Wings
Wild Life

THE REVIEW

"Boy, you're gonna carry that weight / carry that weight for a long time."

No words were more prophetic for Paul, the kind-hearted Beatle, capable of light melodies, yet at the same time thoughtful and complex, the result of an extraordinary compositional talent and an imagination beyond the norm. The weight he has to bear after the Beatles' breakup is made up of lies, slanders that paint him as the main perpetrator of the crime, unforgivable by the critics, in fact a victim of a tense atmosphere that had exploded within the group, forcing him to leave. To recover, Paul needs help, he drinks, he no longer plays, then, slowly thanks to Linda, a rebirth, the desire to make music, to get back in the game, to prove himself once more. To do so, he chooses the longer road, just like that "long and winding" road he so aptly described shortly before, deciding to return to playing like the Beatles did at the start of their career, when they were "just small stuff," a band "like many others" trying to earn by doing rock 'n' roll.

The Wings are born this way, one day in 1971 while Paul waits to hold little Stella in his arms in a hospital waiting room, a story similar to that which led Lennon to propose the name Beatles, all by chance, an intuition that materializes suddenly. Thus the second most famous act in Rock history, and the one that had the most success, begins its adventure with recordings in home studios, concerts for English universities, where astonished students charge modest prices to see the new Paul dabble in his "small stuff" made of rock classics, a few little songs but never a Beatles piece, those remain off-list, there's time to make peace with the past. "Wild Life" is a blank slate, it is nothing, little more than a demo, where noisy nonsense ("Mumbo"), nursery rhymes ("Bip-Bop"), and a small lesser pearl "Dear Friend" find space, all seasoned by the sunset of the flower children era, now nature is seen through the bars of a zoo, "Wild Life." Anyone approaching this album will judge it poorly, but it is too important; without this work, we would never have had the Paul of "Band On The Run" or "Flaming Pie," it is simply the most courageous work done by an ex-Beatle, a liberation from his own past, a rebirth in new garments, made of children, balance, and plenty of good music composed for fun and enjoyment. Now the wings are open, you know the rest of the story; the start was missing, and do not judge this period of Paul's in contrast to Lennon or other similar figures, they are different things. And as Neil Young says at McCartney's Rock Hall of Fame induction ceremony, "Paul is great because he has kept a family together in the rock world."

And with that, I close.