Man on the Run

by Tom Doyle

  At first the McCartneys settled in the main house, with the band living in a neighbouring farmhouse, mirroring the living arrangements at High Park. It quickly became clear, however, that this sense of separation wasn’t aiding the group’s bonding. Only when the others moved into the big house did the rehearsal sessions in its converted garage become productive.

  In their downtime, the group shot basketball hoops, enjoyed barbecues – including one four days in to celebrate Paul’s 32nd birthday – and rode motorbikes. McCartney treated himself to a Honda road bike, which he sped around on haphazardly and helmet-less, much to the unease of one of the attendant security guards, who wryly commented, ‘The next headline he makes will be about a motorcycle wreck. He doesn’t know how to drive that thing.’

  Elsewhere, Paul lived out his cowboy fantasies, sauntering around town in mirrored aviator shades and a Stetson. Lebanon, situated in the partly ‘dry’ Wilson County, had restricted alcohol laws, resulting in moonshining in the surrounding hills. ‘Guys came into town in old pick-up trucks and did their whittling with bits of wood,’ said Britton. ‘It was straight out of a movie.’

  As the weeks unfolded, visitors to the farm included Roy Orbison, who Paul had first met during the early touring days of The Beatles, and veteran Nashville musicians including guitarist Chet Atkins and pianist Floyd Cramer, whose shared credits included Elvis Presley and The Everly Brothers. The McCartneys visited Johnny and June Cash, and were tickled that their daughters instantly began drawling in southern accents, copying the First Couple of Country’s son, John.

  At the home of music publisher Kevin Killen, Wings’ fix-it and gofer during their stay, the host was bemused to find the McCartneys allowing the kids to jump up and down on his new, all-white crushed-velvet couch, their fingers slick with Kentucky Fried Chicken grease. ‘They were very lenient parents,’ he noted. Ushering them out of the house, while attempting to set his burglar alarm, Killen was horrified to hear the sound of a child bawling. Stella, now nearly four years old, had forgotten her shoes and dashed back inside, straight through a glass door, badly cutting her legs and arms. Linda ran into the house, grabbing towels to stem the blood. Stella was rushed to a hospital at nearby Donelson, where the doctors and nurses kept turning up to peek surreptitiously at her famous father. ‘A couple dozen people died at the hospital,’ Killen joked to Paul. ‘All the doctors were watching you.’

  It soon became public knowledge where the band were staying, and fans began congregating around the gates of the farm, requiring off-duty policemen to be positioned at the entrance 24 hours a day. The phones in the farmhouse rang constantly: TV and radio producers inviting Paul to appear on local shows, celebrities calling to say hello or ask favours. The peaking US heart-throb, David Cassidy, repeatedly called McCartney at the Lebanon house. ‘The stars all came to Paul for help and advice,’ said Britton.

  The McCartneys were clearly at ease in Tennessee. They would indulge themselves with leisurely breakfasts of hot biscuits and country ham at the Loveless Motel; they motored to the nearest drive-in movie theatre to catch double features at the end of the day. Linda bought a gobsmacked Paul the double bass used by Bill Black on Elvis Presley’s ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, one of the records that had made a formative impression on the teenaged McCartney back in Liverpool.

  One night out involved a visit to the fabled Grand Ole Opry to witness the third annual Grand Masters Fiddling Contest. Stepping out of the car with the McCartneys, Kevin Killen noticed that as they approached the theatre, people began to recognise the ex-Beatle and mouth his name in shock. One by one they gravitated towards Paul, forming a crowd. Killen admitted he hadn’t reckoned on the extent of McCartney’s fame: ‘It just didn’t dawn on me what an icon he was.’ Paul, meanwhile, was unruffled by the attention, having learned how to react to this kind of mob behaviour in his Beatlemania days. ‘If you stay calm, you’re OK,’ he told Killen. ‘But if you bolt and run, they’ll tear you apart.’

  Another evening at Nashville’s vaunted Printers Alley, a thoroughfare designed for nightlife, threw up a song. The McCartneys had dinner at the Spanish-galleon-themed country music hangout the Captain’s Table, before moving to the Rainbow Room, where they bumped into a pinball-playing Waylon Jennings, who chatted with the rapt Paul about his early days with Buddy Holly. Later, in a boozy haze, McCartney was struck with an idea for a tune, originally to be titled ‘Diane’, after country singer Diane Gaffney, until Paul was told that she was in a particularly litigious mood and in the process of suing a newspaper reporter who had published an article without her consent.

