THE EDITED PRESS RELEASE: “Of the myriad classic albums Paul McCartney has released throughout his illustrious career, Wings’ Band On The Run holds a place of particularly high esteem. The album not only delivered on the promise of predecessors like Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, but also consolidated Wings’ status as standard bearers of ’70s rock ’n’ roll. As the soundtrack for a decade defined by the rock radio playlists it dominated, Band On The Run would set the bar not only for Paul’s future efforts but also for generations of arena rock stars.
Exactly 50 years after its release, Band On The Run sounds as vibrant and relevant as ever, and in reaching this magnificent milestone, deserves its amazing story to be celebrated one more time — with a new 50th-anniversary edition that features the original album remastered at half speed, plus a second LP titled Band On The Run (Underdubbed). The previously unreleased rough mixes were created by Geoff Emerick, assisted by Pete Swettenham at AIR Studios, on Oct. 14, 1973. The track list mirrors the original analog tapes discovered in the MPL archives.
“This is Band On The Run in a way you’ve never heard before,” McCartney says of the new mixes. “When you are making a song and putting on additional parts, like an extra guitar, that’s an overdub. Well, this version of the album is the opposite, underdubbed.”
The backstory: By the summer of 1973, Paul had a fresh batch of songs earmarked for a new album. Looking through a list of EMI’s international studios, he chose Lagos, Nigeria, to be the location of its recording, becoming enthralled with the idea of recording in Africa. Just days before departure, lead guitarist Henry McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell quit the band. Wings were now, suddenly, a trio. Paul, his wife Linda, and band member Denny Laine (along with recording engineer Emerick) toiled in the Lagos studio’s relatively rudimentary conditions, working up the new songs over two months. Disaster struck one night when Paul and Linda were robbed at knifepoint while walking home from a friend’s house, the thieves making off with a cassette of home demo recordings of the songs. Paul was able to remember the songs as he’d only recently written them.
Noted for its suite-like structure of three distinct movements, the title track Band On The Run was not an obvious pop hit, but it would top the Billboard Hot 100 and propel its parent album back up the charts, becoming a No. 1 smash in both the U.S. and U.K., returning to the top spot twice more in America, and becoming the best-selling studio album of 1974 in Australia, Canada, and the U.K.
Band On The Run has only grown in stature over the years. After scooping two Grammy Awards in 1975, the deluxe edition was awarded a third in 2012 — followed by the album’s induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2013. It is considered the definitive Wings album and a firm fan favourite as new generations discover its genius. It took until 2010 for Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five to be performed live, but now, as Paul’s solo career continues unabated, it is a regular presence in his live sets.”
