‘Wings Over the World’ Documentary Premiered 35 Years Ago Today, Chronicling Paul McCartney’s Return to the U.S.
Paul McCartney and Wings formed shortly after The Beatles disbanded. While the band didn’t have the same success as The Beatles, Wings was still a prolific band of the 1970s. Their 1975-1976 tour proved that McCartney could be the leader of an excellent band and could be successful without his former band. The tour was documented in Wings Over the World, which premiered on CBS 35 years ago today.
Paul McCartney formed Wings shortly after The Beatles broke up
The Beatles dissolved in 1970, with each member of the fab four embarking on solo careers. McCartney began his solo career with two albums: McCartney and Ram. While these albums had mild success, the singer-songwriter wanted to get back to playing in a band. In 1971, he and his wife Linda formed Wings. The starting roster had Paul on bass, Linda on keyboard, Denny Seiwell on drums, and Denny Laine on guitar.
While The Beatles mostly remained consistent, the roster for Wings frequently rotated before the band disbanded in 1982. They were never quite as big as The Beatles, but the band still had plenty of hits, including “Band on the Run”, “Jet”, and “Silly Love Songs”. They also had a few No. 1 albums, including Band on the Run and Venus and Mars.
‘Wings Over the World’ documented their 1975-1976 world tour
Starting in 1975, Paul McCartney and Wings went on an international tour that included stops in Europe, North America, and Australia. This marked McCartney’s first return to the U.S. since The Beatles’ final tour in 1966. On March 16, 1979, Wings Over the World, a documentary television film chronicling this tour, premiered on CBS.
The documentary consisted of behind-the-scenes footage and a short excerpt of the band rehearsing at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts before their U.K. university tour in 1972. The documentary featured footage from their performances in Glasgow, Scotland, Los Angeles, CA, Sydney, Australia, and Seattle, WA. The tour led to the live triple album, Wings Over America, which hit No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.
McCartney performed Beatles music for the first time with Wings during this tour
The “Live and Let Die” singer knew audiences would still want to hear him play classic Beatles songs. In the initial years of Wings, McCartney refused, as he wanted Wings to be its own thing. However, in the 1975-1976 tour, McCartney felt that Wings had already become successful, so he finally gave fans what they wanted. In an interview with his website, he explained why he felt comfortable performing Beatles songs during the Wings Over the World tour.
“Previously, all of the efforts had been to establish Wings and to make something that wasn’t like a Beatles tribute band. But once we had a few hits with Wings – and Band on the Run was a really big hit album – we had some of these hits in our repertoire, and it did feel like, ‘Oh, it’s okay, now we can do Beatles stuff!’” McCartney said. “And It was quite a relief in a way because I’m always sort of conscious of what the audience wants because my audience isn’t a narrow audience, it’s quite a wide group of people. There’s a very good chance that they want to hear hits that they’ve heard you do in your career. So, if you don’t do ‘Hey Jude,’ they’re probably a bit disappointed, you know. And we hadn’t done anything like that at that point.”
