Paul McCartney: Wings Over America

PAUL McCARTNEY: WINGS OVER AMERICA (1976)

1) Venus And Mars / Rock Show / Jet; 2) Let Me Roll It; 3) Spirits Of Ancient Egypt; 4) Medicine Jar; 5) Maybe Iʼm Amazed; 6) Call Me Back Again; 7) Lady Madonna; 8) The Long And Winding Road; 9) Live And Let Die; 10) Picassoʼs Last Words (Drink To Me); 11) Richard Cory; 12) Bluebird; 13) Iʼve Just Seen A Face; 14) Blackbird; 15) Yesterday; 16) You Gave Me The Answer; 17) Magneto And Titanium Man; 18) Go Now; 19) My Love; 20) Listen To What The Man Said; 21) Let ʼEm In; 22) Time To Hide; 23) Silly Love Songs; 24) Beware My Love; 25) Letting Go; 26) Band On The Run; 27) Hi, Hi, Hi; 28) Soily.

General verdict: Paulʼs triple-live contribution to The Age Of Excess — loud, chaotic, clumsy, and technically expendable, but alive and fun rather than mechanically nostalgic.

The Wings Over The World tour of 1975–76 was not merely the public zenith of Wings as a band: somewhat arguably, it marked the very last moment in history when any one of the Beatles was still capable of «moving mountains», figuratively speaking. McCartney was making headlines, selling like hotcakes, attracting gigantic masses of live audiences, and basking in the warmth of rockstar extravagance. Sure enough, for the upcoming generation, soon to be feasting on the fresh flesh of punk and New Wave, Paul was approaching the status of living fossil — but not any more than, say, Led Zeppelin, who were still very much at the peak of their game.

The thing is, Paul was really digging the Seventies. He would never succeed in properly catching up, Bowie-style, with the new musical trends of the Eighties, and starting with Flowers In The Dirt, he would completely jump out of the time window. But the hard-rock, the glam-rock, the prog-rock period of 1970–75 — this, instinctively, was still his time, and Wings Over America is the perfect historical document to prove that. The band that was assembled for that tour may not have exactly been the tightest, most disciplined, or even most professional team to back him up on stage; but each and every member of Wings in 1976 — even Linda! — was a personality, rather than a willing and obeying servant of the one and only Sir Paul, and all these personalities were enjoying the dope-thick air of the mid-Seventies in a freedom-loving, reckless way that, some might say, could only have existed around 1976. (Cue Weenʼs ʽFreedom Of ʼ76ʼ here).

That was a hyperbole, but so is this entire album: a triple LP set — if ELP and Yes can do this, then why not an ex-Beatle? — focused on ensuring Wingsʼ dominance over the contemporary world of rock (or, at least, pop-rock) music, and ensure it did: to the best of my knowledge, this is the only triple live album to have ever topped the US charts. Once again, one last time, Paul McCartney was on top of the world, showing himself to the world exactly the way the world wanted to see him — rocking out, glitzy, long-haired, and playing tons of catchy anthems. And most importantly, while he did make a few nods to his past with the Beatles, for about 80% of the time he was busy presenting his new stuff, and the fans did not seem to mind. Never again would a McCartney live set feature less than at least 50% Beatle classics — and never again would the man ever agree to share the spotlight with any of his supporting band members.

This is not to say that Wings Over America is a great live album. For all his lively nature, Paul McCartney lives and breathes studio polish, and everything that he takes with him on stage inevitably suffers from the lack of that polish. The lack of atmospheric overdubs, the difficulties of singing and playing at the same time, the inability or unwillingness to reinterpret or expand the studio material — all of these problems, so typical of pop artists in general, are especially biting in the case of Paul McCartney, where you instinctively want everything to be perfect, get sorely disappointed when not everything is, then understand that there would be no need for a live album if everything were perfect, then try to find a way to embrace the imperfections... then you find out you cannot really do it, and never return to the album again.

Granted, as long as Paul has those Wings around him, the situation is not that dire. The biggest hero in this mess is Jimmy McCulloch, who has enough raw talent to make almost each single song on which he is active slightly different from the original, with subtly improvised moments that make the songs come alive. Listen to his solo on ʽMy Loveʼ, for instance, which he has faithfully learned from Henry McCullough, his predecessor, but subtly converted from a soft-rock to a hard-rock paradigm; or to his screechy flourishes on ʽLet Me Roll Itʼ, which make the song a little less repetitive and monotonous than it was on Band On The Run. His instrumental and vocal performance on ʽMedicine Jarʼ turn it into a serious highlight of the show, with Paul willingly reduced to the role of his trusty bass henchman for a bit.

