06/12/2025
ON THIS DATE (52 YEARS AGO)
December 5, 1973 – Paul McCartney & Wings: Band on the Run is released.
# ALL THINGS MUSIC PLUS+ 5/5
# Allmusic 4.5/5
# Record Mirror (see original review below)
# Rolling Stone (see original review below)
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Band on the Run is an album by Paul McCartney & Wings, released in the US on December 5, 1973 (December 7, 1973, in the UK). It topped the Billboard 200 Albums chart and features three Billboard Hot 100 charting singles - "Band On The Run" ( #1), "Helen Wheels" ( #10) and "Jet" ( #7). In early 1975, Paul McCartney & Wings won the Grammy award for "Best Pop Vocal Performance By a Duo, Group or Chorus" for Band on the Run. In 2003, the album was ranked #418 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.
Band on the Run became Wings' most successful album and remains the most celebrated of McCartney's post-Beatles albums. It was the last McCartney album issued on the Apple Records label. After the success of Red Rose Speedway and "Live and Let Die" - the featured song for the James Bond movie of the same name - Wings began contemplating its next album. Paul and Linda McCartney began writing new songs at their Scottish retreat soon after concluding their 1973 tour.
Bored with recording in the United Kingdom, they wanted to go to an exotic locale. After asking EMI to send him a listing of all their international recording studios, Paul happened upon Lagos in Nigeria and was instantly taken with the idea of recording in Africa.
Alongside the McCartney's, guitarist and pianist Denny Laine, lead guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell also were set to go. However, a few weeks before departing in late August, McCullough quit Wings in Scotland; Seiwell followed suit the night before the August 8, 1973, departure for Nigeria. This left just the core of the band - Paul, Linda and Denny Laine - to venture to Lagos, along with former Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick.
Upon arriving in Lagos, the band discovered a country in stark contrast from their visions of paradise. The country was run by a military government, with corruption and disease running rampant. The studio, located on Wharf Road in the suburb of Apapa, was ramshackle and underequipped. The control desk was faulty and there was only one tape machine, a Studer 8-track. The band rented houses near the airport in Ikeja, an hour away from the studio. Paul, Linda and their three children stayed in one while Denny Laine, Geoff Emerick and Wings' two roadies stayed in another.
The band established a routine of recording during the week and playing tourist on the weekends. Paul temporarily joined a country club where he would spend most mornings. The band would be driven to the studio in the early afternoon where recording would last into the late evening and sometimes early morning. To make up for the departed band members, Paul would play drums and lead guitar parts with Denny playing rhythm guitar and Linda adding keyboards.
More incidents would plague Wings' Lagos stay. While out walking one night against advice, Paul and Linda were robbed at knifepoint. The assailants made away with all of their valuables and even stole a bag containing a notebook full of handwritten lyrics and songs, and cassettes containing demos for songs to be recorded. On another occasion, Paul was laying down a vocal track when he began gasping for air. According to Geoff Emerick, Sound Engineer for the album: "Within seconds, [Paul] turned as white as a sheet, explaining to us in a croaking voice that he couldn't catch his breath. We decided to take him outside for some fresh air...[but] once he was exposed to the blazing heat he felt even worse and began keeling over, finally fainting dead away at our feet. Linda began screaming hysterically; she was convinced that he was having a heart attack...The official diagnosis was that he had suffered a bronchial spasm brought on by too much smoking. "
Another incident was the confrontation with local Afrobeat star and political activist Fela Ransome-Kuti who publicly accused the band of being in Africa to exploit and steal African music after their visit to his club. Ransome-Kuti even went to the studio to confront McCartney who played their songs for him proving that they contained no local influence whatsoever. Later on drummer and former Cream member Ginger Baker invited the band to record their entire album at his place, ARC Studio in Ikeja. Though not wanting the invitation, Paul agreed to go there for one day. The song "Picasso's Last Words" was recorded at ARC with Baker contributing a percussive tin of gravel.
Recording of the album was completed by the third week of September and the McCartneys hosted a beach barbecue to celebrate the end of recording. They flew back to England on 23 September 1973 where they were met by fans and journalists. In October, two weeks after the band's return to London, final overdubs and orchestral tracks were added and the album was finished at George Martin's AIR Studios (George Martin was not present).
