Oral history of Wings gets off to a flying start

Like the post-Beatles band Paul McCartney created, though, the best stuff is early on.

- MARC WEINGARTEN

BARRY LATEGAN 1971 MPL Communications Ltd.

BANDMATES Denny Laine, left, Paul and Linda McCartney and Denny Seiwell in 1971 in London.

What is there left to know about Paul McCartney in 2025? Actually, quite a bit. The octogenarian megastar is seemingly ever-present, popping up on social media feeds with his affable avuncularity, his relentlessly sunny, two thumbs-up ’tude.

Yet despite the steady trickle of Beatles scholarship that continues to be published, including Ian Leslie's insightful book, “John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs,” earlier this year, McCartney is a cipher, a blank page. He has masterfully created the illusion of transparency, yet his life remains stubbornly opaque. Does the man ever lose his temper? Has he ever cheated on his taxes? If there is a chink in McCartney’s armor, we are still looking for it.

‘According to a new book, an oral history of McCartney’s band Wings, 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. The book is ostensibly “authored” by McCartney even though it is an oral history that has been edited by Ted Widmer, an estimable historian and a former speechwriter for Bill Clinton. Widmer has also written third-person interstitial information to guide the reader through the story.

Stitching together interviews with McCartney, his wife Linda, erstwhile Beatles, and the various musicians and other key players who found themselves pulled into the Wings orbit across the nearly decadelong tenure of the band, “Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run” is a smooth, frictionless ride across the are of McCartney’s °70s career, when he continued tomint more hits, and secured alockonamassive career that is presently in its 55th year.