The Beatles legend is looking back at his career with Wings which began when the Beatles split as has responded to a rumour that he was killed in a car crash in the 60s
For several years from 1966 there were persistent rumours that Paul McCartney had been killed in a car crash and The Beatles had brought in a lookalike to keep the band going.
The Secret Service had a hand in the deception, so the conspiracy theory went, with believers speculating that the cover of the 1969 Abbey Road album depicted a funeral procession – with a white-clad John Lennon representing a priest, George Harrison an undertaker, Ringo Starr a gravedigger and a barefoot Paul himself representing a corpse.
While he obviously was alive and well, now, nearly 60 years on, the singer admits he did feel as if part of himself had “died” at the end of The Beatles. And he reveals that career doubts meant he almost quit music soon after, following a backlash from reviewers.
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In his new book, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, Sir Paul says: “The strangest rumour started floating around just as The Beatles were breaking up, that I was dead. We had heard the rumour long before but, suddenly, in that autumn of 1969 stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all of its own, so that millions of people around the world believed I was actually gone.”
Sir Paul says that he and wife Linda were “aware of the power of gossip and the absurdity” of the stories circulating – and that they had moved out of London “precisely to get away from the kind of malevolent talk that was bringing The Beatles down”.
He goes on: “But now that over half a century has passed since those truly crazy times, I’m beginning to think that the rumours were more accurate than one might have thought at the time.
“In so many ways, I was dead, a 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover.”
The legendary singer-songwriter – who left the Fab Four in April 1970 – credits moving to a sheep farm in Scotland with Linda and their first child together, Mary, with helping him get through this depressing time. But cocooning himself in this way also allowed him to emerge renewed as a musician, having left behind some elements of “Beatle Paul”.
He says: “The old Paul was no longer the new Paul. For the first time in years, I felt free suddenly leading and directing my own life. I was not conscious at the time of moving away from the long shadow cast by The Beatles, but that’s exactly what I was doing.”
In the book, Sir Paul explains that he was keen that anything he did next musically was very different and not “Beatles 2.0”.
Shying away from creating a supergroup, he released the 1971 album Ram with Linda and future Wings member Denny Seiwell on drums. But critics and some fans were less impressed.
Rolling Stone magazine dubbed the LP “incredibly inconsequential and monumentally irrelevant”, while NME called it weak and stale. Amid the criticism, Sir Paul came close to quitting music altogether.
He says: “I did get depressed. I was getting slagged off by everyone, and that does make you question if you’ve still got it. It makes you think, ‘Can I still do this? Can I make a decent record?’ I did seriously consider packing it in on a number of occasions.”
Instead, he “learned not to care” what critics said. He formed Wings, with Linda on keyboard, Denny on drums and former Moody Blues’ Denny Laine on guitar.
Their album Band on the Run reached No1 in 1974, followed by Venus and Mars the next year. The band also scored a Christmas No1 single with Mull of Kintyre in 1977. It was the first song to sell more than two million copies in the UK and is one of the country’s top 10 best-selling songs of all time.
But before those successes came, the band would turn up at universities in a van and play gigs unannounced, charging 50p entry as they honed their craft and learned to play together. “It was as simple and mad as that,” Sir Paul recalls.
Band on the Run made them huge stars – but not everything went smoothly when they recorded it in Lagos, Nigeria. The studio wasn’t up to scratch and Paul and Linda were mugged one night by six people, including one with a knife.
The robbers took money, a notebook with lyrics and some demos. Sir Paul recalls: “Linda is a ballsy chick. She’s screaming, ‘Don’t touch him! He’s a musician! He’s just like you. He’s a soul brother. Leave him alone.’” After recovering from the shock the band got back on track.
Although there was more drama when Paul fainted from a bronchial spasm caused by too much smoking. Years later, as success grew and Wings began to tour the world, Paul was arrested in Japan when 219 grams of cannabis were found in his hand luggage. He says: “It was the maddest thing in my life – to go into Japan, which has a seven-year hard-labour penalty for pot, and be so free and easy.
“I put a bloody great bag of the stuff right on the top of my suitcase.” Daughter Stella now says: “A nine-year-old could have hidden weed better than my parents.” It proved to be a huge mistake – Paul spent nine days in prison and the 1980 tour dates were cancelled.
After returning to England, with musical differences becoming apparent, Paul decided to release his solo album McCartney II. Plans for a US tour were dropped and Wings officially disbanded in 1981 when Denny Laine announced he had quit. As a result, Sir Paul turned to his solo career – and he has been making music and touring for 45 years. In the foreword to the book, the 83-year-old reveals plans for a new album in 2026 and says that his love for songwriting remains.
“I have 25 songs that I’m finishing in the next few months,” he says. “New songs that are interesting. I can hear something, I can hear a piece of music, and think, ‘Oh, I love that.’
“And I’ll incorporate that feeling into a new song. And often, a constant thread through my writing is nostalgia, the memories of things past. I don’t question too much how it happens. I’m just thrilled that it does.”
* Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run by Paul McCartney is out on November 4, published by Allen Lane. Also, Wings: The Definitive Self-Titled Collection, is out on Friday
Source: Mirror
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