The country legend who made Paul McCartney form Wings: “A real act of faith”
While the breakup of The Beatles may have come as a shock to many and a long time coming for those who had been observing the fragile inner dynamics of the group, knowing what the four respective members would do next was anyone’s guess.
It was evident that none of them was going to take this opportunity to retire from music altogether, but being able to determine whether any of them would pursue a new project rather than a typical solo career was impossible, given how each of them had clearly developed their own recognisable styles by the end of their tenure with the group.
However, while John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr wasted no time in putting out material under their own names, Paul McCartney had a few more reservations about the idea of being a singular figure.
While he did release his self-titled debut album in 1970, following it up with Ram, a collaborative album with his wife Linda in May of 1971, McCartney still found himself trying to scratch the same itch that being in a band had provided him with. Unsure of how he could realistically put together another band after having dominated the globe with his previous group, he found himself desperately scrambling to find some source of inspiration that could potentially revitalise his career.
It wasn’t until he and Linda found themselves watching television one night that he realised what the answer to all of his questions was, and his eureka moment came from what most would consider to be an unlikely source, given McCartney’s pedigree as a pop and rock songwriter.
“Johnny Cash came on the telly with a new band he’d formed with Carl Perkins,” he recalled in a 2024 interview with Mojo. “There they were, playing with some country musicians I had never heard of, looking like they were having fun.”
Cash and Perkins were performing as part of the Tennessee Three, who had been the backing band for Cash since 1954, but the lineup of the band had always been flexible and prone to frequent personnel changes throughout their existence.
This particular incarnation of the group also consisted of drummer WS Holland, bassist Marshall Grant and guitarist Bob Wootton, all of whom had been playing together as a group since 1968, but it was the fact that these sidemen weren’t household names that gave McCartney the inspiration to follow suit and create a band of his own while disregarding the need to have an all-star cast of musicians backing him.
From this, Wings came into existence, a move that McCartney dubbed as a “real act of faith” in his own songwriting and the people he enlisted to help him. “That’s when I realised maybe there is a third alternative: to get a band that isn’t massively famous and to not worry if we don’t know what we’re doing.”
With Linda, guitarist Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell on board, the band managed to get their debut album, Wild Life, out by the end of 1971. While it didn’t perform well initially, with a few additions to the lineup and tweaks to the band’s sound, they’d eventually help McCartney conquer the world a second time over, just as he had done with the Beatles in the 1960s, and it was all thanks to Cash’s attitude that this ever came to be.
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