Wings
The Story of a Band on the Run
Paul McCartney author Ted Widmer editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Penguin Books Ltd
Publishing:6th Oct '26
£16.99
This title is due to be published on 6th October, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
This paperback is available in another edition too:
- Hardback£35.00(9780241758571)

Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run tells the history of Paul McCartney and his newly formed band, from their humble beginnings in the early 1970s to their dissolution barely a decade later. Drawn from over 500,000 words of interviews with McCartney, family and band members, and other key participants, Wings recounts the musical odyssey taken by a man searching for his identity in the aftermath of The Beatles’ breakup. Soon joined by his wife – American photographer Linda McCartney – on keyboard and vocals, drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Denny Laine, McCartney sowed the seeds for a new band that would provide the soundtrack to the decade.
With extraordinary recollections collected by Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville and edited into a genre-defining oral history by Ted Widmer, Wings transports the reader to the grit and glamour of the 1970s. Introduced with a heartfelt foreword by McCartney, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run contains 150 black-and-white and colour photographs, many previously unseen, as well as timelines, a gigography and a full discography, in an art form all its own.
Compelling ... a portal into a more eccentric age of pop, a fable about the tension between celebrity and creativity * Guardian *
An engrossing testimony about [McCartney's] post-Beatles renaissance * Financial Times, Books of the Year *
The astonishing, unruly story of how [Paul McCartney found] a way to exist alongside his inescapable past .... interleaved with rich archive material [and] elegantly annotated with timelines and discographies, this book skilfully patchworks together testimony from all the Beatles, McCartney’s family, friends and bandmates, and external sources ... demanding re-evaluation, fostering revelation * Sunday Times *
A must-read ... Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run takes readers on an inspiring journey from the rudimentary efforts behind Wings' Wild Life in 1971 through the apex of arena rock in the mid-1970s and beyond * Salon *
ISBN: 9781802069273
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 35mm
Weight: 500g
576 pages