Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles band, Wings, has become more respected in recent years, but that wasn’t always the case.
As recounted in the new book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, the group received plenty of negative reviews and faced numerous hostile critics during their heyday in the 1970s. At one point, Paul and his then-wife, Linda McCartney, were so incensed by one review that they decided to get back at the journalist with help from their baby daughter Stella.
According to former Wings drummer Denny Seiwell, a British writer came to a Wings gig in the early ’70s and claimed he wouldn’t be reviewing the show. Instead, he would do a story on the band’s unusual method of touring with their families, including their small children. At the time, Paul and Linda had three kids: daughters Heather, Mary and Stella. (They later welcomed son James, and Paul welcomed daughter Beatrice with second wife Heather Mills in 2003.)
“So, OK, we take him along to the sound check. We let him backstage,” Seiwell, 82, recalled in the book, which hit shelves Tuesday, November 4. “We let him on the bus. We let him see how we live and all that. He didn’t stay for the concert. He flew home.”
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A week later, however, the journalist published his article, which allegedly included a “full-on review” of the concert he did not attend.
“And he slagged it. Everything about it,” Seiwell said. “The way we lived. The way we traveled. The way we sounded, the way we da-dada-dada.”
Per Seiwell, Paul and Linda decided to get their revenge by sending the writer an unexpected gift in the mail.
“Stella was a baby at the time. So Paul and Linda took one of those little plastic soap dishes from the hotel we were in and they got one of Stella’s turds, put it in the soap dish, wrapped it up and sent it to him,” Seiwell claimed. “You heard that from me. I don’t care if they want it to be known or not. I thought it was the perfect response to a crude British pressman.”
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The book, which is organized as an oral history, does not include any quotes on the alleged prank from Paul, Linda or Stella. (Linda died of breast cancer in 1998 at age 56.)
Stella, however, offered plenty of insight into the way her parents’ style influenced her career as a fashion designer. Now 54, she helms her own namesake brand and served as the creative director for Chloé from 1997 to 2001.
“I was obsessed with my parents’ influence, and I literally always look at images of them from the archives,” she explained in the book. “All of my degree shows at Central Saint Martins, my work with Chloé and my work today is still influenced by their style. I’m lucky enough to have some of those pieces, and I feel like I’m safeguarding them for the future generations.”
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The music of Wings, meanwhile, has found a younger audience too. As the book notes, Harry Styles is an avowed fan, having listened to their albums extensively while working on his second album, Fine Line.
“In Tokyo I used to go to a vinyl bar, but the bartender didn’t have Wings records,” Styles, 31, told Rolling Stone in 2019. “So I brought him Back to the Egg. ‘Arrow Through Me,’ that was the song I had to hear every day when I was in Japan.”
Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, edited by Ted Widmer, is out now.
