The Paul McCartney anthem that made him self-conscious
Every single that Paul McCartney has ever released always carried his trademark whimsy. No matter if it’s the songs he made when with The Beatles or his multiple attempts working with Wings and his solo career, there’s nothing that Macca has ever put out that isn’t authentic to where he comes from, wanting to bring positivity wherever he goes. Although he might be able to work his magic across any of his classics, one song wasn’t exactly up to par for his record label.
Granted, the ending of The Beatles was never going to be easy for any of the Fab Four. Throughout the band’s breakup, every member had their hangups, from George Harrison wanting to get all of his songs out to the people on All Things Must Pass to John Lennon expunging his demons across his debut Plastic Ono Band.
While McCartney’s early post-Beatle outings weren’t treated warmly by the critics, he was always more comfortable having a band behind him. Rather than get a who’s who of classic rock musicians to play behind him, McCartney thought it would be best to start at ground zero all over again, creating Wings with his wife, Linda, as well as Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine.
When working on the first handful of demos for Wings, though, the songs were decidedly ramshackle, with Wild Life being a mess compared to McCartney’s perfectionist tendencies. Looking to get back into the world of pop music, Red Rose Speedway marked the hit first time McCartney got a hit single with his band on the song ‘My Love’.
Around the same time, though, McCartney was also looking to assemble a song for the soundtrack to the latest James Bond film, Live and Let Die. Reading the accompanying novel before setting to work, McCartney came up with a wistful ode to Bond’s career, talking about his cold-blooded as just another job to do.
Although McCartney was undoubtedly proud of the final record he made, his record company was less than impressed at first. When talking about the production of the song in The Lyrics, Macca raved about the moment his label wanted him to start over, saying, “[George Martin] brought a little record player with him to play it to Cubby Broccoli, one of the movie’s producers, who listened to it and said, ‘That’s nice, George, That’s a nice demo. When are you going to make the finished record?’”.
Convinced that McCartney would give the theme to someone else, the backhanded compliment made the former Beatle a little insecure about the song, explaining, “I didn’t rate it too much alongside some of the Bond themes that had gone before. I wasn’t sure whether mine was, whether it would hold up with such classics, but a lot of people have put it on their list of top Bond songs.”
The song would also garner a significant resurgence in the early 1990s when it was adopted by Guns N’ Roses, turning McCartney’s initial melody into one of the biggest anthems of their career. Even if McCartney wasn’t as keen on his original idea, the sound of the noir-adjacent spy music has been affecting generations of rock musicians.
