“Second rate”: The one section of his career Paul McCartney never believed in
For any artist, there comes a few moments when songs don’t manage to come together like they should. As much as they might try to find the best music that they can at the time, there are some tracks that either sound incredibly forced compared to everything else or don’t manage to accomplish everything that they could have done. Although Paul McCartney might have a few albums that fall into that category, he admitted that one entire band wasn’t up to his usual standards as a songwriter.
Then again, there was going to be no way that anything Macca did after The Beatles was going to truly measure up to them. The whole point of them breaking up seemed like a day of mourning for every music fan across the world, and even when McCartney struck out on his own, his way of getting back in touch with his artsy side on RAM wasn’t greeted with open arms the same way that John Lennon was on Imagine.
All he needed was a band that brought everything together, but there was one problem: how do you join a new group after the Fab Four? McCartney knew that he was going to be getting back to basics, but when putting together Wings, he found that he still had some untapped potential as a songwriter while working off of new blood.
Bringing in Denny Laine gave him some credibility, and even though Linda wasn’t the most capable vocalist when they started out, her work on keyboards helped her get a footing during the group’s live shows. While Wild Life was certainly a rocky start, hearing them eventually soar on Band on the Run and Venus and Mars turned them into the kind of stadium rock act that The Beatles could have been had they stayed on the road.
That said, it’s not like every Wings album is perfect. The band was dubbed ‘Paul McCartney and Wings’ for a reason, and listening back to the moments where the bassist let go of the reins is where things start to fall apart, whether that’s letting the rest of the band sing on songs like ‘Cook of the House’ or making songs that feel more democratic on ‘No Words’ or ‘Spirits of Ancient Egypt’.
Looking back on that period, McCartney went so far as to say the band was nothing but a lesser version of what he was known for before someone corrected him, saying, “I used to think that all my Wings stuff was second-rate stuff, but I began to meet younger kids, not kids from my Beatle generation, who would seriously say, ‘No, wait a minute; can’t have you say that about your work. We really love this song or that song.’”
There are still the odd moments where things don’t work out quite the same way, like the scattershot pieces of London Town or the band jamming mindlessly on riffs, but Wings still had some muscle behind them. ‘Listen to What the Man Said’ is still one of their greatest pop songs, and looking at ‘Junior’s Farm’, McCartney created a tune that could stand next to some of his best rockers.
Wings may not even come close to what The Beatles did, but measuring them against one of the best bands in the world is hardly fair. They were never trying to be the answer to the Fab Four, but it’s okay to enjoy a song like ‘Yesterday’ and still get excited whenever a tune like ‘Jet’ comes on.
