Wings’ 1972 European Tour
In July 1972 McCartney took his new band on their first professional tour. He chose Europe to avoid the critical spotlight that might have come from the UK or Amercia:
We’re a very new band, you know. And if you go and play in Britain, or America, with a new band, you’re really on the spot. You’ve got to be red hot…Hopefully we’ll tour Britain next year
Wings had by this stage released two very contrasting singles – Give Ireland Back To The Irish (February 25th 1972) and Mary Had A Little Lamb (May 12th 1972). Contrary to popular opinion, Mary Had A Little Lamb had been composed before December 1971, so was not an ironic response to the banned single in support of Irish nationalism.
On the Tour Bus
The band set off to the south of France on a brightly-coloured Wings Over Europe open-topped tour bus. As McCartney commented:
So we came up with this idea to have an open-deck, you know, upper-deck kind of thing. We’ve got some mattresses up there so we can just cruise along – fantastic – just lie around – get the sun, keep healthy on tour.
Footage of the tour bus shows that the band lived up to the ultimate hippy fantasy – the top deck has laid-out with mattresses and Paul and Denny practised guitar while baby Stella (b. 13th September 1971) rocked from side to side in a wooden cot!
Itinerary
The first leg of the tour covered eight locations – four in France; two in Germany and two in Switzerland. The tour began on the French Riviera before moving north to Paris
Set List
The set list for the tour was very flexible. The tour programme states “songs you may hear”. It seems clear that the band had even practised Junk from the McCartney album! Many of the songs were yet to be recorded. This was not usual practice – the norm at the time was to use a tour as an advertising tool for an album, but there was no new album to promote!
The band had been working at Olympic studio with the producer Glyn Johns, but he eventually fell out with the band in March 1972, complaining that they had “smoked dope and jammed in the studio to little effect”.
However, the band did eventually settle on the following songs for the first leg of the tour:
- Bip Bop
- Smile Away
- Mumbo
- Give Ireland Back to the Irish
- 1882
- I Would Only Smile
- Blue Moon Of Kentucky
- The Mess
Intermission
- Best Friend
- Soily
- I Am Your Singer
- Say You Don’t Mind
- Henry’s Blues
- Seaside Woman
- My Love
- Mary Had a Little Lamb
- Maybe I’m Amazed
- Wild Life
- Hi, Hi, Hi
Encore
Opening Night
The opening night of the concert took place at the amphitheatre of Châteauvallon near Toulon.
Wings played to 2,000 people and opened with Bip Bop, the much-maligned nonsense song from the Wild Life album. We don’t have a complete recording of that concert, but we can hear snippets of the song over the top of an interview with the British journalist Michael Wale. Linda was very nervous on the opening night and commented:
I was nervous in the first half… But we had no soundcheck, no rehearsal, no nothing. We had to go on cold. But we were very hot in the second half
Arles
We do have a very good audience tape of the third gig on the tour – Arles. This was another performance at an amphitheatre, or Théâtre Antique. McCartney talks to the audience in schoolboy-French, which causes some laughter from the audience. I have set the video here to begin playing at Mumbo, the opening track on Wild Life and the third song of the evening:
Germany
Wings performed two concerts in Germany on the 18th and 19th of July; at Munich and then Frankfurt.
The performance at Frankfurt is the better of the two. McCartney introduces I Am Your Singer as “Ich Bin Your Singer”. Uncharacteristically, McCartney flubs his vocals at 44:20:
Switzerland
The first leg of the tour ends with two concerts in Switzerland in Zurich and Montreux. We do have a recording for Montreux but the concert is not wholly successful. The guitars are best with tuning issues and there is a false start at the beginning of Seaside Woman. However, the band are in fine form for the encore – Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally:
Conclusion
It is fascinating to hear Wings at the beginning of their first professional tour. The concerts did not always run to plan and the overall impression is that Wings were more laid-back and freewheeling than perfectly polished.
The band had a break at the end July and started a second leg of the tour. This part of the tour was filmed at various locations and provides the basis for The Bruce McMouse Show. I will cover this second leg next week.
New Book
All of this information will be included in my next book, Wings Live! which will be available in 2021 and will cover the whole of the Wings touring era up to the abandoned Japanese Tour of January 1980.