Wings

The Story of a Band on the Run

Author: Paul McCartney and Ted Widmer

Told in revelatory first person, this immersive account of Paul McCartney and Wings is the engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation.

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Summary

Told in revelatory first person, this immersive account of Paul McCartney and Wings is the engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation.

Description

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the astonishing, almost improbable, story of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band from 1971 through its dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, key players, and family members, Wings poignantly recounts, now with a half-century’s wisdom, the story of a man and musician navigating the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup, soon joined by his wife—American photographer Linda McCartney—on keyboard and vocals; drummer Denny Seiwell; and guitarist Denny Laine, among many others. Organized around nine Wings albums, the narrative follows the adventurous band as they survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, appear unannounced at various university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the decade. With 150 black-and-white and color photographs, many previously unseen, this is a landmark work of soaring originality.

About the Author

Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney was raised in the city and educated at the Liverpool Institute. Since writing his first song at fourteen, McCartney has dreamed and dared to be different. He lives in England. Ted Widmer is a historian, writer, librarian, and musician who writes about American history in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and other venues. He has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Washington College. In 2022 he was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.