I heard this album in the summer of 1979, sneaking into my friend’s older brother’s room in Rajinder Nagar. I can still vividly recall a hot June day after our 10th Boards, taking a DTC bus to his house, taking the cover off the turntable , putting this on while drinking shikanji that Aunty made …bliss!!

Interesting story about this album. Macca wanted to record this at Abbey Road but it was booked. He asked EMI for a list of international studios that were available and chose to record this in Lagos, Nigeria. Bad idea, right?!! Instead of a beach and island paradise they were expecting (clearly Paul McCartney didn’t know how to read an atlas) they landed in a country run by a military junta, civil war underway and infrastructure gone to hell. Oh, and they landed without their drummer and guitarist who quit the band before the trip – so Paul played guitars and drums on this album with Linda on the keyboards as always. And then Paul & Linda got mugged and all their demos and hand-written lyrics for “Band On the Run” were stolen and then Macca fell ill…..anyway out of this adversity came this incredible album. My favourite song on the album is “Let Me Roll It”.  And I really like chrous  “Hey, Hey Ho..Hey, hey Ho” from “Mrs Vanderbilt” and the first chords of “Jet”. In fact, I love the whole album.

IMHO this album / song is the best work Paul McCartney has ever done after quitting the Beatles. The song was on the radio a lot, and I always found it’s three-part structure really weird –  catchy but weird. Each section is great and has a really nice hook but it’s strange. It was only years later I realised that this was an old Beatles trick of combining pieces of unfinished songs into one whole hit record (‘I am The Walrus’ is a great example). The song was inspired by George Harrison commenting “If I ever get out of here…”  during an intense Beatles-era business meeting. And, sure enough the lyric finds its way into the song. The whole story is about a band that’s in jail (lots of big bands like the Eagles were being prosecuted for minor drug offences those days) that escapes persecution and goes on the run. Well, Macca finally managed to escape from the Beatles after this hit album.

Wings: Let Me Roll It

This is my favourite song on the Band On The Run album – that guitar riff is instantly recognisable to anyone who grew up in the 70s. Love it!