  Possibly distracted, Paul left the Rainbow Room that night without settling his $4.75 bill, resulting in his name being inked into the bar’s ‘delinquent payments’ book.

  The next day, Paul was found by Britton sitting on a stoop at the farmhouse, playing guitar, completing the lightly country-flavoured song now called ‘Sally G’. Set amid the previous night’s shenanigans, McCartney imagined himself falling in love with the titular girl, who serenades him with Hank Snow’s ‘A Tangled Mind’ before breaking his heart. ‘That was my imagination, adding to the reality of it,’ he says.

  Wings recorded the song at SoundShop Studios on Music Row in Nashville, despite the fact that they were essentially on holiday and didn’t have work permits. At the same time, they committed to tape the chugging, ‘Get Back’-like pop rocker ‘Junior’s Farm’, an upbeat nonsense song written partly in tribute to their time spent lying low on Putnam’s estate. On the recording, set to become the next Wings single, Paul sounds positively liberated, introducing McCulloch’s melodic, slightly flashy guitar solo with the gleeful exhortation, ‘Take me down, Jimmy . . .’

  The musicians even found time to record a jaunty, old-time swing instrumental written by Paul’s father Jim, entitled ‘Walking In The Park With Eloise’. McCartney remembered sitting at the foot of the piano as a ten-year-old while his dad played this self-penned tune and standards such as ‘Chicago’, thrilled and stimulated by the idea that his father had written an actual song of his own. In conversation at the Lebanon farm with Chet Atkins over dinner, Paul told him about the tune and played it to him. The guitarist suggested they record it, and the result was released under the name The Country Hams in October 1974; a perky, slight indulgence that failed to chart. Jim McCartney, quietly touched, was dismissive of his song-writing effort. ‘I said, “You know that song you wrote, Dad?”’ Paul remembers. ‘He said, “No, I’ve never written one . . . I made one up.”’

  These frivolities proved to be entertaining diversions, but ultimately, six weeks in, the band began to grow restless and testy. ‘If you’re together for six weeks, it’s hard work and it begins to tell on you,’ reckoned Denny Laine. ‘At one point I thought, I don’t know what we’ve come here for, we should be at home gigging.’

  Geoff Britton was still trying to come to terms with being in a band with McCartney. During rehearsals, the drummer admits he would catch himself staring at Paul, especially if – as the bandleader had decided to do – they were working up an old Beatles standard such as ‘Hey Jude’. ‘It seemed like a dream,’ said Britton. ‘It was beautiful.’ Nevertheless, under-prepared for the gig, with his foot encased in plaster due to a karate injury, Geoff was having trouble playing some of the material. ‘I was put on the spot a bit,’ he said. ‘“Live And Let Die”, stuff like that. I hadn’t really delved into the music much. I was goofing off. A poxy kit I didn’t like, and I didn’t think I was delivering the goods.’

  Worse, Britton was failing to gel with the others on a personal level, being a teetotal fitness freak amongst a bunch of stoners. He began to irritate his bandmates, sitting there with his foot in plaster, not smoking or drinking. ‘So I’m not quite communicating on a social level,’ he said. ‘I knew it was gonna take them a bit of time to get off on me as a person, ‘cause I’m gonna be a bit weird to them.’ In addition, the drummer was growing increasingly garrulous and opinionated: ‘I’d get a bi
t upfront about things. I’d bite my tongue but basically . . . no, I wouldn’t.’

  One day a major argument broke out in rehearsals. According to Britton, ‘Everyone got a bit stoned and then it got heavy.’ Jimmy insulted Linda, criticising her playing, and there were tears. Britton turned on McCulloch and the pair nearly came to blows. Paul told the angry Britton that he wanted to ‘reassess’ the situation. The thunder-faced drummer stomped off to the crew room, determined to quit, asking the roadies for petty cash he could use while he took off and travelled the States. In the end they talked him down, though he was still fuming and ranting, saying, ‘I’m not going back in there. I’m either the drummer in the band or I’m not.’ The incident punctured Britton’s dreamy bubble. ‘I couldn’t believe all the hassles,’ he said. ‘We were at each other’s throats.’

