Why did Paul McCartney write Band on the Run?

Paul McCartney said Wings’ “Jet” and “Band on the Run” changed the trajectory of his career. They gave him the confidence to write new songs that were similar to The Beatles’ songs. Paul explained this change during an interview with One Direction’s Harry Styles.

Paul McCartney explained his early post-Beatles career to Harry Styles

In a 2017 Another Man article, Styles and Paul interviewed each other. Styles asked Paul if it was difficult to begin making music without The Beatles. Paul said he initially didn’t think too much about what style of music he was making. He said his album McCartney reflected that approach.

Then Paul’s attitude changed. “There was this difficulty — you’re thinking, ‘Well, now what am I going to do, just make records that sound like The Beatles? Or, am I going to try and go in a completely different direction and do something that’s really not like The Beatles?'” Paul said.

Paul initially decided to write songs that sounded different from the Fab Four’s material. “So we started the group Wings, and then I just thought, ‘Sod it, I’m going to write some stuff that I want to write and keep it away from what The Beatles might have done with it,'” Paul recalled.

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Paul McCartney said Wings’ ‘Jet’ and ‘Band on the Run’ changed his post-Beatles career

Paul said “Jet,” “Band on the Run,” and other songs altered the trajectory of his career. “Once that was established with a few hits of my own, like ‘Jet’ and ‘Band on the Run’ and things like that, then I thought it was OK to do Beatles stuff again, because I’d proved a point to myself,” he remembered.

Paul then discussed his recent career. “These days I do lots of Beatles things, it doesn’t matter anymore, I’m happy to do anything,” he said. “But at first it was a little bit difficult, I must admit.”

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How ‘Band on the Run’ and its parent album performed in the United States and the United Kingdom

“Band on the Run” became a massive hit in the United States. It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for a week, remaining on the chart for 18 weeks in total. The song appeared on the album of the same name. Band on the Run was an even bigger hit. It was No. 1 for four of its 120 weeks on the Billboard 200.

“Band on the Run” was also popular in the United Kingdom, albeit significantly less popular than it was in the U.S. The Official Charts Company reports the song peaked at No. 3 in the U.K., staying on the chart for 11 weeks. Meanwhile, Band on the Run was No. 1 on the chart for seven weeks The album spent 124 weeks in total on the chart.

“Band on the Run” was a huge success and Paul said it marked a turning point in his career.

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The title track of Paul McCartney’s fifth post-Beatles album, ‘Band On The Run’ was a three-part song, inspired in part by a remark about the business meetings at Apple in 1969.

It’s just a good flow of words. I really don’t analyze stuff, and if I do I kind of remember what it meant about three months later, just lying in bed one night.

It started off with ‘If I ever get out of here.’ That came from a remark George made at one of the Apple meetings. He was saving that we were all prisoners in some way, some kind of remark like that. ‘If we ever get out of here,’ the prison bit, and I thought that would be a nice way to start an album. A million reasons, really. I can never lay them all down. It’s a million things, I don’t like to analyze them, all put together. Band on the run – escaping, freedom, criminals. You name it, it’s there.

Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney In His Own Words, Paul Gambaccini

The Beatles had often combined half-finished song fragments together, in works such as ‘A Day In The Life’, ‘She Said She Said’ and ‘I’ve Got A Feeling’, and the celebrated Abbey Road medley. John Lennon, in particular, often combined three unrelated ideas in one song, a technique used on ‘I Am The Walrus’, ‘Happiness Is A Warm Gun’, ‘God’, and ‘(Just Like) Starting Over’.

On ‘Band On The Run’, McCartney used the same technique, although unlike Lennon, the different parts stood in marked contrast from one another. The song begins with the band’s incarceration, “stuck inside these four walls”, in a gently melodic passage which gives way to thoughts of escape.

Part two uses Harrison’s quotation, ‘If we ever get out of here’, as its central theme. This is the briefest section of the song, lasting less than a minute.

The third and final section is the longest, and sees the band escaping prison and defiantly fleeing from authority figures: the jailor (representing the law), a sailor (the armed forces), an undertaker (death) and a county judge, as a bell rings in the village to alert residents of the jailbreak.

In the studio

The Band On The Run album was recorded at EMI Studios in Lagos, Nigeria, and partly at Ginger Baker’s ARC Studios in Ikeja. Wings spent six weeks in Nigeria, with McCartney producing and Geoff Emerick engineering the sessions.

Work continued at George Martin’s AIR Studios in London, where the eight-track tapes were transferred to 16-track. Vocals and orchestral instruments, the latter arranged by Tony Visconti, were overdubbed there.

In 1975 Band On The Run was issued with a quadraphonic mix, made by Emerick and Alan O’Duffy.

Single release

Paul McCartney initially wanted no singles to be taken from Band On The Run, but later relented. ‘Jet’ was the first, followed by the title track.

‘Band On The Run’ was issued as a single in the United States on 8 April 1974, with ‘Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five’ on the b-side. It topped the charts and was certified gold by the RIAA.

In the United Kingdom the single was issued on 28 June 1974, with a new song, ‘Zoo Gang’, on the b-side. Although also certified gold, the single fared less well, peaking at number three in the charts.

Although the album and single versions were identical, a radio edit was created which cut the song in three places. It cut the original length from 5’13 down to 3’57. The edits were from 0’26 to 0’37, 2’52 to 3’38, and 3’48 to 4’07.

Two separate promotional singles were issued in the US. The first contained a mono mix of the edited song, together with the full-length version in stereo. The second single had the edit in both mono and stereo.

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