WNO 481: When Wings went on tour in a London bus
Having spent the better part of a decade taking it to the extreme with The Beatles, it’s fair to say that by the time the 1970s rolled around, Paul McCartney was used to a fair few of the finer things in life.
Luxury hotels, champagne, a bit of caviar, anyone? But deep down, he knew just as much as the next man that this was not how a rock star should live. Shedding that decadent shell would be the only thing that would allow him to move forward. So, when it came to trying to take flight with Wings, he knew he had to take his style back to basics.
That meant there was a need to ditch the private jets and start to rough it, of sorts, in a proper ramshackle tour bus, kitted out to cope with life on the road. Clearly, in McCartney’s eyes, as he was being washed with hippie spirit and a sense of reinvention, the only way to rocket a second band after you were in the biggest band in the world was to truly get the grit of the Earth right under your fingers.
The vehicle he chose to channel this vision through was the WNO 481, a former 1950s London bus that had very well served its time trundling along the streets of the city, before it was selected by Macca to take on its biggest challenge of all – traversing across the whole of the European continent in the summer of 1972. This was not just a few short stops in a smattering of capital cities, either. It was Wings’ first ever tour, and by pounding 7,500 miles across nine countries and 25 cities, they were set on making themselves the next big thing.
Of course, this is exactly what they achieved in that McCartney ended up positioning himself as the leader of both the biggest bands of the 1960s and 1970s. Naturally, this line might have raised a few eyebrows among his former Beatles bandmates as well as his then-wife and stalwart guitarist in Wings, but there’s no denying that he was the essential glue that stuck that mammoth period in rock and roll history together.
As such, the WNO 481 not only became a physical mode of transport in getting the group from A to B, but it also took on a symbolic life all of its own in representing exactly what Wings set out to achieve following the closure of one massive chapter in its frontman’s career. The bus was almost a conduit for reinvention and taking in new sights, proving that although The Beatles had only lasted less than a mere decade, the 1970s still beckoned a series of tempting new horizons.
It was pretty ironic that Wings opted to take a life on the road approach rather than taking to the skies, given the connotations of their namesake. But it also displayed an ultimate core grit and tenacity that can often lose its way in the rock and roll sphere. You can’t just become the biggest band in the world for a second time by resting on your laurels and coasting your way to success. Instead, it’s late nights, uncomfortable beds, and crammed conditions that truly show what someone is made of.
Even as the WNO 481 became the most famous bus in the world, it also proved the ultimate survival test of success.