  The next morning, Paul and Linda talked to Geoff, reassuring him that his place in the band was secure. An uneasy peace was established for the next few days. But in Britton’s eyes, McCulloch remained the major problem – whether he was accusing Linda of playing the wrong chords or hassling the less fastidious guitarist Denny about his tuning. ‘It was very fragile,’ said the drummer. ‘If he came in wrecked and hungover, everything about him would be negative. If he was on an up, then we’d rock away for hours and it would be absolute magic.’

  Britton began to sympathise with McCartney, recognising the difficulty of his position as bandleader and peacemaker, carrying the weight of a monumental reputation. ‘He was subject to so many pressures. His whole world was pressing in on him. And in those conditions, well, you are not a normal person.’ The drummer felt that, having replaced his formerly teenage buddies in The Beatles with what were effectively session players, McCartney was flanked by yes-men and, as a result, was isolated. ‘He didn’t seem to have any old friends any more,’ he said. ‘Paul didn’t have anybody around who could tell him when he was out of order or to fuck off. You need that.’

  The elephant in the room, as always, was the financial agreement with the band. McCartney was keen to drop the idea of contracts and keep the group arrangement looser, and therefore cheaper, by paying the musicians session by session, performance by performance. The problem, once again, was that no one felt as if they were being offered any kind of monetary security. The original idea had been that everyone would travel to Nashville and sign contracts and seal their commitment to the new Wings. Now that they were there, and particularly in the light of the intra-band hassles, this was looking far less likely.

  The band faced up to McCartney and there was something of a showdown, during which they threatened to walk out. ‘It’s not like these things hadn’t been said before,’ Laine pointed out. ‘You’re walking out. But the next minute you can be walking back.’ Somehow, fully employing his powers of persuasion, McCartney managed to talk the band round, convincing them that it would be better if their professional relationship was left non-contracted.

  ‘I’ve signed so many contracts that got me into trouble,’ reasoned Laine, ‘I never want to sign anything again. It just didn’t seem necessary to me.’

  ‘If you’re a real pro and you’ve got a tour booked,’ argued Britton, ‘you don’t phone up and say, “I’m not going.” That’s just not on.’

  McCulloch, who had been put on a wage for a few months to secure his services after joining the band, similarly decided that he’d rather operate on a freelance basis: ‘We’d just go on and get paid for what we do.’

  If the personality clashes within Wings Mk II were making Paul doubtful about committing himself to this group – especially legally, given the pain of his Beatles court battles – then Denny Laine was feeling much the same way. ‘It was being a bit rushed,’ he reckoned. ‘I thought, Hang on, let’s make sure that this is the right group.’ Having served his time as Paul’s apprentice, Laine was clearly enjoying the reflected glow of being part of the core of the operation. ‘Me and Paul and Linda know exactly where we stand now, and you’ve got to inject that into the whole group,’ he stressed, verbally puffing his chest out.

  Jimmy McCulloch was already proving a more gnarly proposition, however, beyond his combative behaviour in the rehearsal room. In the SoundShop session he angrily threw a Coke bottle at the studio’s control room window. Then he was arrested for some woefully reckless drunken driving, with Kevin Killen having to sweet-talk the authorities, who politely advised him that it might be better if this wayward Scottish rocker exited the country.

  Luckily, the trip was coming to a close. On the day before leaving, the McCartneys met reporters in scorching 90-degree heat at the gates of Putnam’s farm. Paul seemed keen to underline his kinship with the Tennesseans, pointing out that he was basically a country boy at heart himself. ‘I’ve got a farm in Scotland,’ he said. ‘You’re not the only people who have farms, y’know. Back in Scotland, we’re country people in our own way.’

  Still, when Wings landed back in Britain on 17 July, their spirits were low. Britton felt as if he’d blown his big opportunity: ‘I said to my wife, “Dream shattered . . . I should’ve fucking known better.”’ The music press, meanwhile, picked up on the rumours of discontent within the band, ramping them up, with NME wrongly reporting under the headline ‘Wings Upheaval’ that the band had split permanently: ‘The existing line-up of Paul McCartney’s Wings appeared this week to have broken up, following what is understood to have been a major internal policy disagreement.’ A spokesman for Laine admitted that there had been ‘personal difficulties’. The McCartneys’ PR, meanwhile, underlined the open arrangement that Paul had agreed with the others. ‘Wings members are free to pursue their own musical careers,’ read their statement. ‘This will enable them to develop working relationships free of contractual ties. Wings will have a fluid concept, which will be adapted to suit current and future projects.’

