Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Wings

Band on the Run, the third album from Paul McCartney and Wings, came out on Apple on 30 November 1973 in Britain and 5 December in America, and it's the record where McCartney stopped apologizing for not being a Beatle. It was nearly a disaster. Denny Seiwell and Henry McCullough quit just before the trip to EMI's studio in Lagos, Nigeria, leaving Paul, Linda and Denny Laine to make it themselves, with Paul himself handling the drums, the bass and the bulk of the lead guitar. The studio was shabby, the mood was tense, and Paul and Linda had a knife pulled on them by robbers who made off with a bag full of lyrics and demo tapes. The rest got finished in London, mostly at AIR Studios.

Somehow it all sounds free and airborne, songs about escape and running for daylight. "Jet" and the title track were the hits, and the album topped the charts in Britain and America. The cover, shot by Clive Arrowsmith at Osterley Park, has the trio and six celebrities dressed as convicts, frozen in a prison searchlight.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.