Paul McCartney and Wings - Band On the Run (1973)

(This review is meant to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the release of Band On the Run this month.)

If necessity is the mother of invention, then adversity is the mother of innovation.  Having attempted to start over with a new band for a new decade, Paul McCartney ended up in a huge rut after two poorly received Wings albums that offered music ranging from stripped-down nonsense to immaculately produced mush.  With two of his band's members - drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCollugh - having quit, and  with the EMI studio in Lagos, Nigeria, where Paul would record the third Wings LP, turning out to be more primitive than the studio that greeted the Beatles in 1962, Paul had no choice but to concoct a basic album, overdubbing guitar, bass and drums,  with only wife Linda and right-hand man Denny Laine supporting him, with any overdubs he couldn't handle himself (brass, strings) to be added after the fact in London.  Any other major performer with so much going against him might have been happy to make a halfway decent record his die-hard fans might like.  But because this is Paul McCartney we're talking about, he rose to the challenge and - finally - made an artistic statement equal to John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band.

Band On the Run is a release, an exhalation of energy and drive from a man who has finally put his past behind him.  From the pent-up mid-tempo tension of the title track, exploding into the guitar and brass crescendo that leads into the tale of a band of outlaws, to the majestic orchestration of the closing cut, "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty-Five," Paul delivers an album that recalls the adventure of Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road, but with a seamless, polished sound that is distinctive from the Beatles.  The songs are all about escape and freedom, freedom from being a Beatle, freedom from expectations, and the freedom to live life and enjoy it.  The pulsating energy of "Jet" and the joyous rhythms of "Mrs. Vanderbilt" are spectacular expressions of the carefree feeling Paul has found in expanding the possibilities of his own music without having to rely on his old bandmates, while ballads like "Bluebird" and "Mamunia" resonate with crisp acoustic guitar lines and plaintive lyrics.  

Band On the Run is the album everyone knew Paul had in him in the first three years following the Beatles' breakup, but what is surprising here are songs that fans didn't know he was capable of.  "Let Me Roll It" recalls the basic, raw nature of John's original Plastic Ono sound, while the intentionally fragmented "Picasso's Last Words (Drink To Me)," artist Pablo Picasso's final words set to music at the suggestion of actor Dustin Hoffman, runs through half-heard French dialogue, abrupt arrangement changes, and quotes from other Band On the Run songs.  The spirit of the record, though, is probably best captured by a single that, ironically, was only included on the U.S. edition of Band On the Run.  "Helen Wheels" is a fast, boisterous tune chronicling Wings' trip from Scotland to London in a punningly named Land Rover.  Apart from being the only good song ever written about an SUV, "Helen Wheels" is one of the few songs in Paul's career that show him in an unguarded moment, when he's not playing the role of a lovable pop star.  It has a lot of energy that helps fuel the whole album, and it's the same energy that would sustain Paul through the rest of the seventies, even if Venus and Mars and subsequent Wings albums showed little of Band On the Run's artistic adventure.  But if any album of Paul's reminded us why he was still important after the Beatles' split, Band On the Run was it.