Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run

Told in revelatory first person, this immersive account of Paul McCartney and Wings is the engrossing oral history of a band that came to define a generation.

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the astonishing, almost improbable, story of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band from 1971 through its dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, key players, and family members, Wings poignantly recounts, now with a half-century’s wisdom, the story of a man and musician navigating the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup, soon joined by his wife―American photographer Linda McCartney―on keyboard and vocals; drummer Denny Seiwell; and guitarist Denny Laine, among many others. Organized around nine Wings albums, the narrative follows the adventurous band as they survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, appear unannounced at various university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the decade. With 150 black-and-white and color photographs, many previously unseen, this is a landmark work of soaring originality.