Paul McCartney and Wings “Band on the Run” released 45 years ago today, December 5th, 1973 on Apple Records. It was McCartney’s third album with Wings and his fifth after the disbanding of the Beatles. Band on the Run was initially beset with a multiple of near catastrophes. Just before recording of the album in Nigeria began, band members Henry McCollough (guitar) and Denny Sweiwell (drums) quit so Wings was cropped down to McCartney (on vocals, bass, drums and guitar), his wife Linda (keyboards) and Denny Laine (guitar). The recording in Nigeria did not go well: the country was just coming out of a brutal civil war, the studio was sub-standard, they had a confrontation with Felafels Kuti and the McCartneys were robbed at knifepoint with their valuables, lyric book and demo cassettes stolen. Despite all of this, Band on the Run was a wild success. Released on the 5th in the US, it came out two days later in the UK and became McCartney’s most successful record, hitting #1 in both the US and the UK (and making it to the #3 and #2 spots respectively for the top year-end albums of ‘74). In ‘75 it was nominated for an Album of the year Grammy and in 2012 won the Best Historical Album Grammy.

The two best-known (at least to me) songs on Band on the Run are its two top performing singles: “Jet” (#7 in the US and UK) and the title track “Band on the Run” (#1 US, #3 UK). Growing up in the 70′s, my parents were fairly big Beatles and Wings fan; they didn’t have this record that I recall but they did have Wings Greatest Hits, released in ‘78 that had both singles on it; I listened to that album a ton, loving it so much I put the album’s insert poster of Paul, Linda and Denny Laine up on my bedroom wall.

This copy of Band on the Run also came with a poster, one of polaroids taken during the album’s recording.

Wings released two other singles from Band on the Run including “Helen Wheels” (#10 US, #12 UK – it came out prior to the album’s release and was not included on the UK LP) and  “Mrs Vandebilt” (released only in Continental Europe and Australia).