When the Beatles officially broke up in 1970, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr were changed for good. They’d all been part of the most famous band in the world. Now what? Lennon had creative plans with Yoko Ono. But what about the rest of the fab four? McCartney once admitted that he felt lost after the band parted ways. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to continue with music at all.
‘The Main question I had was whether to keep going after The Beatles’
In March 2023, McCartney answered a question on his website from a fan about the biggest risk he’s taken in his career. One of the biggest risks McCartney took, he answered, was continuing on with music after The Beatles.
“The main question I had was whether to keep going after The Beatles,” he wrote, “because it was a hard act — some might say, an impossible act — to follow.”
The combination of Lennon, McCartney, Harrison, and Starr was like catching lightning in a bottle. Together, they were something astoundingly special. There’s no way the next project could produce that kind of magic.
“The ingredients in the Beatles were so unique,” he said. “You had John right there, who could have made any group brilliant. Then you had George’s talent, and Ringo’s, and then me.”
McCartney “didn’t know what to do with [himself].” Jumping into a new musical project felt “really risky.”
McCartney also went on to say that he’s “quite careful normally.” Still, continuing on with his music career ended up being a risk he was willing to take. But figuring out the logistics in the beginning proved to be tricky.
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“There’s a couple of times in life when you are forced into taking a risk,” he said. “After The Beatles, this was my situation: ‘Do I keep going with music, or not?’ Well, I want to keep going. So, ‘How am I going to do it? Am I going to have a band, or am I just going to busk outside train stations? How’s it going to work?’”
Paul McCartney and the risk that was Wings
McCartney’s first foray into music after the Beatles was with his band, Wings, which included his wife, Linda McCartney.
“Having Linda in Wings, when she was not a ‘musician’, was a risk too,” he said. “When the reviews started to come in a lot of them focused on her, asking, ‘What’s she doing in the band?’ And that was hurtful. But I rationalised it by thinking about when we started The Beatles and none of us knew our chords – over time we got better and picked things up.”
But everyone, including Linda, put in the time to improve. They started small and, eventually, built something they were proud of.
“In the early days of Wings, we decided to go right back to square one, taking a van up the motorway and playing little spontaneous gigs at universities for students, rather than jumping straight in with big live shows,” said McCartney. “I’d doubled back to almost being nothing – just some guy in the band – and now I was earning my fame again. By the time the mid-70s came around when we were doing a big American tour, that was the vindication of it. We were so tight and had come up together, as it were. The risk paid off.”
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