1973 Interview with
Paul McCartney - Forming Wings
by: Steven Rosen
July 6, 1973 Birmingham England
Steven: Has it been difficult for you putting together a
new band? There would seem to be an extraordinary amount of
pressure on you to come up with a group of musicians that
could compete with the Beatles.
Paul: It was a bit touch and go at the beginning because
it was a bit difficult for me to just suddenly develop a new
band. Because let’s face it, the Beatles played Hamburg for
like a year solid, playing eight hours a day before we ever
were anything. Then we still came back to Liverpool and played
for years at these little places, Litherland Town Hall and
the Aintree Institute. So it took a long time but that was
the idea. We felt, ‘Well, we can’t take quite as long with
this band but we’re gonna kinda duck out of the press thing
and do little anonymous gigs.’ We did our university tour
and we did a Europe tour which was a bit more kind of press
but we thought we’ve got to swallow our pride and go right
ahead.
Steven: Were those considered breaking-in tours?
Paul: Definitely, for us. It was to get the band used to
playing. Because if you get any five people, it’s pretty hard
to get a band out of it unless you’ve been going a year or
so. It takes that long for five people to begin to understand
each other.
Steven: After playing with the same three musicians for such
a long time, was it difficult to find new players? When you
chose the people in Wings, were they your first choices?
Paul: Yeah, they were all first choices. I didn’t do it like
thinking, ‘OK, who are the best musicians in the world?’ and
get it together like that. It was all done very kind of random,
really; there was like a great element of randomness in it.
I went to New York and we auditioned drummers which everyone
said later was about the uncoolest thing you can do because
these drummers are like the world’s top. And there’s me, I
just got them all down in a basement and said, ‘Alright, lads
…’ And they’re sitting there and there’s no band, each drummer
is just sitting there. But Denny (Seiwell) was the one who
kind of appealed to me; I thought he looks good, he sings,
and he can drum great. And he’s picking up a lot of compliments
now from musicians who think he’s a red hot drummer. Brinsley
really digs him, Brinsley’s drummer goes crazy over Denny.
That’s Billy (Rankin).
Steven: Was that your idea to bring Brinsley Schwarz on the
tour?
Paul: We did that special, that TV special, and that was
kind of the end of our breaking-in period. We really hadn’t
played very well, I don’t think any of us thought we played
very well as a band up until the end of that special. And
the last night, we did a concert for the special which we
didn’t dig too much, it just didn’t get enough on for us.
It was a bit of a dead audience.
Linda McCartney: And the audience was just sitting there
all hot.
Paul: And they were all lit (with lights) and it was very.
But we did a gig at the Hard Rock Café in London which is
a real tiny, little thing for kind of charity. And Brinsley
Schwarz were on before us and they kind of warmed it all up
and they got a standup. Once you’ve heard a band rock a bit
you can’t go on and not rock, you’ve got to play better. So
we thought,’Great,’ and we went on after Brinsley and that
was the first night we thought we played at all well. We were
all double made up with that night. We rocked a bit that night.
Steven: What are you going to do for a second encore? You’ll
have to have one now.
Paul: There are a lot of features with the act that are still
a bit raw. Our opening is still possibly a bit raw, and the
end we could go on a bit longer, but this is all fine tuning.
The thing for us, the way we’ve done it is the idea of having
places to go still. This is only our third thing really –
university tour, European tour and this.
The aim was just to have a band, pure and simple. Have a
good band. As to where we play, we’re easy. We’ll play down
a pub if it’s cool, if we feel like it and they like it. But
that’s the thing for us, we won’t naturally just play 50,000-seaters.
That’s’ the interesting thing, we got Denny from New York,
we auditioned some drummers there, and I knew Denny (Laine)
was a good guitarist and good singer and stuff. So I just
rang Denny up. And Henry was a kind of friend of Denny’s and
Ian’s and he turned up one day at a rehearsal we were doing.
Henry McCullough: Drunk!
Paul: Drunk again. We didn’t really know, we were just thinking
about it and stuff and he turned up and he played good stuff
and that’s the kind of thing I meant about the element of
random. It wasn’t like, ‘OK, now let’s audition another fifty
guitarists and let’s see who’s who and what’s what.’ We just
thought, ‘Great, let’s see how it goes’ and we had a band
together then. It worked out good.
Henry McCullough: Everybody got to know each other; you know
me, I know you, and we took each other for what it is. We
were a little bit scared of each other. It started off we
were a little bit apprehensive and it was ‘Who’s this we’ve
got in the group?’ but we managed to cool out.
Steven: Did you have plans from the beginning to include
Linda?
Paul: Yeah, Linda was a kind of first inclusion because we’d
done Ram together. I worked her so hard in New York because
it was all very well having Linda on harmonies but I’m not
having her do bum harmonies. So I only worked her like mad.
I mean she had never done it before, she’d never done a thing
before. If you listen to Ram, all those harmonies on there
are just me and Linda. Pretty good, some of them. It was quite
hard work as I said. I worked her hard on that album. There
was a bit of (mimics Linda), ‘What do you mean I’m singing
flat?’ But in the end it was OK and we did it.
Steven: You must have noticed tonight that the more rock
tunes you did created a bigger response. Will you emphasize
those more and more?
Paul: That’s what we’re thinking, that’s the way we’re going
to include a few more of those kinds of numbers. The main
thing in performance, an average audience always go for numbers
they know. Witness tonight when we did ‘C Moon;’ as soon as
we hit ‘C Moon,’ which was a hit in Britain but not in the
States, how the audience reacted.
Linda McCartney: On the university tour, we did some numbers
twice.
Paul: But rather than go back, we’d like to do new numbers
in the same vein. And on the next album we’ll have another
bunch of numbers from which to choose. And by the time that
album is done the whole act will be there.
Steven: How did it feel getting back on stage?
Paul: It’s now beginning to feel really good. It feels good
to have a gig. If you’re just recording it’s very nice but
you get a bit sterile. It’s a bit testtube, a bit like being
in the laboratory. And if you go out and play, it’s the difference
between sex and artificial insemination. Do you get what I
mean? That’s what I think … audiences. It’s true enough, isn’t
it?
Steven: Being on stage, then, must be a natural place for
you.
Paul: You see I’ve always been, I suppose, a bit shy about
getting up on stage. I remember the first time I ever got
up on stage, I hauled my brother up with me. He had his arm
in a cast, he’d broken his arm at scout camp, and I brought
him up there with me. I brought my guitar with me and guess
what I sang? ‘Long Tall Sally.’ I was eleven and still doing
it.
About The Author
Steven Rosen is a Rock Journalist. Since 1973 he has accumulated
over 1000 hours of audio content and 700 articles and interviews...all
now available for licensing or purchase.
