The breakup of The Beatles may be a legendary story, but it’s not the only band fallout Paul McCartney suffered. While the veteran songwriter would rally after The Beatles’ end, forming Wings in 1971, it wouldn’t be long before there was another bust-up. McCartney called time on the Band on the Run hitmakers in 1981 and has performed as a solo musician ever since. But he did offer up a few high-profile collaborations in the 1980s that, according to the Let It Be songwriter, wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.
Speaking around the time of Tug of War’s release, McCartney suggested he preferred working alone. The 1982 release would see him reunite with George Martin and Ringo Starr, two years after the death of John Lennon. While McCartney wouldn’t opt for supergroup albums in the future, citing his lack of interest in doing so, his first post-Wings project saw him
He said: “Not really. I felt a bit limited working with the group and I just didn’t fancy going in and making another group album. So I decided to approach it in another way– to take each song and ask myself, ‘Who would the best drummer be to work with for that kind of song?’ I cast them all. It was something I’ve never done.
“So instead of getting the group and just working with one bunch for a whole album, which I’d done plenty of times, I just fancied trying it this way. So I grabbed Steve Gadd for a couple of sessions and Ringo [Starr] for a couple of others and just grabbed people according to their styles. The album is like a star-studded cast of thousands, which, to me is a little bit of a drawback, if anything. Normally I don’t like albums with huge casts on them… like supergroups.”
McCartney would feature Martin, Starr, and Stevie Wonder on Tug of War. While he had been recording with Wings at the start of the 1980s he would soon drop the band’s work and opt for a solo album instead. Hits like Ebony and Ivory, the Wonder-featuring song that was later adapted into a biopic, were recorded during the 1981 sessions that turned into solo material for McCartney.
These sessions for what would become Tug of War were so productive that McCartney managed to hold back some songs for Pipes of Peace. Tug of War would feature the John Lennon tribute track, Here Today, which McCartney recorded just a year after the death of his writing partner.
In the same 1982 interview, McCartney would state being in the band had become a bit of a chore. McCartney also shared that he and long-serving member, Denny Laine, were at odds with one another towards the end of the band’s lifespan. Though the two would work together on McCartney’s solo albums, Tug of War and Pipes of Peace, the fractious relationship between the pair appears to have contributed.
McCartney said: “But Denny [Laine] has got his own theory about what happened all the time. As far as I’m concerned, there were no hatchet jobs, ever, and if there were, it certainly wasn’t Denny that went around doing them. Maybe there was one case where he had to do it. I don’t know. These stories grow so madly, you know, from just one little line. There weren’t any big hatchet jobs.”
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