Wings’ University Tour

Amidst the stress of the break-up of The Beatles, McCartney formed Wings in the summer of 1971. The band didn’t yet have a name. The birth of Stella McCartney on 13th September conjured angelic thoughts, prompting Paul and Linda to settle on the name “Wings”.

The new band had recorded the Wild Life album at lightning speed in July and August. On the 8th November, McCartney hosted a party to mark the formation of his new band at the Mecca Ballroom in London’s Leicester Square.

Lead Guitarist

Wild Life had been recorded without a true lead guitarist, with Denny Laine and Paul McCartney taking care of solo spots. The Irish guitarist Henry McCullough was brought in to fill this gap in January 1972.

At the beginning of February, McCartney put the band through their paces with a rehearsal in a cinema inside London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) building. The footage of these rehearsals was finally released in full as a part of the 2018 Wild Life Archive Edition boxed set.

The band’s rehearsal is steady but inevitably unpolished. It’s difficult to discern the keyboard contribution of Linda. From the video, it can be seen that she’s given simple parts – such as octaves in both hands to outline the main chordal riff in The Mess. In My Love, it’s more obvious that her harmonies were not quite up to scratch. However, she was the first to say that her role at this stage was to provide moral, as well as musical, support.

Itinerary

The ICA rehearsals were the preparation for an impromptu tour of British universities, beginning on Friday 9th February at Nottingham University. McCartney shares his memories of the tour here, on this recording from Radio Two’s The Wings Story, broadcast in 2001:

The University Tour lasted the 22nd February and covered ten different venues. The tour took on a distinctly north-England character, but ended up on the south coast of Wales, before moving to a final date at Oxford University.

Tour Map

Advantages

There were several obvious advantages to this very low-key beginning to Wings:

• The fact that the dates were unannounced meant that the band could avoid press and media scrutiny.
• There were no prior ticket sales, hype or advertising, and prices were low. Attendees couldn’t complain if the performance wasn’t quite up to scratch.
• The cramped and low-key travel and accommodation was a true test of the whether Wings could bond as social unit.

Recordings – Nottingham

The first concert at Nottingham actually exists as a fair-quality audience tape. It is incomplete (and runs a quarter of a tone flat) and begins half-way through Blue Moon of Kentucky. It is possible to get a general feel for the concert as whole, despite the quality of the recording.

The second song on the audio recording is Give Ireland Back to the Irish , which McCartney introduces as “a song we wrote earlier this week and recorded in two nights”. One of the most effective performances is of the title track from Wild Life. It begins with the distinctive block chords in G minor and the Seiwell’s rolled snare crescendo. However, the “false” G major introduction is omitted from this and all other renditions of the song in subsequent tours. Bip Bop is one song that McCartney often refers to as something of an embarrassment. On the Wild Life album, it is given quite a light treatment, but in a live setting it comes across as quite a heavy two-beat stomp.

After Bip Bop, the band embark on a twelve-bar blues in A that lasts for four minutes, with some unintelligible vocal interjections. It is a standard format that any group of musicians can conjure up with no rehearsal. It seems tempting to conclude that this jam was concocted to flesh-out Wings’ then-limited set list. The next song is The Mess I’m In, whose title was truncated to The Mess when it appeared on the B-side of the My Love single in 1973. The differences with the album release don’t end there. Linda McCartney plays a much more prominent role on these early recordings, singing on the song’s refrain. During the final two bridge sections she provides call-and-response answers to Paul’s main vocal, but it is difficult to discern exactly what she is singing.

My Love

Before the start of My Love, McCartney tests the Fender Rhodes keyboard; a practice that slightly detracts from the impact of the “magical” Bbmajor7 opening chord. Linda McCartney again offers answering vocal phrases, in keeping with performance of My Love at the ICA rehearsal. It is also worth noting that at this stage, Henry McCullough’s guitar work is still quite primitive – a far cry from the iconic guitar solo that he provided for the recording of My Love at EMI the following October.

Little Richard

This is followed by the Little Richard rocker Lucille. The song had been a long-standing favourite for McCartney. The Beatles had recorded the track twice for BBC radio.

