Sir Paul Talking Wild Life: No Beatles Imitation

In an interview on his website about the reissue of Wings’ debut album Wild Life, Paul McCartney said that the last thing he wanted to do was imitating the Beatles. With his new band he deliberate choose for a new direction by doing something different to what fans and music critics would expect from a Beatle.

Yes. You know, let’s just do what we want. It was important to do that. But I probably should have realized that critics and people looking at it would go, ‘Well, that’s not as good as what he used to do with The Beatles!’ (…) I mean, you know, we didn’t get good reviews for this because I think people were expecting something more sort of Beatle-like and I was purposefully digging my heels in saying, ‘We’re not gonna do that’. Just like an imitation of The Beatles. I didn’t feel like that was a good way to go. 

The concept of Wild Life is inspired by Bob Dylan’s 1970 album New Morning, which was recorded in a week. It's an approach that appeals to McCartney, thinking it would give the album a certain freshness: “Well, I wanted to make an album just like that! [Clicks his fingers]”. A typical example for this way of making an album, is the opening track Mumbo, which came out of a jam:

Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t listen to my old albums much, you know. I just don’t. So, I mean, to me it’s very strange that I would dare to do a track like ‘Mumbo’. To open an album with a track that hasn’t got any lyrics! It’s like, ‘Whoah!’ I mean, I think it’s kind of cool now. Like, ‘Wow, okay…! (…) It was just a kind of rebellious attitude that maybe it’s time to be a bit experimental and try some new ideas. So this is just, you know, a romp. Just a rocking, romping thing. It was really a jam. It started as a jam and then we put the various little guitar riffs over it and made it a little bit more into a track. But I think that’s one of the sort of first things that came to mind. And then followed it up with ‘Bip Bop’, another little thing that’s not really got a lot of lyrical strength! (…) And, you know, this was following The Beatles. I’m not trying very hard, you know! [Jokingly sings the opening line of ‘Mumbo’, ‘Welllllllllllllllll….!!!’]

I now like that we did this. I like this because, you know, I’ve always said we could have put some very professional group together and gone and done things very much like The Beatles, and just sort of carried on. But I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to try and relearn what it is to be in a band. So yeah, we just kind of threw it together. And then the decision to have Linda in the band singing was a really tough one, because she’s never sung professionally. She’d just sung at school in the Glee Club and around the house, sort of thing. But it was: whatever we do, we’re not going to do what The Beatles did… Well, we followed what the early Beatles did which was form a band of people who couldn’t play very well, couldn’t write very well, and just do it a lot until it gets good!”

Read the full interview here

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André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

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