Paul won and later said one of the infamous short letters in the history of rock and roll to Allen Klein saying, dear Pig, you have nothing to do with my affairs. [00:26:17] Dave Anthony: So keep out of them and fuck off. Signed pm. 1971 was a pretty massive year for music. The Stones, sticky Fingers. Joni Mitchell Blue The Doors. LA Woman, David Bowie had Hunky Dory. John Lennon. Imagine Arvin Gaye, what's going on? Led Zeppelin four. They could go on and on. In your opinion, how did McCartney's 71 albums Ram and Wildlife match up to some of the classic albums, not to mention the solo efforts released by other Beatles? [00:26:49] Allan Kozinn: Sure. Ram at the time was, as you said, pretty badly reviewed and it wasn't considered quite in the same league in terms of [00:27:00] hipness as most of those albums that you mentioned. But since then, it has, it's really survived very well, and it, it stands up to listening now. As a representative of that period, but it's very personal to Paul in a way. [00:27:17] Allan Kozinn: It's not Led Zeppelin four and it's a very different kind of album. I think it stands up very well. Wildlife may be a bit less so because with wildlife, when he got that first version of wings together with the two Denny's. Yeah, Linda. They rehearsed for a weekend and then went to London to Abbey Road and started recording and they made the album really quickly. [00:27:41] Dave Anthony: Well a one take. method on that, didn't they? They just said only one take. [00:27:45] Allan Kozinn: It wasn't entirely. There was overdubbing and there was editing. When you say one take, it sounds almost as if they've gone into the studio and just played it. And that's the album that's. What they put out that they did, but [00:28:00] it wasn't quite as simple as they said. [00:28:02] Allan Kozinn: And in volume one of McCartney legacy, we go through all the sessions and exactly what was done and people can see that it wasn't just one take and that's it. Actually, the thing about Wildlife Two is it hasn't quite attained the reputation that Ram has, but. It too has survived, I think better than I would've expected at the time when it came out. [00:28:27] Allan Kozinn: There are a number of songs on side two. Some people never know things like that and that are really quite. Nice. Carefully made songs with the nice arrangements and well performed, and I think that maybe people think a lot more of the stuff on side one, like [00:29:00] Mumbo and the title song and all that is as being a little bit more ramshackle. And that's the reputation that album has had. But it's actually, if you revisit it, it's a little [00:29:12] Dave Anthony: better than you may remember. We move on to the next single that he releases in February 72. Give Ireland back to the Irish. Paul wasn't known for necessarily for politically themed songs, unlike John. Why do you think this one? [00:29:32] Allan Kozinn: Well, he is of Irish descent. He was sitting in his home in London listening to the news when Bloody Sunday happened in Ireland, which was basically a massacre of protestors by the British Army Massacre. Might be extreme, but that's the way it was taken at the time people were killed and it, it offended Paul as someone of, as an English person of Irish descent. [00:30:00] Allan Kozinn: He basically. He had a dog on both sides of this fight, but didn't think that these two sites should be fighting and felt that the British government should really stand down on that. It is Ireland. Give it back to the Irish. It caused him a lot of trouble. EMI tried to get him not to put it out. A lot of stores refuse to carry it. [00:30:24] Allan Kozinn: Radio stations refuse to play it. And even when he went on his university tour, a lot of students would come up to him afterwards and say, so are you supporting the IRA now? Which was not what the song was saying, but yeah, there was something about it that, I mean, he even said at the time, yeah, I don't normally like protest songs. [00:30:47] Dave Anthony: oh, the point about his Irish heritage, of course that would hit a little bit harder. When they started touring. When he starts touring, he wants to do the smaller tours. They're literally are in a van driving around England. He wanted no publicity, just show up and [00:31:00] play. [00:31:00] Dave Anthony: They were playing UK universities. What do you think he was trying to accomplish with the back to basics? Start small. Was there something else going on and then something strange happened that leads Leeds University? [00:31:12] Allan Kozinn: I think he did wanna start small and he wanted to start unheralded the way you would do a show out of town before bringing it to Broadway. [00:31:20] Allan Kozinn: That he wanted the band to get some playing experience, uh, without being totally in the national limelight, which they were gonna be because it was him. He wanted to start a new band and he wanted to start it kind of like the Beatles and grow into it, but he realized that. He's still Paul McCartney. He's still very well known. [00:31:42] Allan Kozinn: He is not gonna be able to just turn up and do a quiet show and gain the experience and, and not have it be the focus of national, international attention. By the time they turned up, it leads the press was there [00:32:00] photographers, everybody was waiting for him, and so they just drove away and then came back to Leeds like four or five days later. [00:32:07] Allan Kozinn: Wow. And did an impromptu concert, which is what they wanted to do. But the thing is that this idea of just getting in a van and driving around is something that went back to the Beatles, not just the early Beatles when that was the way they did it, but around the time of the Get Back, let It Be Sessions. [00:32:27] Allan Kozinn: Paul was pushing this idea, why don't we just do some concerts in a small club? And John said, you're daft. You can't do that. But this is it. It's just Paul. I think the university tour in a way was Paul working out. Finally, an idea that he brought up towards the end of the Beatles as something he wanted to do, and here he now had his new band and he [00:32:50] Dave Anthony: was gonna do it that way.There's the beginnings in 1972 of financial Friction. There's no color track yet for the band. The band are still on the [00:33:00] retainer of 70 pallets per week, and they receive a small share of tours. Drummer Danny Swell and guitarist Henry McCullough are not happy only making union wages