Did 1973 provide Paul McCartney’s greatest chart conquest?
Nothing can ever beat The Beatles, of course, but once the band had ended, Paul McCartney made a damn good go of getting back to his glory days.
Well, to be fair, for a man of his status, the good days never really left. You could tell that he’d been brewing Wings in the pipeline for a good while, obviously helped by Linda spurring him on, and there was no room for false starts. The Beatles were done, and he had to hit the ground running, so by 1971, his new outfit was ready to take flight.
The rapture around what came next for McCartney, as well as any of the Fab Four, in total honesty, effectively meant that they could kind of release anything they wanted and get away with it. Thank God they were good musicians at heart; otherwise, that could have been a car crash. For Wings, they saw it as their mission to live up to the hype as massive as the previous decade had been.
In this sense, getting traction under their belt in the form of their debut Wild Life was a bit of a breeze. By the time it came around to Red Rose Speedway in 1973, the conditions were all set for a piece of chart history to be made. And, as if it were some stroke of luck or some meticulous plan, they achieved just that.
It was a marathon, though, and not a sprint. For a span of seven weeks, the lead single ‘My Love’ climbed the US charts, followed by the album itself four weeks into its run. Then, on June 2nd, the motherload was hit. Both the song and the record claimed the number one spot at the same time, thus making it possibly the greatest chart conquest McCartney has ever achieved.
From there, Wings sailed off into the sunset with their status secured and their chart acclaim in the bag, didn’t they? Well, that’s at least the version of events they’d rather you knew. In reality, however, there has to be the uncomfortable acknowledgement that the earliest days of the band were largely built on the notoriety of McCartney being a Beatle; their material itself wasn’t actually that great.
The warning signs had been there since Wild Life, which was widely described as a rush job, as McCartney’s attempt to quickly get the Wings show on the road after Ram. By the same token, the perception of Red Rose Speedway wasn’t much more favourable, with EMI saying the songs were “substandard” and therefore forcing the frontman to cut the album down to just one disc.
The chart achievements that the 1973 record conquered were the perfect ruse in this regard, masking the mixed critical response with a shiny trophy or two to exhibit their popularity with the masses. But with drummer Danny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough having also become disillusioned with the band by this point, McCartney inherently knew he had to pull his socks up before his luck ran out.
In many ways, being reduced to the trio of himself, Linda, and Denny Laine was the best creative reinvention that could have ever happened, because it forced them to look at themselves, who they truly were, and what they wanted to become. Band on the Run was subsequently born out of that ultimatum, and they never looked back.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.