Wings’ end came out of the blue. There was still something whirring away for Paul McCartney and the ever-changing group of musicians involved in his post-Beatles project. Lively endeavours followed their defining Band on the Run release but it is easy to argue it was the peak for Wings. Nothing came close. Just collections of hits and a few skips in there. Back to the Egg provides an end, but the timing could not have been worse. McCartney decides enough is enough right at a point where the band were starting to sound interesting again. It was one of many musical shifts for McCartney, who was keeping up with the trends of the time and styling them with a remarkable understanding of how pop-oriented sounds could still fit in with punk and new wave. Financial woes paved the road to solo work, and the rest is history. McCartney II makes sense with Back to the Egg in the background.
Perhaps Denny Laine’s departure, McCartney’s marijuana bust in Japan and the stagnation of Wings were all signs of the inevitable. But harsh receptions at the time of Back to the Egg’s release are staggering to read up on. This is an album with real guts. It is the best Wings had sounded since their Band on the Run triumph. Considering how much of a bad rap Electric Light Orchestra got for feeling their way through The Beatles’ sound, it is rather ironic to hear one of the Fab Four adopt the space-age style of pop rock and new wave swing. Back to the Egg works tremendously. Its A-Side is a hits-laden thrill ride which suggests Wings are back to doing what they were best at – loved-up songs with a contemporary edge to lyrical joys. McCartney has a soft spot for the whimsical and it shows more here than it did on previous Wings offerings.
And yet this is not some light and twee Wings offering. There is venom on the lips and lyrics of McCartney here, much of it reserved for Old Siam, Sir and Arrow through Me. They are masked extremely well by the instrumental consistencies, the latter particularly brilliant and one of the best pieces McCartney wrote in the 1970s. Oozing a sex appeal no song from Wings had and paired with a Stevie Wonder-like groove, it makes all the difference to where Wings found themselves. Arrow Through Me is a stunner. A call to arms against those who romantically wronged him at a time when his relationship with the Wings collective could not be worse. And yet he finds the love to carry on.
He strips back the orchestral arrangements which dominated the electric guitar leads of the B-Side disaster and whittles it down to the very best for the A-Side. An album of two halves in every sense. A personable A-Side with some of McCartney’s more open and frank lyrics, and then an Out of the Blue adaptation with Rockestra Theme and onwards. Groovy bits of light work but nothing essential. Had it been a neat and compact A-Side and just white noise on the reverse, Back to the Egg may be looked at with fonder feelings. It was not to be. An unremarkable collection of noise soon follows and the reasons for Wings’ collapse can be felt. Messy work the whole way through is easy to ignore when tracks like Getting Closer can be heard. But the fun-loving McCartney operation was coming to an end. This train has reached its station. An album in the wrong place at the wrong time, and doomed to be ignored by McCartney for a long while yet.
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