Band on the Run turned 50 at the end of last year, and a new expanded edition—its fourth—celebrates the anniversary. As the proliferation of reissues over the years suggests, it’s Paul McCartney’s most consequential post-Beatles record, if not necessarily his best: the album that revived his critical fortunes and established him as a powerhouse outside his former band.
McCartney’s career was hardly languishing when Band on the Run appeared at the end of 1973. Earlier that year, Red Rose Speedway became his second album to reach No. 1 in the U.S., with the dreamy ballad “My Love” topping the Billboard charts and his James Bond theme “Live and Let Die” coming close. Yet his critical reputation was at a nadir, lacking the countercultural cachet of either John Lennon or George Harrison, ex-bandmates whose early-’70s successes hit the sweet spot where the underground and mainstream met. Cast as the primary culprit in the Beatles’ demise, McCartney was portrayed as a careerist control freak who specialized in featherweight pop.
But following the Fab Four’s breakup, McCartney hardly had a master plan. Newly married to the former Linda Eastman, he moved to a farm in Scotland and then revived an idea he had for the Beatles in their waning days: to get back out and play rock’n’roll as part of a group. As he recently told Mojo, he realized his path forward was “to get a band that isn’t massively famous, to not worry if we don’t know what we’re doing because we would form our character by learning along the way.”
An essential part of that fledgling band was Linda McCartney, who previously hadn’t played music. Paul recalled, “I wasn’t motivated by having a fabulous group. I was motivated by not wanting to leave my wife behind. We had only just married. What was I going to do, run off on the road? The Beatles weren’t very good when they started out either.” He had the pick of prime studio players, recruiting New York drummer Denny Seiwell after he played on Ram, the 1971 album credited to Paul and Linda McCartney, but he found his true lieutenant in Denny Laine, a guitarist who sang lead on the Moody Blues’ breakthrough hit, “Go Now,” in 1964 but spent the subsequent decade struggling to maintain a living as a working musician.
Laine shared a history with McCartney and also recognized his subordinate role. He later said, “Let’s be honest—[McCartney] wanted to be in a band in a sense, but he would still have the final call.” McCartney overshadowed the rest of Wings to the extent that their records were essentially treated as Paul’s creation: Jon Landau’s Rolling Stone rave of Band on the Run didn’t mention Denny Laine’s name once.