for their sessions. [00:33:11] Dave Anthony: Swell was making way more as a New York session man. He'd go back to New York City to do session work when there were breaks with wings to supplement his income. Paul agrees to a seven year extension in mid 1972 to his publishing contract with Northern Songs, The company that you mentioned before. and of this legal battle unlocks Linda's royalties and they begin to roll in. [00:33:35] Dave Anthony: They were under dispute in a court order by Northern Songs due to Paul Trade to go around the company with Linda's royalty flow. . [00:33:45] Dave Anthony: And as quote, all differences have been settled amicably as a press release, unlocked royalties in general began to roll in. Paul buys Lamborghini. The other members of the wings still can't afford a car 'cause money still had not been [00:34:00] settled relative to them being paid, I don't know, 70 pounds a week, something like that. [00:34:05] Dave Anthony: Right, right. Can you comment on the degree of tension in the band or were being paid this. Out still not being made a full member of the band. This must have been an irritant daily, weekly, et cetera. [00:34:17] Allan Kozinn: It kind of was to an extent, at least the way Denny Sewell explained it, was that when they got together that first weekend before they recorded wildlife to, to form the band. [00:34:30] Allan Kozinn: Basically, Paul had said, okay, this is gonna be an equal band. Everyone will contribute and everyone will share in the spoils. And they had what Denny called a hippie handshake. And then because they were just starting, Paul decided to put them on a retainer, which was, as you say, 70 pounds a week. And Denny Sewell was a very successful studio drummer in New York, and he gave that up to go. [00:34:59] Allan Kozinn: To [00:35:00] London and and Scotland. They went back and forth to work with wings on the theory that with is Paul McCartney. This could become big. It became big that he was still getting the 70 pounds a week in 1973 when he finally left. Paul would sometimes give them bonuses for various things, but he. Did find that when he had a couple of weeks off, he would have to fly back to New York and do some studio work. [00:35:28] Allan Kozinn: Yeah, that it was an issue. It wasn't the only issue, but because there was also an issue that was a little familiar from the Beatles days with Henry McCulloch, the lead guitarist not wanting to be told all the time what notes to play in his solos. And in one instance in My Love, [00:35:49] Allan Kozinn: which came out in 1973, he said, couldn't I just, couldn't I just try my idea just once. If it doesn't work, we'll do it your way. And [00:36:00] Paul said, oh, well, okay, fine. And he did it . And that is an exquisitely beautiful guitar solo. Paul was the first to admit that. But then right before they broke up, before a band on the run, exactly the same thing happened. [00:36:25] Allan Kozinn: It was at a rehearsal. Henry McCulloch wanted to play his own idea for a solo. Paul said, no, they had an absolute blowout. Henry packed up his stuff and quit the band. The finances. Had a lot to do with it, but it wasn't the only thing. There were, there were other frustrations within that first version of Wave. [00:36:46] Dave Anthony: Yeah. Yeah. Is this kind of a repeat a little bit? Uh, the Beatles tensions treating band mates. That Seman being overbearing, but it, I guess that's Paul's nature. He is just wants it to be [00:37:00] perfect in his mind. [00:37:01] Allan Kozinn: He wants it to be the way he wants it to be. Paul, in that way, is like a classical composer. A classical composer writes down the notes that an orchestra or a string gorget or whatever is gonna play, and that's what he expects to hear. [00:37:14] Allan Kozinn: And with Paul, he's not writing it down, but he has in his mind a very definite idea of what he wants to hear. And at least in that version of wings, he. Wasn't that flexible about it. So, so that did cause that, that kind of issue. And you're right, we, we did see some of that in the Beatles as well. There's that scene in Let It Be with George saying I'll play anything you want or I won't play it all. [00:37:41] Allan Kozinn: Whatever it is that [00:37:41] Dave Anthony: will please you. I'll do it in March, 1973. The other three Beatles tell Klein his contract will not be renewed. This seems to help men, tensions between Paul and the other Beatles. Let's say that possibly Paul's suspicions about Helen Klein were right, said John Lennon. Next legal [00:38:00] battles begin to be resolved and Paul pushes forward with new albums and the producers of James Bond. [00:38:07] Dave Anthony: Make a surprise offer, [00:38:11] Announcer: kick back, relax, and enjoy your trip. From the Garage to Global Stadiums, [00:38:16] Dave Anthony: the next album by Paul and Wings is in. April of 1973 and it's called Red Rose Speedway, which contains the number one hit. My Love, [00:38:35] Paul McCartney: my Love, [00:38:41] Dave Anthony: and this is followed by a known album single in June 73. Called Live and Let Die [00:38:52] Paul McCartney: Living. Let Die [00:38:58] Paul McCartney: Die.[00:39:00] [00:39:09] Dave Anthony: She becomes the title track for a James Boland movie of the same title. It was nominated for a best song at the Oscars. McCartney was a noted control freak, and that came out loud and clear during our Beatles episode. So it's no surprise that as rehearsals spur the next album beginning in August, 1973, that Paul is up to his old drill sergeant ways by controlling most aspects of everyone's playing. [00:39:37] Dave Anthony: And accordingly, a couple of members of the band drummer, Danny Swell and guitarist Henry McCullough. Quit on McCartney due to escalating tensions around money and McCartney's controlling nature. Next, Paul determined as ever, soldiers on with only Linda McCartney and Danny Lane in tow and heads for an odd [00:40:00] destination to record a rock elbow, which would become legendary. [00:40:06] Dave Anthony: Thanks for listening to part one of the story of Paul McCartney and Wings. Join us for part two where Paul [00:40:13] Dave Anthony: heads for an odd destination to record a rock album, which would become legendary. [00:40:19] Announcer: Thanks for listening to Garage to Stadiums Need More? [00:40:22] Announcer: Visit us on all social platforms and Garage to Stadiums.com for bonus content. [00:40:29] Announcer: Another Blast Furnace Labs production.