50 years ago, Paul McCartney went on tour in the United States with his band Wings. It was the first time he played live since The Beatles’ last tour in 1966. 2026 has become the year of Wings, with a wave of new historical and archival celebration around Sir Paul’s post-Beatles band. There’s a documentary (“Man On The Run”), a 550-page oral history (“Wings: The Story of a Band On The Run”), and the first major museum exhibit on Wings at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The end result of all of the above is both practical and aspirational: the total effort rounds up all of the loose ends around this era while there are still enough people around to talk about it, and officially induct Wings into McCartney’s larger legacy.
It’s charming to observe within these different archival efforts just how very much Paul McCartney wanted his post-Beatles musical projects to be a band. He didn’t want to be “The Cute Ex-Beatle And Some Other Guys.” He wanted it to be a proper group, where each of the individual members had the opportunity to contribute and have a voice in the songs or the arrangements. This mindset explains his approach to the early days of the band, when they hopped into a van and drove around the UK, stopping at universities and offering to play for 50p at the door, dividing up the bag of coins at the end of the night.