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THE COVER
The cover photo was taken on 28 October 1973 by photographer Clive Arrowsmith against the gable end wall of the stable block in Osterley Park, Hounslow. It depicts the now iconic view of Paul, Linda and Denny plus six other well-known people dressed as convicts caught in the spotlight of a prison searchlight.
They are:
Michael Parkinson (chat-show host and journalist)
Kenny Lynch (actor, comedian and singer)
James Coburn (actor)
Clement Freud (columnist, gourmet, raconteur, Member of Parliament, Just a Minute panellist and grandson of Sigmund)
Christopher Lee (actor)
John Conteh (Liverpool boxer who later became World Light-Heavyweight champion)
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Paul's fun on the run
Rosemary Horide
Disc Dec 8 1973
PAUL McCARTNEY AND WINGS-"Band On The Run" (Pas 10007, £2.38). (When Paul was in the Disc office the other day he gave us the background to some of the tracks on his new album. We thought you'd like to hear them-along with our comments on the finished album.)
SIDE ONE
Band On The Run
“This is the title track-it goes with that picture of all the stars 'on the run' on the cover. But apart from that there was nothing special about it."
This number demonstrates the changes of tempo that have almost become a McCartney trademark these days. A slow melodic beginning moves abruptly to a much faster central refrain. A good taster track for the rest of the album.
Jet
"I originally got the idea for the title from a puppy . . . a small black Labrador puppy from a litter one of our dogs had. I'd gone off on my own to get away from everything and there I was sitting in the middle of a field when it came bounding up. The pup's name gave me a spark of an idea-and out came this song about a girl called Jet."
Out of that also came a strong belting refrain and Paul's voice, as distinctive as ever, singing some of his own fine lyrics. The use of echo helps the whole feeling.
Bluebird.
"We wrote it in Jamaica when we were on holiday. In the recording we used a bloke called Harry Casey who we've never used before. I know him from way back, when we were in Hamburg. Then he used to be in a group called Derry and the Seniors-at that time he looked about 40, with his pork-pie hat and long drape jacket. Now he looks about 25 and is your groovy session player! He played a blinder of a sax solo.
"Helping us on percussion is a guy called Lenny Kabaka-the only African we used. When we were back in London he just turned up at the studio, and we found out he was from Lagos!"
One of my favourite songs on the album-with the repetitive refrain again an art all the Beatles mastered so well, and one of the reasons their songs stuck in one's memory.
Mrs. Vanderbilt.
"This was recorded during a power cut in Lagos. Suddenly everything went black, and eventually we found ourselves doing it on EMI generator power, and just hoping the hum wouldn't come over on the record.
"There's a phrase on this track that is also on a song I wrote for Rod Stewart, one he's just recorded. It fitted so well into this one, too, that I pinched it! So the phrase is in both songs."
The hum didn't come over, and they put down successfully one of the fastest tracks on the album. It has an unusual rhythm, and having heard it a few times you find yourself singing "Ho, hey ho" rather like one of the Seven Dwarfs.
Let Me Roll It
We put the guitars through a vocal PA system to get the unusual guitar sound on this one.
By far my favourite, and I believe the best, track. That could be because of the remarkable Beatles' sound he achieves. One of those slow melodic numbers for which he's so well known.
SIDE TWO:
Mamunia
"The first one we did in Lagos-recorded in the middle of a tropical rainstorm. I don't know if that had any effect on the final result." The persistent rhythm of this track may echo the rain, but apart from that it's easy going and fairly forgettable.
No Words
"That's one I did with Denny -he had half and I kind of finished it.
A McCartney/Laine composition-sounds good doesn't it? That's a favourite of mine, I thing it grows on you. And it really works as a record." In fact it would even make a single. There's some fine guitar work and some lovely melodies. Paul and Denny should get together more often to write songs.
Picasso's Last Words.
"We met Dustin Hoffman when we were in Jamaica-and went to have dinner with him one night. We were talking about songwriting . . . and he pulled out a copy of Time magazine. He said 'Here's a piece that I thought was really lyrical'. It was the story of how Picasso had toasted his friends one night saying how he couldn't drink any more-and the next morning he was dead.
"So I plonked a few chords and out came the ,song-Dustin was very excited about it. When we came to record it at Ginger Baker's studio the idea was to fragment it, make it sort of cubist. It's very disjointed, but that's the way it's meant to be, folks!"
Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five
"This was originally a little thing I couldn't get words to, except for the first phrase. But the words just came to me the day we were due to record, and 1 think it's turned out quite well."
These last two tracks almost run into one another. They are novelty tracks, which contain interesting ideas. I won't say they always come off, but at least they are unusual.
On the whole this is a superb album. There are flashes of that McCartney magic, and I prefer this even to "Red Rose Speedway." Paul says it was fun to make-and it's fun to listen to. An outstanding album, with a lot more cf Paul's individual sound than his previous albums have had-and for my money there can't be enough. **** RH
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ORIGINAL RECORD MIRROR REVIEW
Record & Radio Mirror, DECEMBER 15, 1973
By Peter Harvey
DEAR PAUL (Linda and Denny too),
Felt I had to write and tell you how much your new elpee sounds like that old group you used to play with, the Beatles. I know it's all in the past now and perhaps you'd all much rather forget your identity, but honest, there isn't a track that doesn't send me into a shiver of nostalgia for those Fab Four days.
I've got a sneaky feeling that you Paul had an inkling of this when you returned from making the album in Nigeria. You've been popping up all over the place, on the telly, on the radio, and in the music papers. You must have felt pleased with your work, glad to have something to shout about?
Well as you might say, "there's no sweat" over this one; it just happens to be the best thing you've done. But just how much does this excellence owe to the fact that Wings is no more? I know it's still Paul McCartney And Wings, but after all, it's only your missus and a regular old mate. The other fellers you drafted in were kinda musicians looking for their own expressions, whereas now it's more a family thing saying: "Look what we can do!"
The cover of the album was the first surprise, I mean that must have been an expensive photo session with all those famous people. Let's see, there's Michael Parkinson, Kenny Lynch, James Coburn ( ?), Clement Freud, Christopher Lee, and someone I don't recognise (someone said it was a famous boxer). Anyway, Kenny Lynch takes the prize for looking most like a frightened prisoner trying to escape.
And Band On The Run is a good title. It seems to be something of a theme, am I right? There's the cover and all those travellers artefacts in the luverly photo on the back, all those coloured pictures taken on your trip to Lagos, and even the progression of songs. Or is that taking it too far. I know it must have become a drag having so many cultists reading meanings into your words, but this one does have a little mystique about it doesn't it?
There's a nice attention to detail too. Like the photos of each of you are in a different order on each side of the record. Paul stays in the same place and Denny and Linda swop positions next to him - just think what that will mean to all the Great Paul McCartney Legend freax who study every fact known about you. Subtle, eh, like to keep them guessing? It was that sort of teaser that started the huge "Paul McCartney is dead" myth.
Still, down to the music. That was what I really wanted to congratulate you on.
It seems to me that the loss of Denny Seiwell on drums and Henry McCulluch on guitar is an important factor to this album. You've been unable to rely on an injection of varying musical stimulus, so it's back down to what you know best plus some very tidy harmony singing and very tasteful touches on synthesizer. I reckon it's time Linda took some credit for her work on that unwieldy instrument - contrary to popular opinion, it's not the sort of machine anyone can drive.
For the rest it's down to your melodic bass and shall we say uncompli- cated drumming, and God knows who plays the guitars, did I hear oboes, and definitely some fine sax solos? That did add to the mystique I suppose . . . not knowing owing who is playing the Beatlish guitara phrases and rhythms, and the piano. I know you can do it all Paul, but Denny's in there some - were too.
The songs are as good as anything you have written and much more thoughtful than those on your last album. It's a paradox really; the songs are not as simple as those on Red Rose Speedway but they are played in a simpler more effective manner. 'Course it's all down to your drumming Paul. It's hardly piledriving, but you've got a luverly sense of rhythm.
It's hard to pick a favourite song. You start off with a very intimate leveller to all the listeners - beaut bit on the synthy - and take us into a rather personal comment and then the title song which has a smashing first verse: (Hope you don't mind me using this?) "Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun. And the first one said to the second one there I hope you're having fun. "
Jet seems to be a personal look back; it's a good rocker anyway with more nice synthy work. Bluebird is so romantic and smoochy it makes your toes curl, if yoou know what I mean.
Mrs. Vanderbilt is ever so Beatlish and a bit calypso too - maybe a mark of respect four your location? It's urgent from the bass up but has a lazy sunny feel too.
