On This Day in 1971, Paul McCartney Introduced the Band He Formed With His Wife That Defined His Post-Beatles Career

On this day in 1971, Paul McCartney announced the formation of his band Wings. Here’s a brief history of the group McCartney made music with post-Beatles.

The Birth of Wings

Following the release of his second solo album Ram, McCartney formed Wings with drummer Denny Seiwell and former Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine. His wife Linda played keyboards, and McCartney was on vocals and bass. Wings would go through several lineup changes over the years. However, Laine and the McCartneys would remain a constant in the group until the very end.

In December of that same year, the new group released their first album, called Wild Life, with Apple Records. Their debut project wasn’t well received by critics. However, the next year, Wings found slight redemption with a single titled “Give Ireland Back to the Irish”. That song went No. 1 in the Republic of Ireland and in Spain.

In 1973, the band, now renamed Paul McCartney and Wings, found success with a new album, Red Rose Speedway. The album produced the No. 1 hit “My Love”. “Live And Let Die”, an international hit written for the James Bond film of the same name, was also released under the group that year. In addition, they also released their most commercially successful album Band On The Run. In 1975, the album’s title track would go on to win a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus.

Wings Over The World Tour and Other Projects

In 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings released their first album under Capitol Records, titled Venus And Mars. A single from the album, “Listen To What The Man Said”, went No. 1 in the US. Then, the group embarked on their Wings Over The World Tour. It was on this tour that they played to two million people across eleven countries.

McCartney once said of this tour, as shared by his website, “With Wings, I always knew we would have to take a few years of trials and tribulations. That was the same with The Beatles. We had gone to Hamburg, played around all the clubs in Liverpool before anyone had really heard us. You know, only the local audiences knew us before we had even made a record. We’d done a lot of work getting our skills together, so now I had to do this all again with Wings. But by ‘Wings Over America’, and by the world tours, we’d pretty much done that. We now knew what Wings were.”

Over the next several years, Paul McCartney and Wings would release more albums. Wings At The Speed Of Sound, London Town, and Back To The Egg all came out during this time. The group would also score their sixth No. 1 with “Silly Love Songs” in 1976.

By 1982, McCartney would acknowledge that the band had officially broken up while promoting his fourth solo studio album, Tug Of War.

Photo by: Watal Asanuma/Shinko Music via Getty Images