Wild Life

Like many debut albums, Wings' Wild Life wasn't a real reflection of what was to come, its guiding ethos being Paul’s intention to record the entire piece quickly. Taking just two weeks, Wild Life was about spontaneity: the opening track ‘Mumbo’ was recorded in one take. “I’d read that Bob Dylan had just made a quick album,” Paul explains, “and I really liked the idea, because we tended to take longer and longer to make records. The early albums by The Beatles hadn’t taken long and it seemed to me that Dylan was getting to that. I was a great admirer of his – and still am to this day – so I thought, Well, if it’s good enough for him, let’s do it. Linda was heavily pregnant with Stella while we were recording. If she’d have wanted to stop the sessions we would have done, but it just didn’t arise. A lot of women work until two weeks before the baby is due and that’s what Linda did.” The actual pregnancy was a difficult one and as Paul slept next to his wife he had vivid dreams about angels: “And I thought, that’s a nice image, wings. I wonder if there’s been a band called Wings? That’s how the name came about, in King’s College Hospital, in London, as we recovered from the birth of Stella. So Wings became the name.” Paul, Linda and drummer Denny Seiwell were joined for the album by the former Moody Blues singer Denny Laine, destined to remain with Wings throughout.