They shared the stage with Richard at the Tower Ballroom, Birkenhead in October 1962 and then again in Hamburg in the December of the same year. McCartney introduces the song as “our last number” and “the one we started off with” – Wings were so short of repertoire, they were forced to repeat songs in the same concert. It is a song that is perfectly suited to the McCartney’s rock-inflected upper-range; after the lengthy introduction, he belts out a repeated Bb4 on “Lucille”.

The final song of the night is another Little Richard number – Long Tall Sally. McCartney admits, “we haven’t rehearsed this one”. He then launches into the song’s blistering vocal introduction, “I’m gonna tell Aunt Mary…”- again based on repeated tones of Bb4; but this time, the Bb is the “blues” minor third of the song’s G major home key. After two verses, McCulloch offers a guitar solo, but it is difficult to hear, as the recording is drowned out by bass frequencies. As the excitement builds, McCartney pushes his voice right up to D5, but doesn’t quite reach the desired pitch.

Hull

The only other extant audience tape is from Hull University on the 11th February – two days after Nottingham. The recording is still poor by modern commercial standards, but better than that of Nottingham and only clips the very beginning of the opening number, Lucille.

After give Ireland Back To The Irish, Henry McCullough launches into a curious acapella version of the American traditional song Turkey In The Straw, which is identified on some CDs as Your Wee Tobacco Box, for some unknown reason.

We also get to hear Seaside Woman, introduced by Paul McCartney as “the first song she’s [Linda McCartney] ever written”. At this stage, the song is lacking the instrumental introduction that appears on the recording credited to Suzy and the Red Stripes in May, 1977. The track had been written by Linda McCartney during a family holiday in Jamaica in December 1971.

Seaside Woman is followed by a blues jam generically identified as Help Me on the unofficial release. It is in a major and Denny Laine’s harmonica work can be heard in the recording. Laine would later make a name for himself as a harmonica/blues harp player on such as Time to Hide on Wings At The Speed Of Sound (and later recorded live on Wings Over America).

Some People Never Know

This is followed by Some People Never Know; one of the best tracks from Wild Life. The verses on Wild Life are marked by close vocal harmonies, shared between Paul and Linda McCartney. These are, at the very least, attempted; but due to the quality of the recording, it is hard to know how effectively they were delivered. The gentle acoustic riffs in sixths on Wild Life sound rather clunky when transferred to electric guitar for this performance.

After Bip Bop, the band perform one of the weaker tracks that was to be recorded in the Red Rose Speedway sessions; Thank You Darling – rather lame outing around the standard I – vi – iv- V doo wop chord progression. This is redeemed by the subsequent performance of Smile Away, one of the grittier numbers from the 1971 Ram album. It seems to work well in this live setting. A soundboard recording of Smile Away the 28th August in Berlin from the 2018 Wings Over Europe boxed set confirms this view. My Love follows next, after a “one, two, three, four” count-in. Linda McCartney’s answering vocal phrases are more apparent than in the recording from Nottingham.

My Love is followed by a short tongue-in-cheek acapella rendering of The Grand Old Duke Of York. This leads into a rather meandering blues jam in A major. After Wild Life, Give Ireland Back To The Irish and Lucille are repeated from earlier in the show. McCartney proudly announces that Give Ireland Back To The Irish has been “banned by the BBC” and is to be released the following week.

Other Dates

Wings played seven other university venues during February 1972, but none were recorded. Perhaps one of the most memorable incidents happened at Leeds University on the 16th February. For a brief moment, Linda, and then Paul McCartney suffered a moment of panic when they both forgot the opening chords for Wild Life. On the 2001 Wingspan documentary, McCartney claimed that the incident occurred in Newcastle:

Conclusion

The University Tour was in many ways a primitive return to live concerts for McCartney. The band could have been better rehearsed; songs are marred by count-ins; and tracks are repeated due to a lack of material. However, it was a milestone towards establishing Wings as a performing. as well as a recording, band. A tour of Europe from September 1972 marked Wings’ inauguration into the world of professional performance.

New Book!

I am undertaking research into all of Wings’ tours for a future book project.

• Did you see Wings during their University Tour of 1972?
• Did you see Wings during any of their other tours in the 1970s?

If so, I would love to hear from you.

Please drop me a message at adrianallan@paulmccartneyafterthebeatles.com

All contributors will be fully credited and receive a free book when it has been printed (hopefully in 2021)