Let Me Roll It would certainly be a big hit as a single and as such makes a perfect side one closer. It's catchy, has a raunchy guitar, and wuite an echo on the mouthbox. Let Me Roll It is the chorus line and really hooks.
Mamunia opens side two and again, it's a luverly song. I don't know what it means but it sounds fine. Again the lyrics gently swirl pictures before you.
No Words is the one you wrote with Denny. It sounds almost familiar, Laine and McCartney. It sounds almost George Harrison too. There's a slight edge that almost (almost?) typifies the Lennon and McCartney thing. Well maybe not, but it would be nice to hear what else you can come up with.
I reckon Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me) will become one of our all-time great pub songs and is sure to win fame with alcoholics from Mile End to Moscow. Presumably it's a tribute to the great painter: "Drink To Me, Drink To My Health, you know I can't drink any more. " I love the tempo changes and the French bit and the reprisals for Jet and Mrs. Vanderbilt.
And the last of all Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five. A joke on David Bowie? It's a happy song musically but just what is the little stuff your lady gets behind? You can't get enough of it but .. . Oh well, Paul, Linda, and Denny, it's a really good album. Pretty cute of you to drop it on us just before Christmas too.
Thanx for reading the letter, oh and seasonal greetings to y'all. Peter Harvey
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RECORD WORLD, December 8, 1973
PAUL McCARTNEY & WINGS, "BAND ON THE RUN." This is the album every- one has always hoped McCartney m would make, filled with shimmering < melodies, sensational vocals and incredibly tasty instrumentals. Great cut follows great cut as Paul goes from the hard rock of the "Helen Wheels" single to sweet soft stuff in an album triumph. Apple SO -34115 (5.98).
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ORIGINAL ROLLING STONE REVIEW
Band on the Run finds Paul McCartney walking a middle ground between autobiographical songwriting and subtle attempts to mythologize his own experience through the creation of a fantasy world of adventure -- perhaps remotely inspired by his having recently written "Live and Let Die." He does it by uniting the myth of the rock star and the outlaw, the original legendary figure on the run.
Up until now, the critical assumption has been that McCartney's lyrics mean little if anything, that he is a mere stylist, playing games with words and sounds. And it is of course possible that the words on Band on the Run don't mean (or weren't intended to mean) as much as I think they do. But I'll take a chance, and say that Band on the Run is an album about the search for freedom and the flight from restrictions on his and Linda's personal happiness. It is about the pursuit of freedom from his past as a Beatle, freedom from the consequences of the drug busts that have kept him from the United States and forced him into thinking of himself as an outlaw (witness the album cover, as well as the title). It is also about two people becoming what they want to be, trying to decide what they want to do, and asking to be accepted for what they are now rather than what they were then.
If the listener were to ignore the music and the skill with which McCartney has developed his theme, the entire enterprise might seem banal. But he holds the record together through the continual intimation that he enjoys the search for freedom more than he might enjoy freedom himself. In the best tradition of outlaw mythology, he makes being on the run sound so damned exciting.
I'm surprised I like Band on the Run so much more than McCartney's other solo albums because, superficially, it doesn't seem so different from them. It's superiority derives from a subtle shifting and rearrangement of elements running through all of his post-Beatles music, a rounding out of ideas that had previously been allowed to stand half-baked, often embarrassingly so. Band on the Run is no collection of song fragments (McCartney, Ram), nor a collection of mediocre and directionless songs (Wild Life, Red Rose Speedway). Band on the Run is a carefully composed, intricately designed personal statement that will make it impossible for anyone to classify Paul McCartney as a mere stylist again.
A lesser talent would have taken the escape concept and perhaps woven a simple story around it. But, consistent with his own past, the songs overlap both in their content and sentiments (some are even reprised), the album forming a unit without ever becoming too schematic, literal, overbearing or overtly accessible.
On Band on the Run, there are two separate searches going on: McCartney's for himself and the listener's for McCartney. The title song begins soberly, its narrator in jail, his music depressed. Both he and the album explode at the moment of his escape, the newfound exhilaration suggesting that there could have been no such pleasure without the preceding pain and that while McCartney prefers the former to the latter, he has learned how to cope with both.
From the moment of escape, everything on the album eventually evokes the notion of flight. "Jet," a superb piece of music with an obscure lyric about the McCartneys' dog, suggests an overwhelming desire not only to get away but to get away to someone. It ends up a love song, a tribute to both a person and a state of mind, propelled forward by a grand performance.