Next to the young passion of Jimmy, Denny Laineʼs more mature professionalism is not as easily noticeable, but he, too, gets a couple interesting spotlights, including a heart-on-sleeve acoustic rendition of Paul Simonʼs ʽRichard Coryʼ ("oh I wish that I could be... JOHN DENVER!") — I am only sad that he had not yet written his own masterpiece in this fast acoustic folk subgenre, ʽDeliver Your Childrenʼ, which would have been an even more appropriate inclusion. And, some­what predictably, he gets to pour the contents of his broken heart out on ʽGo Nowʼ, probably the only song associated with his person in the pre-Wings days that anybody in the audience had a chance to remember — with Jimmy lending a helping hand, as the old torch waltz is transformed into a strong arena-rock anthem.

Speaking of the setlist in general, the album has an interesting structure and features some unique performances that favorably set it apart from the string of sonically superior, but interchangeable live records from McCartneyʼs later years. The first side of the first LP is fully contemporary: nothing but songs from Band On The Run and Venus And Mars, with Wings in full-scale rock mode — Paul pulls no punches when he blasts off with ʽRock Showʼ and then directly segues it into ʽJetʼ. After the first adrenaline-raising segment is over, he switches to piano and tests out a couple of Beatles classics (ʽLady Madonnaʼ, ʽThe Long And Winding Roadʼ). After this, the band gathers round a friendly campfire to have some acoustic fun, and eventually Beatle stuff resurfaces once again — but this is just Paul solo (with a little help from the horns), playing solitary renditions of ʽBlackbirdʼ and ʽYesterdayʼ to a thrilled audience that would probably be offended if it had to leave without hearing a single Beatles song.

Once ʽYesterdayʼ is over and the people have been placated, it is back to contemporary business: as we get to the third LP, the band begins to play selections from its most recent album, Wings At The Speed Of Sound, and you get unique takes on ʽSilly Love Songsʼ and ʽBeware My Loveʼ, songs that, to the best of my knowledge, McCartney has never played live since then — my guess being that the former taxes his bass playing skills to the max, and the latter does the same to his vocals. That live version of ʽSilly Love Songsʼ is well worth your money, though, because the bass might be even louder and tighter than in the studio — and, for that matter, Paul himself plays a lot of bass on this tour, unlike the later years when he would frequently switch over to rhythm guitar and generally present himself as The Great Ex-Beatle rather than a fabulous musician. Here, he hugs that Rickenbacker like there was no tomorrow (you can actually see all the hugging on the Rockshow video from the tour), and it becomes particularly evident that on all these Wings albums he was still treating the bass as a highly important melodic instrument rather than a support strut, which would be more typical of later albums.

It is also telling how the show ends — not with a predictable good-vibe audience hug with ʽLet It Beʼ and ʽHey Judeʼ, but with two heavy and slightly provocative power-pop-rockers: ʽHi Hi Hiʼ and ʽSoilyʼ, the latter surprisingly funky for Wings (a bit reminiscent of the Stonesʼ ʽHeart­breakerʼ from Goats Head Soup) and never issued in a studio version, perhaps for the better, since the song (similarly to the earlier ʽMessʼ) is essentially an excuse for some dark and sweaty band jamming. It might not be a great composition, but once again, it shows just how much effort Paul was putting in at the time to avoid his shows being perceived as nostalgic events.

Personally, I find myself watching the accompanying video (Rockshow, recently remastered and officially re-released by Eagle Rock) more often than I listen to the album — the glammy vibe of the mid-Seventies, with all the glitter flying around, is ridiculously fun, and even if Paul now admits himself that Wings were a "terrible band" when it came to hanging out on stage, the important thing is that they had some great stuff to play, and they had a lot of fun playing it. It is hardly surprising that the pop rocker Paul McCartney, the folk / art-rocker Denny Laine, the hard-rocker Jimmy McCulloch, and the photographer-cum-keyboardist Linda McCartney could never gel together on the level of The Who or Led Zeppelin — but the very weirdness of this combina­tion of a bunch of talented people brought together by fate adds a special flavor to this historical document, one that you will never taste again.