The Fake Name Paul McCartney Used to Write the Sleeve notes on a Wings Album
Paul McCartney has used several pseudonyms throughout his career, including Paul Ramon and Percy Thrillington. McCartney introduced another fake name for the album Wild Life by Wings when he penned the sleeve notes.
Paul McCartney used a few pseudonyms throughout his career
The world knows McCartney by his real name, but there have been several incidents of the former Beatle using a stage name to create more privacy. In the early days of The Beatles, the entire band experimented with stage names while on tour with Johnny Gentle. McCartney went under the name Paul Ramon, and the name eventually became the inspiration for The Ramones.
McCartney also used a fake name on Thrillington, an instrumental version of his second solo album Ram. The album was produced by McCartney and arranged by Richard Hewson, but Paul released it using the pseudonym Percy Thrillington. For his first solo album McCartney, the “Yesterday” singer recorded under the name Billy Martin so people wouldn’t know where he was recording material.
Paul McCartney used the name Clint Harrigan for the sleeve notes on ‘Wild Life’ by Wings
Since albums aren’t bought in physical form anymore, people don’t have the chance to read sleeve notes, which are messages from the artist written on the sleeve with details about the album. In an interview with Club Sandwich, Paul McCartney said he always enjoyed reading sleeve notes and wanted to include them on the debut Wings album Wild Life.
“I like sleevenotes, especially Derek Taylor’s sleevenotes – I like something to read when I’m listening,” McCartney explained. “You see, I come from the time when you used to buy a record and then have a half-hour bus journey home, and so it was always very important to have a note. The Sgt Pepper sleeve was packed with stuff for that very reason. Every album had sleevenotes once, and then suddenly, everyone stopped having them, especially in the early 1970s. So I decided to re-invent them: for Wings Wild Life I drew that little cartoon and wrote some words.”
However, McCartney says he didn’t want to seem narcissistic by writing about how terrific Wings was. So, he authored the sleeve notes under the name Clint Harrigan.
“I thought, I can’t just sign it Paul McCartney, having written about how great the group is, so I made up the name Clint Harrigan,” he added. “It was the easiest way of doing it, to put someone else’s name there, do a little cartoon and put it out.”
McCartney used this fake name a few times
Paul McCartney used Clint Harrigan a few times following his Wings debut. He used the name again when he wrote the sleeve notes for Thrillington. He also used it for a press release for MPL Communications, McCartney’s music publishing company. The “Live and Let Die” singer said it’s easy to tell when he writes something, no matter what name, because he isn’t a great writer.
“You can always tell it something is mine because it’s badly written! I’ve got a definite schoolboy writing style,” McCartney admitted. “I remember when I was in hospital once, aged 11, I did this pretty good essay about something and then totally blew it at the end by saying, ‘So if you’re ever there, remember to go along and pay a visit!’ – it suddenly became a travelogue. I always think back to that, even now, when I’ve got to write anything. There’s something incomplete about the way I write prose. I always stick in some terrible little line that’s a dead giveaway, but I’m working on it.”
