On the occasion of the upcoming re-release of the Wings classic “Band on the Run”, Paul McCartney spoke in an interview about the band’s early days. In 1971 he founded the new group with his first wife Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, who had just left the Moody Blues.
He told the British music magazine “Mojo” how Johnny Cash inspired him after the Beatles ended. After the exit, the then 27-year-old felt like he was at a crossroads.
“Start a band that isn’t particularly famous”
“After the Beatles ended, I was faced with certain alternatives,” he says. “One of them was to give up music completely and do God knows what. Another was to form a supergroup with very famous people, Eric Clapton and so on. I didn’t like either of them, so I thought, ‘How did the Beatles start?'” said McCartney.
“We were a couple of buddies who didn’t know what we were doing,” he continued. “That’s when I realized that maybe there was a third alternative: to start a band that wasn’t particularly famous and not worry if we didn’t know what we were doing.” For the former Beatle, the good thing about a new band was that it would reshape the character and “we learn as we go.” One evening he was watching Johnny Cash with his wife Linda and came up with his idea for Wings.
Johnny Cash and Carl Perkins
The Brit continues: “We were lying in bed one evening, newly married, when Johnny Cash appeared on television with a new band that he founded with Carl Perkins, one of my great heroes. They were playing with some country musicians I had never heard of and looked like they were having fun.”
So the singer turned to his wife and spontaneously asked: “Do you want to start a group?” And Linda replied: “Sure.” “That’s how our relationship was,” the now 81-year-old explains the spontaneity in his previous marriage.