  A vague plan was put in place to compile an album to be named Cold Cuts. It would mop up unheard recordings by the previous Wings line-up and introduce the new line-up with the material recorded in Nashville. It wasn’t to happen. But Paul talked up the new band in Melody Maker, while at the same time admitting that he felt there had been problems in the Denny Seiwell/Henry McCullough version of the group, since no one had dared to talk back to him. He cited ‘Mary Had A Little Lamb’ as exhibit A.

  ‘No one would say, “No, Paul, that’s a mistake,”’ he explained, without fully considering what his reaction might have been had the original drummer or guitarist questioned his wisdom in releasing the single at the time. ‘It was all a bit ropey,’ he added. Further, he accepted that Wings had limitations, in respect to their peers, and recognised how hard it was to put a band together and nurture it. Slightly on the back foot, he claimed they were a purposely loose operation and that they were not attempting to ‘be cool and overreach ourselves and try to be Pink Floyd’.

  Instead, Paul reverted to Let It Be mode, gathering the band together at Abbey Road in August to record an hour-long TV special, One Hand Clapping, that in the light of the ructions to come was to remain unseen for many years. In it, the band turn in slick versions of ‘Jet’, ‘Junior’s Farm’, rattling rocker ‘Soily’ and the loping, reggae-ish ‘C Moon’, sounding tight and strong. They can be heard jamming the breezy if mawkish anti-war pop of Paper Lace’s ‘Billy Don’t Be A Hero’, which earlier that year had knocked ‘Band On The Run’ off the top of the UK singles chart, and which was conspicuously McCartney-flavoured.

  Paul was filmed alone at the piano, tinkling his way through an ad lib medley of snatches of cabaret-style songs that he’d constructed with other singers in mind, from the slightly bizarre ‘Suicide’ – a Sinatra-fashioned ballad written in his teens, and eventually presented to the legendary crooner, who wondered in bewilderment if it was a joke – to the drifty romanticism of ‘Let’s Love’, sung by Peggy Lee and produced by McCartney later that year.

  Viewing the One Hand Clapping footage, Britton was surprised to discover that, ‘seeing us playing, we
were a good band’. But as smooth as the actual performances were, the film was revealing in other, less favourable ways: an impish McCulloch exits the room at a close-of-session rendition of ‘Bluebird’, grinning and muttering that Paul is ‘flogging a dead horse’. Later there is an appearance by McCartney’s old friend from Liverpool, Howie Casey, five years older than him and a former member of Derry and the Seniors – the first band from the city to play in Hamburg, mapping out the territory for The Beatles. He is seen being conducted, a touch condescendingly, through a reprise of his improvised sax solo for ‘Bluebird’. Paul, not a big drinker, had asked Howie if he could get him anything for the session, and the saxophonist had asked for a beer. A roadie was duly dispatched, returning, to the musician’s amazement, with a single bottle of beer. ‘I’d been working with John Entwistle,’ Casey laughs, ‘and the place was full of booze, and then we’d go to a club afterwards.’

  Elsewhere in One Hand Clapping, Laine slurs though his voice-over, sounding staggeringly drunk. Britton unintentionally provides the comedy, bouncing behind his drum kit wearing his karate suit. In one section, he enthusiastically slices and kicks his way through the choreography of a kata routine for the benefit of the camera. It is all too easy to see why he was becoming the butt of the others’ jokes. Laine would mock the drummer mercilessly, asking him, ‘What are you gonna do? Play the drums or chop them in two?’

  As one band was falling apart, the legal affairs of another, long dead, were finally being put to rest.

  By the latter half of 1974, relations between the former Beatles were decidedly mixed. Paul and John were getting on better than they had done since the split. When Lennon first returned to New York from LA, and before getting back together with Ono, he shared an apartment with May Pang on East 52nd Street. The McCartneys were regular visitors whenever they were in town. ‘We would go out for dinner all the time,’ says Pang. Lennon said he and Paul enjoyed ‘Beaujolais evenings, reminiscing about the old times’.