After the Beatles disbanded, Paul McCartney issued two albums before forming Wings around the core lineup of himself, his wife Linda, and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine. The group cut an album during 1971 and devoted much of the following year to low-profile dates across Britain and Europe. Commercial momentum arrived in 1973 via Red Rose Speedway, then reached a lasting peak with Band on the Run, which delivered the transatlantic Top Ten hits “Jet” and its title track. McCartney dissolved Wings after the enormous 1977 success of “Mull of Kintyre” and soon returned to solo work.
Following his 1971 solo album Ram, McCartney and Linda established Wings as a complete recording and touring unit. Denny Laine and drummer Denny Seiwell completed the initial roster, and the band issued its debut, Wild Life, in December 1971; the record drew unfavorable notices and modest sales. Adding former Grease Band guitarist Henry McCullough, Wings functioned as a working ensemble throughout 1972, releasing the protest single “Give Ireland Back to the Irish,” the reggae-styled “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and the hard-rocking “Hi Hi Hi” in the U.K. Red Rose Speedway appeared in spring 1973; despite tepid reviews it became McCartney’s second American number-one album. After a British tour that year, both McCullough and Seiwell departed. Before those exits, McCartney’s theme for the James Bond film Live and Let Die reached the Top Ten in both the U.S. and U.K. The remaining members recorded in Nigeria that summer; Band on the Run, released late in 1973, earned McCartney’s strongest reviews to date, topped the U.S. charts for four weeks, and was eventually certified triple platinum.
McCartney next assembled a revised Wings lineup featuring guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton. This configuration appeared on the 1974 British single “Junior’s Farm” and the 1975 album Venus and Mars. Wings at the Speed of Sound followed in 1976, marking the first Wings release to include songwriting input from other members; it achieved massive success through the McCartney tracks “Silly Love Songs” and “Let ’Em In.” An extensive international tour supported the album, breaking attendance records and documented on the triple live set Wings Over America (1976). During a quieter 1977, McCartney issued the instrumental Ram reinterpretation Thrillington and produced Denny Laine’s solo album Holly Days. Later that year Wings released “Mull of Kintyre,” which became the biggest-selling British single up to that point with more than two million copies sold. London Town arrived in 1978 and earned another platinum certification; McCulloch then left to join the re-formed Small Faces. Back to the Egg appeared in 1979, went platinum, yet yielded no major hits. Early in 1980 McCartney was detained for marijuana possession while beginning a Japanese tour, spending ten days in jail before release without formal charges. Wings completed a British tour that spring. McCartney then recorded the one-man-band album McCartney II. In 1981 Denny Laine exited because McCartney declined to tour following John Lennon’s assassination, effectively ending Wings. McCartney subsequently entered the studio with Beatles producer George Martin for the 1982 album Tug of War.
Wings resurfaced in 2001 through the compilation Wingspan, paired with a television documentary. The 2018 Paul McCartney Archives Edition series presented expanded editions of Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway; a limited pairing included the bonus disc Wings Over Europe, drawn from the band’s debut tour. McCartney returned once more to the catalog in 2024 with a 50th-anniversary edition of Band on the Run that featured “Underdubbed” mixes and the first official audio release of One Hand Clapping, a previously unreleased 1974 live-in-the-studio concert film.
