The only song Denny Laine wrote for Wings: “Ended up being a dual composition”
There was something truly special about John Lennon and Paul McCartney‘s songwriting partnership. The day they met and decided to write a song was a day that fundamentally changed the way people viewed music. But what was it about the two of them working together, which was so intrinsically unique?
When you think about Lennon and McCartney, it wasn’t their similarities that made them a good songwriting duo, instead, it was their differences. They both had completely different approaches to music and as a result, whenever they hit a creative wall, they were able to offer a fresh perspective on one another’s work.
These differences worked great for a time, but eventually, they grew too much, causing friction within the band, and the Beatles had to split up. Once the band had separated, each member pursued their own solo career, but Paul McCartney found it hard to adapt to working alone.
One of his main issues was that he didn’t feel he was pushing himself as much as he could without accountability. He spoke about this after releasing his debut solo album, calling it safe music and not something he revisits all that often.
“When The Beatles had broken up and I was on my own for the first time, I got that four-track Studa in my living room,” he said. “And just kind of started making up songs and stuff, and it was a very bare album […] I like it, actually; I like it as an album. But listening to it now, it’s a very basic kind of album.”
To be part of a collective again, Paul McCartney started Wings, which was made up of a number of creative minds. His wife, Linda McCartney, was part of the band. He also reached out to Denny Seiwell, who had played drums on McCartney’s solo album Ram, and Denny Laine from The Moody Blues.
McCartney thought of the band name when his wife was in hospital giving birth. “I was thinking for some reason of wings of a dove, wings of angels, wings of birds, wings of a plane,” he recalled. “So I said to Linda, ‘How about Wings?’ It was a time when most people would be thinking about a name for a child, and there we were talking about a pop group.”
Wings would go on to have a great deal of success as a band, as McCartney was able to bounce ideas off different band members. He could take some of their creations and apply twists to expand upon what the band was doing. This can be heard in their song ‘No Words’, which was two songs written by Denny Laine that McCartney put together to create one piece of music.
“The only song I wrote was ‘No Words’, and that ended up being a dual composition, because ‘No Words’ was two songs that were put together. It was Paul’s idea to put two of my songs together, which made one song, and then he added a few lines in the last verse and helped me put it together,” Laine concluded. “So it came to be a dual composition. But basically, it was my song, and all the rest of the songs were his.”
