When Paul McCartney picked Lagos, Nigeria, as the location to record Wings’ third album, Band on the Run, he envisioned an extended sun-drenched holiday – interspersed with studio sessions, of course.
However, the sessions were marred by a series of less-than-ideal events: drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough left the group, the political situation in Nigeria was tense following the end of a civil war, and the McCartneys were robbed at knifepoint.
Macca also suffered a bronchial spasm, which was brought about by too much smoking.
The silver lining of it all, however, was the beginning of his friendship with Afrobeat progenitor and Nigerian music legend Fela Kuti. Admittedly, it got off to a rocky start after Kuti and his entourage headed to EMI Studios, where McCartney was recording, to question him about his intentions in Nigeria.
“The first thing [that] happened to me was, I was accused of stealing the Black man's music,” McCartney said in an interview published on the official Fela Kuti YouTube channel.
“[They said] ‘He's come here to steal the music,’ so I said, ‘Who's doing that? It’s in the newspaper.’ It was Fela, of course.
“So I got his number, I rang him up, [and said], ‘Hey, man, come on. I'm not here to do that. I love African music. I just want the kind of atmosphere, but I'm certainly not stealing any of your music.’
“He came around to the studio, and I played him all my stuff, and he said, ‘Nothing like African Music.’ So we became good friends.”
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Soon after this encounter, McCartney ended up frequenting the Afrika Shrine, the legendary club in Lagos that Kuti set up in 1970.
“I wasn't gonna get wasted,” the Beatle recalls in a recent interview with Zane Lowe, “but because it was very much the thing to do with Fela – I was with Ginger Baker, too – I was trying to resist. The guys were coming up, offering joints out. I said ‘Okay, I'm good, thank you.’”
McCartney was successfully resisting the temptation until a pivotal moment
“The guy went up to Ginger, and Ginger takes a smoke. Fela comes over to him, claps an arm around him, he said, ‘Ginger Baker, the only man I know never refuse a smoke.’ So I go, ‘Well, yeah, okay….’ and I got wrecked, paranoid, the whole thing.
“And so I was in a state until his band came on,” he admits, “and then they just hit this riff that I still remember, and it was incredible, and I just wept. That was an experience I could never forget. I still know the riff.”
In more recent news, McCartney explained how his new album, The Boys of Dungeon Lane, was inspired by his songwriting partnership with John Lennon.
