Paul McCartney and Denny Laine, a friendship between songs, marijuana and betrayals

It was a phone call that crossed the path of Paul McCartney and Denny Laine , recently deceased musician. The two had known each other since the 1960s, when the latter was part of The Moody Blues, one of the groups that emerged in the United Kingdom as part of the blues revisionist wave. They had a blow with the blow Go now which allowed them to tour with the Beatles, during their last tour of the United Kingdom in 1965.

“I knew Paul,” Laine told the Tallahase Democratic Portal. We used to go out and see people. We’d go out and watch Dylan or Jimi Hendrix or The Lovin’ Spoonful or whatever. . We were going to see American bands who came to England just out of curiosity. So I practically had a friendship with him because I was in London at the time. And that’s how I met him.”

Laine (born Brian Frederick Hines in Birmingham in 1944) He went through other groups. After leaving the Moody Blues in 1966, he played in the psychedelic Electric String Band and the supergroup Ginger Baker’s Air Force. But the biggest opportunity came in 1971, when he answered the phone and on the other end McCartney spoke to him. ” What are you doing ? » he said. “Nothing,” Denny replied. “‘Well, let’s go then!’ » launched “Macca”.

So, Laine joined Wings, the group led by the former Beatle. He was present at the first concerts, when McCartney and the band played impromptu for students. This rawer sound defined the album wildlife, a work that did not receive good reviews. “The fact that we went out and started showing up at colleges just to play meant we had to play live in front of an audience to feel the band,” he detailed in the same interview. Build confidence and everything else. So this album was really a result of the band we were in at the time. “You know, it was a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude.”

After publication red rose race track (1973), two of the band’s musicians, Henry McCullough and Denny Seiwell, left the group. Only Paul, his wife Linda and Denny remained. The three traveled to Lagos, Nigeria to record Group on the run (1973), which will go down in history as one of McCartney’s most successful works. At the helm was Geoff Emerick, the former Beatles sound engineer, who always had a good relationship with “Macca”.

“Paul’s rehearsal tape was stolen, so we had to start from scratch” Laine remembers. “It was a very poorly equipped studio (in Africa). We did the backing tracks there, then came back to London and finished them. That’s it, really. Actually, it was just me and Paul in the studio. We just wanted to do something really raw and get a good feel. “That’s what worked.”

Denny Laine didn’t just play guitar. He also contributed with vocals, for example you can hear it in the first lines of Picasso’s last words of Group on the run. But Paul McCartney pushed him to collaborate with material for Wings. Thus, his signature appears in songs like No words, again and again and again, hopefullyamong others.

But his greatest success for Wings was Mull of Kintyre (1977), the heartfelt homage to the Scottish coastal area where Paul had his farm. Just like the good old days, “Macca” was co-written with Laine. “I had an idea for a song,” the musician said in the same interview. “I went to have breakfast with them (Paul and Linda) in Scotland. I heard the chorus and said it was a potentially hit song. So the next day we went to finish it. “We sat down, wrote the lyrics and put them together.”

And the detail that gave the subject its Scottish character was missing. “We brought in the Campbeltown Pipe Band and everyone was excited. -Laine pointed out-. It was their first time in the studio and it was fun. We recorded the flutes and drums outside to bring out the echoes of the mountains. It was released at Christmas and was a big success (in England). Here it was a B side.”

But towards the end of the seventies, McCartney lacked energy to keep Wings active . This was influenced by the discreet results of the last albums (the city of London And Back to the egg), the constant line-up changes and the interest in trying their luck again with a solo album (McCartney II, 1980).

The definitive break between Laine and McCartney took place precisely in January 1980, when the former Beatle was arrested for possession of marijuana (which he was carrying in a suitcase) while entering Japan for a two-week tour. Since he had been in the shade for ten days, the rest of the group didn’t know what to do. At that point, according to biographer Phillip Norman, tour organizers asked the musicians to leave the country. Needing money, Laine flew to France to participate in the MIDEM festival and negotiate a contract for a solo album.

Laine gradually distanced himself from Wings. He became interested in consolidating his solo career for which he formed a band which included his wife Jo Jo. But their first album didn’t work. Plagued by debt and insolvency, he decided to sell his share of the company’s credits to McCartney. Mull of Kintyre, for 135,000 pounds, according to Phillip Norman.

And it didn’t stop there. He signed a deal to publish his memoirs in the tabloid The Sun, one of the pillars of sensationalism in the United Kingdom. Nothing was saved in his memories. “According to Laine, Paul and Linda smoked marijuana daily, to the point that Paul’s recordings suffered chronically from delays and lack of concentration,” says Norman.

These revelations opened a deep fissure in the relationship between the two. McCartney considered Laine a traitor, for abandoning him in Japan and exposing his private affairs to the press. Only distance and years of old age managed to bring them together again, as Paul admitted in a release upon learning of Laine’s death. “We had grown apart, but in recent years we have managed to reestablish our friendship and share memories of our time together. . Denny was a great talent with a good sense of humor and was always willing to help others. He will be missed by all his fans and remembered with great affection by his friends. “I send my deepest condolences and best wishes to his wife Isabel and his family.”

After leaving Wings, Denny Laine released nine albums as a solo artist. His latest album, The blue musician, was released in 2008. Earlier this year, he explained that he was working on new material again and embarked on a tour of the project. Acoustic songs and stories across the United States, playing music from Wings and The Moody Blues, and telling stories about the good old days. Their last concert was in Richmond, Virginia last July.