As a 1970s joke goes: “Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings?” The post-breakup Beatles faced the most impossible second act in pop history, and for many critics and diehards, McCartney has been a punching bag and a punch line—the Beatle who went bad. He released his solo debut in April 1970, taking his bandmates by surprise. (A week before, McCartney had put out a press release announcing that the Beatles were no more.) In 1971 he formed Wings, a supergroup of sorts, including a member of the Moody Blues and his wife, Linda McCartney. For the next decade, Wings racked up multiplatinum sales and chart hits, until McCartney dumped the band in 1981, embarking once again on a solo career that has produced about an album a year. All the while, Macca has remained one of music’s most frustrating paradoxes: a vocalist and songcrafter of indisputable genius, with notoriously slipshod taste and a weakness for the warm and fuzzy. He hit a creative low point in the mid-’80s, but in recent years—following the death of Linda, a remarriage and a nasty tabloid divorce—the cheese has melted away and maturity has set in, producing a string of superb CDs. Even his missteps—like the awkward excursions into classical composition—seem like symptoms of an undiminished (and very Beatles-y) lust for musical adventure. And despite the garish moments—Christmas ditties that would turn Perry Como into Scrooge, silly love songs by the score—his commitment to melody and sentiment has, on balance, been vindicated by time.
Essential:
RamBand on the Run (Paul McCartney and Wings)
Run Devil RunDriving RainWingspan: Hits and HistoryGreat:
McCartneyRed Rose Speedway (Paul McCartney and Wings)
London Town (Wings)
Flowers in the DirtUnplugged (The Official Bootleg)Flaming PieChaos and Creation in the BackyardMemory Almost FullCheck it Out:
Venus and Mars (Wings)
Wings at the Speed of Sound (Wings)
Wings Over America (Paul McCartney and Wings)
McCartney IITug of WarGive My Regards to Broad StreetBe Careful:
Wild Life (Wings)
Choba B CCCPOff the GroundFor Fans Only:
Back to the Egg (Wings)
Pipes of PeacePress to Play