You Gave Me the Answer: 'Rock Show' Special!

‘The lights go down, they're back in town’… It’s the latest ‘You Gave Me the Answer’ Q&A!

Last month we brought you a Venus and Mars special edition of this Q&A to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the album’s release, and now – surprise! – we have some extra Venus and Mars questions to reveal! 

Welcome to the ‘Rock Show’ special, where we find out from Paul what the live show experience was like for Wings after the success of their 1975 hit record. 

‘Listen to what the man said’ below…

PaulMcCartney.com: Off the back of Venus and Mars, you went on your biggest tour up to that point, with Wings over the World. You went from smaller venues to sports stadiums for the first time since forming Wings – what was that like?

Paul: Yeah, that was the great thing about Wings. After The Beatles, we had this tiny little band that didn't have any hits and didn't even know each other, except for me and Linda obviously. And Denny Laine, who I knew a little. We were almost an amateur outfit, but we knew we would work at it and we did. We built it brick-by-brick. 

In 1976 we did the big American tour and it was like, ‘Wow, this is it!’ That was the payoff, after all that work. This crazy idea of just getting a few friends together and doing little clubs and building it and learning how to be a group - it worked. 

We’d also had a couple of hits like the Band on the Run album, so that was really good because we were kind of refusing to do Beatles stuff. It was the justification of the way we'd done it, with the world's craziest idea - that after you've been a Beatle, you go down to little clubs or places you don’t even have bookings, like on the university tour. It was very daring.

PM.com: Speaking of live shows, you performed ‘Letting Go’ from Venus and Mars on your most recent tour. Is there a reason why that song is still a crucial part of the set?

Paul: I just like the song. I like the riff. It’s a funky little riff! And obviously on this latest tour we had the horn section, the Hot City Horns. Or the ‘Horny Boys’, as we also call them! They start the song from somewhere in the crowd, and we have to do another number to allow them time to get back to the stage!

PM.com: The brass sections on Venus and Mars are great. Is there something special about how that sounds, and did you enjoy bringing horn and brass sections into the album?

Paul: Well, it's very R&B, it's very blues, it's very rock 'n' roll. A lot of people had horn sections, particularly American R&B people like Little Richard and it was always a glamorous thing to me. In the early days of The Beatles, we never did any of that. It was just the four of us: that was it! And then we opened up a little bit when Billy Preston came in and we did session things like ‘Got to Get You Into My Life’. We played around with that, but we never had them in our stage act. 

At the time I recorded Venus and Mars with Wings, I got in touch with Tony Dorsey who was a trombone player from Georgia. He was a lot of fun and a great arranger, so we felt like we were in safe hands. He’d ask, ‘What do you need, a sax? A trumpet? A trombone?’ And he became the director of that section. We took to having that in our live act as well, and it just broadened the appeal of the group. 

A few years ago, I was getting ready for a new tour and thought, ‘What are we going to do to be a little bit different? It’d be great to bring back the horns!’ So, I rang [keyboard player] Wix - because he’s kind of like our musical director in the band - and asked him if he knew anyone who would be suitable. Funnily enough, he’d just done a charity gig with this great little horn section called the Hot City Horns. And coincidentally, two of them went to my old school, LIPA!

The Liverpool Institute was the grammar school that George Harrison and I had been to, and when it closed down we saved it and made it into a performing arts school. Two of the Hot City Horns guys, Mike and Paul, had gone through LIPA. So, it felt like a full circle moment inviting them to join the tour. And they're great! One of the things we always wanted to teach the students was to have a great attitude: you know, just simple little things like showing up on time, not getting drunk before performing, and generally having a good work ethic. These guys are like that. They're really nice people. 

PM.com: Wings had a lineup change during the recording sessions for Venus and Mars, with Geoff Britton leaving and Joe English joining. Do you remember how you found Joe?

Paul: Tony Dorsey had mentioned this guy, Joe English, who was also from Georgia and was apparently a great little drummer. We played with him and liked him a lot. We already had Denny, Linda, me, and Jimmy McCulloch at that point.

Everyone brought a lot to the band. Linda, who'd started off not being a band-type person as she was a professional photographer, was getting really good. She was rocking it! She was a great crowd-pleaser, getting the audience to clap and sing along. It was fabulous because she was one of the first girls in an otherwise male rock group. A few people around that time said she inspired them to get a girl in their group! 

So, with Wings we suddenly we had this really nice group. We had songs, we had hits. And now - with the addition of the horn section - we had something that could fill arenas and do well.

Indeed, Wings did very well – an estimated two million people attended the Wings Over the World tour, and the live album Wings Over America was a US Number One record – their fifth in a row. Not bad for a band who started out playing universities on a whim!

The 50th anniversary edition of Venus and Mars is out now – get your copy here. 

Got a question for Paul? Ask it via the Paul McCartney Official Fan Group on Facebook, or on social media by tagging @paulmccartney.