We all remember The Beatles, right? Let’s see – there was John (the serious one) and George (the quiet one) and Ringo (the funny one) and Paul (the Rodney Dangerfield one). What? Let me explain briefly: Paul was the one who took the most heat from the critics early on after the Beatles broke up, except for maybe his debut solo effort, McCartney. Critics panned his music as simplistic and not fitting the mold of Beatles’ music. WTF? Excuse me, but he was a part of The Beatles…without the rest, how is anything supposed to sound like The Beatles? Regardless of a lack of critical approval from their first 2 albums, Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, Paul moved forward with his music and his new group, Wings.

When the band was rehearsing songs for what would become the album Band on the Run, there was some tension growing between Paul and lead guitarist Henry McCullough. McCullough quit the band and within a week, drummer Denny Seiwell left as well. Was it the same ol’ stuff that had happened earlier in The Beatles with Paul taking over how everything should go? Perhaps, but that isn’t the point here. The point is that Paul and his wife Linda, along with guitarist Denny Laine packed up their equipment and went to Lagos, Nigeria, to record their new album: McCartney playing bass and adding lead guitar and drums to the tracks, Laine playing rhythm guitar, and Linda on keyboards. What they produced in a substandard Nigerian studio over the course of 6 weeks is an amazing album that rivaled some of The Beatles better work.

The album begins with a song that features one of McCartney’s most used skills as a songwriter: piecing together different songs to create one. “Band on the Run” is really 3-songs-in-1, and is put together as well as any other song McCartney has ever written. It is melancholy, brooding, and oddly uplifting as it proceeds through the three stages from “stuck inside these four walls” to “in the town they’re searching for us everywhere but we never will be found.” It’s not surprising the single was a #1 smash hit and ended the year at #22 on the Billboard Top 100 singles chart.

The second song on the album, and the album’s first top 10 single, “Jet,” was a rocker from the very first beat of the drums. While not as wild vocally as some of McCartney’s contributions to The Beatles such as “Oh, Darling!” and Helter Skelter”, it still had the signature McCartney vocal “sound” and very Beatle-esque background vocals.

“Bluebird” slows things down with a nice, mellow love song. The sax solo by session musician Howie Casey is a nice change of pace from guitar or piano solos on some of McCartney’s other works, and fits nicely in this particular song.

Other songs of note are “Let Me Roll It,” a nice little rock number with minimal instrumentation through the verses (bass, drums, lead guitar) and a subtle echo on the lead vocal, “No Words,” which is the only song co-written by someone other than McCartney (Denny Laine), and “Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five,” which closes out the album and reprises the chorus of “Band on the Run” at the end.

The reception of the album was much better than anything McCartney had released post-Beatles. The album reviews ranged anywhere from 4 to 5 stars on a 5-star scale. The fans were also impressed, buying enough copies to place the album at the top of the Billboard album charts three separate times during 1974. The album would go on to be certified triple platinum by the RIAA and sold more than 6 million copies worldwide.

So, back to the critics and their complaints of McCartney’s music not being “Beatle-like.” Why was McCartney the only one held up to that standard? John Lennon was never criticized for not sounding like The Beatles; if anything, he was criticized for sounding like The Beatles. George Harrison also had no pressure to sound like his former band. Ringo Starr was not the musician or songwriter that his three former bandmates were, but he also was not expected to sound like the band. Why McCartney? Was it the impression that many people held about McCartney breaking the band up by his high standards of perfection for each piece of music they recorded? Possibly. All I know is that this is one of the more exceptional albums produced in the 1970’s and it is one I play often for my own enjoyment. McCartney, along with wife Linda and guitarist Denny Laine got this one right. Well played, Sir Paul, well played.