Wings
The Story of a Band on the Run
Published on 4. November 2025
Book
Hardback
576 pages
978-0-241-75857-1 (ISBN)
Description
**A Financial Times Book of the Year**
A landmark account of Paul McCartney's triumphant musical reinvention in the 1970s and the rise of one of the decade's most iconic bands
This is the story, in their own words, of a band that came to define a generation. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the madcap history of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their humble beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, with a cast of characters including John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jagger and more, Wings recounts the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles' breakup. Soon joined by his wife - American photographer Linda McCartney - on keyboard and vocals, drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney sowed the seeds for a new band that would provide the soundtrack to the decade.
Organised chronologically around McCartney, RAM and nine Wings albums, the narrative begins when a twenty-seven-year-old superstar, rumoured to be dead, fled with his new wife to a remote sheep farm in Scotland amid a sea of legal and personal rows. Being there gave McCartney time to create and was where this new band emerged. Wings then follows the group as they play unannounced shows at university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, and eventually perform blockbuster stadium shows on their world tour, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the time.
With extraordinary recollections collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into a genre-defining oral history by Ted Widmer, Wings transports the reader to the grit and glamour of the 1970s. Introduced with a heartfelt foreword by McCartney, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run contains 150 black-and-white and colour photographs, many previously unseen, as well as timelines, a gigography and a full discography, in an art form all its own.
A landmark account of Paul McCartney's triumphant musical reinvention in the 1970s and the rise of one of the decade's most iconic bands
This is the story, in their own words, of a band that came to define a generation. Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the madcap history of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their humble beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, with a cast of characters including John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Chrissie Hynde, Mick Jagger and more, Wings recounts the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles' breakup. Soon joined by his wife - American photographer Linda McCartney - on keyboard and vocals, drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney sowed the seeds for a new band that would provide the soundtrack to the decade.
Organised chronologically around McCartney, RAM and nine Wings albums, the narrative begins when a twenty-seven-year-old superstar, rumoured to be dead, fled with his new wife to a remote sheep farm in Scotland amid a sea of legal and personal rows. Being there gave McCartney time to create and was where this new band emerged. Wings then follows the group as they play unannounced shows at university halls, tour in a sheared-off double-decker bus with their children, survive a robbery on the streets of Nigeria, and eventually perform blockbuster stadium shows on their world tour, all while producing some of the most enduring music of the time.
With extraordinary recollections collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into a genre-defining oral history by Ted Widmer, Wings transports the reader to the grit and glamour of the 1970s. Introduced with a heartfelt foreword by McCartney, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run contains 150 black-and-white and colour photographs, many previously unseen, as well as timelines, a gigography and a full discography, in an art form all its own.
Reviews / Votes
Compelling ... a portal into a more eccentric age of pop, a fable about the tension between celebrity and creativity, and a story with elements of Spinal Tap and Wacky Races... it tells the story of one of the most successful bands of the 1970s - and one of the strangest. Under McCartney's contrarian, impulsive, endlessly generative leadership, it blended imperial rock grandeur with a homemade ethos and a certain stoned nonchalance -- Ian Leslie * Guardian * Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is the astonishing, unruly story of how [Paul McCartney found] a way to exist alongside his inescapable past. Structured as an oral history .... interleaved with rich archive material [and] elegantly annotated with timelines and discographies ... this book skilfully patchworks together testimony from all the Beatles, McCartney's family, friends and bandmates, and external sources ... demanding re-evaluation, fostering revelation. [It] is ... the story of a man who climbed every mountain, then set out to do it all over again. -- Victoria Segal * Sunday Times * An exhaustive, forensic and fascinating inside story of the band who achieved the impossible -- John Aizlewood * i Paper * A weighty new oral history ... crammed with fascinating details and amusing observations -- Neil McCormick * Telegraph * What is there left to know about Paul McCartney in 2025? Actually, quite a bit. . . .There is still much to be excavated from what is the most examined life in pop music history, especially when it comes from the horse's mouth. . . . Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run is a smooth, frictionless ride across the arc of McCartney's '70s career, when he continued to mint more hits, and secured a lock on a massive career that is presently in its 55th year -- Marc Weingarten * Los Angeles Times * A must-read for fans of The Beatles in general and their solo careers in specific. And the story of Wings is a doozy, to put it mildly. . . . Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run takes readers on an inspiring journey from the rudimentary efforts behind Wings' Wild Life in 1971 through the apex of arena rock in the mid-1970s and beyond ... A powerful rejoinder to the band's critics -- Kenneth Womack * Salon * Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run details the group's adventures, from unannounced guerrilla gigs at UK universities (admission 50p) to a knifepoint mugging in Nigeria ... [it] reiterates their excellence. The Fab Four were an impossibly hard act to follow, but McCartney's second act began an artistic rebirth that still resonates today -- Adrian Thrills * Daily Mail * There's more Macca in this oral history of Wings ... [an] engrossing testimony about his post-Beatles renaissance * Financial Times, Books of the Year *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Penguin Books Ltd
Dimensions
Height: 233 mm
Width: 163 mm
Thickness: 52 mm
Weight
842 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-241-75857-1 (9780241758571)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Persons
Paul McCartney (Author)
Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney was raised in the city and educated at the Liverpool Institute. Since writing his first song at 14, McCartney has dreamed and dared to be different. He lives in England.
Ted Widmer (External Editor)
Ted Widmer is a historian, writer, librarian, and musician who writes about American history in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and other venues. He has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Washington College. In 2022 he was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
Born in Liverpool in 1942, Paul McCartney was raised in the city and educated at the Liverpool Institute. Since writing his first song at 14, McCartney has dreamed and dared to be different. He lives in England.
Ted Widmer (External Editor)
Ted Widmer is a historian, writer, librarian, and musician who writes about American history in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and other venues. He has taught at Harvard, Brown, and Washington College. In 2022 he was awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.