Paul McCartney Reveals the Unlikely Artist Who Inspired Him to Form His Post-Beatles Band Wings

Paul McCartney shared his recollections about the formation of his post-Beatles band Wings in a new interview with the U.K. magazine Mojo. The 81-year-old rock icon revealed that the inspiration for him to put together the group, which also featured his first wife Linda, came from an unexpected source: country legend Johnny Cash.

“[Linda and I] were in bed one night, newly married, when Johnny Cash came on the telly with a new band he’d formed with [rock ‘n’ roll pioneer] Carl Perkins, a big hero of mine,” McCartney remembered. “There they were, playing with some country musicians I had never heard of, looking like they were having fun. I thought: here’s Johnny, he’s back, he’s doing it. So I turned to Linda and said, ‘Do you want to form a band?’ And she went, ‘Sure.’ That’s how our relationship was.”

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McCartney explained that the idea of forming a band with some relatively unknown musicians appealed to him more than some other options he was considering at the time.

“After the end of The Beatles I was faced with certain alternatives,” he pointed out. “One was to give up music entirely and do God knows what. Another was to start a super band with very famous people, Eric Clapton and so on. I didn’t like either so I thought: How did The Beatles start? It was a bunch of mates who didn’t know what they were doing.”

He continued, “That’s when I realized maybe there is a third alternative: to get a band that isn’t massively famous, to not worry if we don’t know what we’re doing because we would form our character by learning along the way. It was a real act of faith. It was crazy, actually.”

About Late Wings Member Denny Laine

Wings did feature one other fairly well-known musician, founding Moody Blues frontman Denny Laine, who sadly passed away in December 2023 at age 79 from interstitial lung disease.

In the Mojo interview, McCartney lamented the loss of his longtime former bandmate, who was the only consistent member of Wings besides Paul and Linda during its 10-year history.

“I heard that Denny was getting better, there was hope for the future, but obviously not,” said McCartney. “It’s very sad because Denny was great. Can you imagine trying to start another band after The Beatles? With Denny, we managed it.”

50th Anniversary Band on the Run Reissue

McCartney’s Mojo interview comes in advance of the deluxe 50th anniversary reissue of Wings’ classic 1973 album Band on the Run.

As previously reported, the expanded version of the record will be released on February 2. The Band on the Run 50th Anniversary Edition will feature an extra disc offering “underdubbed” mixes of nine of the album’s 10 tracks. The collection can be pre-ordered now.