Wings at the Speed of Sound song Let ‘Em In features a series of wild name drops from Paul McCartney.
The Beatles and Wings songwriter has since confirmed the series of famous namechecks heard in the song, which McCartney called a “stocking filler” track. Though the Wings frontman sounded somewhat dismissive of the song when writing about it in his book, The Lyrics, he has since shared who “brother Michael, Phil and Don” actually are. McCartney suggested that, like Bip Bop, he was “a bit down” on the track and thought less of Let ‘Em In. At best, the song is a “fun little item,” according to the legend behind songs like Let it Be, Get Back, and Arrow Through Me.
But The Buggles’ Trevor Horn found much to love about the song, and McCartney has since featured it in his recent Got Back tour. The song found a second wind as the choice of song for Postcode Lottery adverts, and McCartney has since revisited the track in a more positive light.
He wrote: “A stocking filler. That’s how I think of some songs. It’s a fun little item, but it’s not your main Christmas present. I can get a bit perfectionist about things and think, ‘This is just not one of my grand pieces,’ and often I’ll get a bit down on them.”
McCartney even noted the song, and Bip Bop, were “banal” though he was met with resistance in calling Let ‘Em In that by Horn. McCartney recalled Horn saying: “That’s one of my favourites of yours!” Though it may be a fan favourite too, McCartney recalled struggling to find much love for the song until Horn shared how much he loved the song.
The Wings frontman added: “And then I could see what he saw in it, which is what I saw in it when I wrote it and wanted to record it, so he made me feel better about that.” McCartney went on to share the famous faces who appear in the song, with a nickname given to Linda McCartney while Wings were in Jamaica serving as the origins of the “Suzy” name.
McCartney shared: “When we were in Jamaica, all the Jamaican guys would say to Linda, being blonde, ‘Hey Suzy!’ To them a blonde, white woman was “Suzy”. So Linda got a group and called herself Suzy and the Red Stripes, after the beer brand. So ‘Sister Suzy’ – that’s Linda. ‘Brother John’ is either her brother, John Eastman, or John Lennon, ‘Martin Luther’ is Martin Luther King Jr., ‘Phil and Don’ are The Everly Brothers, and then you get ‘Brother Michael.”
The songwriter has since suggested “Brother Michael” could either mean his younger brother, Mike McCartney, or Michael Jackson. The latter could be likely as the “timing is right” according to Paul McCartney.
He shared: “We’d invited The Jackson Five to the Venus and Mars album party on the Queen Mary the year before. ‘Auntie Jin’, which is spelt with a J rather than a G because her name was Jane. But in Liverpool that sounded too formal, so she would say ‘just call me Jinny’. Then ‘Uncle Ernie’ – my cousin’s name was actually Ian, but they called him Ern. And by this point, I’m not really fused, I’m just playing with words.”