"Helen Wheels" (which wasn't supposed to be on the album) is about the McCartneys' Land Rover and is another travel song, more upbeat, and feeding the fantasy of a rock band looking for action. Even on a simple love song, "Bluebird," we find the narrator "...flying through your door" to take his lover away, "...as we head across the sea/And at last we will be free."
"Mrs. Vandebilt," which evidences some of Paul's healthy propensity for playfulness and nonsense, is vaguely about the outlaw's need for a haven, in this case the fantasy world of carefree jungle life -(presumably inspired by their recording the LP in Lagos, Nigeria). In an album that contains a number of subtle and sometimes (perhaps) unintended comments on the Beatles, his innocent questions, "What's the use of worrying?/What's the use of hurrying?/What's the use of anything?" might be construed as a comment on Harrison and Lennon's continued high-mindedness and overbearing seriousness.
In point of fact, Band on the Run is closer to the Beatles' style than Ringo, which, though it utilized all the members of the group, is more Richard Perry than Ringo Starr. McCartney's emphasis on amplified acoustic guitars, double-tracked vocals, and a generally thin sound in the middle range, places much of the LP in the Hard Days' Night-Beatles VI mold. Despite the presence of pure McCartney elements (the lovely strings, so well done by Tony Visconti, the elaborate percussion so superior to Ram's) references to the Beatles make an important contribution to the album's mythic undercurrents.
"Mrs. Vandebilt" fools with McCartney's own excesses of style from Ram, sounding vaguely like (although far superior to) my least favorite of his records, "Monkberry Moon Delight." "Mamunia," a lovely song about accepting nature as unalterable, begins with a guitar intro suspiciously like Harrison's on "Give Me Love," though all similarity ends when the vocal begins.
But there is no mistaking McCartney's intention on "Let Me Roll It." A parody of and tribute to John Lennon's Plastic Ono style, he re-creates it with such precision, inspiration, enthusiasm and good humor that I am hard pressed to remember whether Lennon has recorded even a handful of songs that better it, McCartney goes all the way: a perfect vocal imitation, duplication of the Lennon-Spector production style, use of Lennon's lead guitar punctuations and the simple arrangement (complete with tacky Farfisa organ). "Let Me Roll It" is McCartney joyfully asserting that he can play his former partner's music as well as Lennon can, at the same time that it stands on its own as a perfectly satisfying piece of work.
"Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)" is the album's most personally revealing and one of its most moving songs. Dylan mythologizes cowboys; McCartney idealizes artists. But his celebration of Picasso's life at the moment of his death quickly turns into a fantasy about his own death. He asks only that his woman sing the same words to him that he sings for Picasso: "Drink to me, drink to my health, you know I can't drink any more." His approach to death is remarkably good humored and a segue into "Jet" now suggests an even more grandiose escape than the one from jail.
Perhaps McCartney can face death with humor because, as the hilarious rock & roll of "1985" suggests, he plans to stick around for some time. It would have been easy to end Band on the Run with the cut's happy projection of the future, but McCartney doesn't take the easy way out this time around. At the exciting conclusion of "1985," he segues into a short reprise of the title cut, a move suggesting once again that he isn't really sure that he wants to give up the search and the fight. They have become ends in themselves, part of his life, part of the mythology he has built up around himself, part of the fantasy he helped to create about the life of rock stars.
The album's abrupt and surprising ending suggests that the McCartneys are afraid they may find what they are looking for only to discover that it, too, fails to satisfy them. Thus they end with only one commitment: to remain a band on the run. That decision has resulted in (with the possible exception of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band) the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles.
~ Jon Landau (January 31, 1974)
TRACKS:
All songs written and composed by Paul and Linda McCartney, except "No Words" by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine.
Side one
1. "Band on the Run" - 5:10
2. "Jet" - 4:06
3. "Bluebird" - 3:22
4. "Mrs Vandebilt" - 4:38
5. "Let Me Roll It" - 4:47
Side two
1. "Mamunia" - 4:50
2. "No Words" - 2:33
3. "Helen Wheels" (US and international only; not UK) - 3:34
4. "Picasso's Last Words (Drink to Me)" - 5:50
5. "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five" - 5:27
