Paul McCartney announces huge new project for November after reinventing career

In a new book focusing on “love, family, and friendship” with his band Wings, Paul McCartney reveals how he reinvented his career following The Beatles.

The 82-year-old music legend has collaborated with award-winning historian Ted Widmer to create the 528-page book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, which will be released in November. It will feature more than 100 photographs, some never seen before, alongside over 500, 000 words, based on dozens of hours of interviews with McCartney and numerous key players in the band’s orbit.

Sir Paul McCartney, who made the announcement for the project, said: “I’m so happy to be transported back in time to Wings and to relive some of our madcap adventures through this book. After The Beatles were occasionally enthralling, starting from scratch.

“I frequently questioned my choice in the middle of some very challenging circumstances. But as we got better I thought, ‘ OK this is really good. ‘ We established Wings’ potential as a top band. to have a different impact than The Beatles did by playing to large audiences. There was a lot of excitement.

Ted Widmer added:” Wings was about love, family, friendship and artistic growth, often in the face of tremendous adversity. Listening to their stories and compiling this oral history made it enjoyable to relive a special band’s madcap adventures.

Paul McCartney faced the daunting prospect of performing solo music for the first time as the Sixties came to an end, but the Liverpool legend soon put together a band with his wife Linda, and unsurprisingly, it was a hit. However, the journey did not always go smoothly like with all bands.

Paul wanted Linda to be involved with the band and his music so they could be on tour together despite her lack of previous musical experience. Denny Seiwell, a drummer, and former Moody Blues guitarist, Denny Laine both joined forces and played keyboard.

The band’s first two albums, Wild Life (1971) and Red Rose Speedway (1973) were viewed by some as being disappointing compared to Paul’s work with the Beatles.

And Sir Paul acknowledged that the band’s early years weren’t great when he spoke on Radio 4 in 2016.

” We were terrible. We knew Linda couldn’t play, but she learned, and looking back on it, I’m really glad we did it … I could have just formed a supergroup, and rung up Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page and John Bonham. “

He also claimed that he had been overdoing the boozing after the Beatles split, so he informed Radio 4’s Mastertapes that the band formed at the right moment.

” I was depressed. You would be. You were breaking from your lifelong friends, “he said”. So I took to the bevvies. I took to a wee dram. It was great at first, then suddenly I wasn’t having a good time … I wanted to get back to square one, so I ended up forming Wings. “

However, after the release of the James Bond movie Live and Let Die title track, the band’s fortunes would quickly change.

The McCartneys and Laine then released their 1973 film Band on the Run, which received high commercial and critical acclaim, including the top 10 single Jet and the title track, as the group started to change members.

Although it wasn’t entirely straightforward, Seiwell and other band members had just left the night before their scheduled trip to Lagos, Nigeria to record the album.

McCartney said in a 2010 interview:” I think everyone was blissfully happy until they were asked to go to darkest Africa. It was like, you know, we’ll come to rehearsal next Monday – but Africa? Are you kidding? And looking back on it, it’s a valid question. OK, for me the attractions were artistic, instinctive. It was like… the music of Africa will colour our feelings, we’ll be steeped in the ancient African rhythms – that sort of thing. Also the fact that we’d have a reasonably state-of-the-art studio down there. “

He added with a laugh:” It turned out to be an unbuilt studio, but it was enough, and we helped to construct vocal booths and things. It became a part of the enjoyment. No, I didn’t actually get a hammer out myself, but they did bring in carpenters and we instructed them to get some big wooden boxes with Perspex windows and doors. They just didn’t have vocal booths. They were probably more adept at recording live African bands than sophisticated westerners, I suppose.

Other well-known albums, such as Venus and Mars in 1975 and At the Speed of Sound, and 1977’s Mull of Kintyre, which was the UK’s number one album and sold more than two million copies, would continue to rank at the top of the charts.

The band’s various incarnations will be documented in the book narrative, including their unannounced appearances at UK university halls, their unannounced performances in unannounced performances in sheared-off school buses, and their various incarnations.

The “Wings Over America” Tour was also held there, marking Sir Paul’s first performance in a decade and one of the biggest tours of the 1970s.

Madison Square Garden and the LA Forum were among the venues that sold out on their first full-fledged North American tour. The tour’s triple live album had a huge success.

Their final tour in 1979 in the UK was also a more stripped-down but still successful run, including a legendary show at the Glasgow Apollo, where” Coming Up “was recorded live. Other noteworthy events include a quick landing on a plane in Nashville while dealing with marijuana possession.

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is described as a “rousing, stereophonic celebration of the songs, collaborations, and performances that would shape the soundtrack of the late 20th century,” according to book publishers Penguin.

This oral history, which was edited by Ted Widmer and centered on nine Wings albums, will provide new insight into the immediate aftermath and profound global impact of The Beatles’ split, as musical tastes and tastes began to splinter and diverge along with societal views.

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is a larger effort to reevaluate and appreciate the band and their catalog.

The rare Wings live-in-studio performance film One Hand Clapping, which was released in 2024, as well as the accompanying album, 50th anniversary editions of the Wings albums Band on the Run (released February 2024) and Venus and Mars (released March 2025), are among the highlights.

There is also a forthcoming documentary on Paul McCartney’s solo and Wings-related musical work of the 1970s from Academy Award-winning filmmaker, Morgan Neville. Following Sir Paul’s recent successful world tour, the release follows. He also performed songs from the Wings like Live and Let Die, Let Me Roll It, Junior’s Farm, and Jet.

Not for the first time has Sir Paul worked as a paperback writer. In 2021 he released a book of song lyrics, unseen photos and letters which served as his version of an autobiography. The Lyrics, a book called “The Lyrics,” tells the story of his life and work through the lens of 154 songs written by artists for all eras throughout his career, from his earliest compositions as a boy to Wings and his later solo albums.

On November 4, Allen Lane will publish Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, edited by Ted Widmer and written by Paul McCartney.

Follow Mirror Celebs on Threads, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok.

Source: Mirror