This book is credited to Paul McCartney, but as an oral history the credit really goes to historian/editor Ted Widmer and the crew at Paul’s company MPL that had all the archives. The book is seen as a companion to the documentary Man on the Run coming out in wide release in 2026 on Amazon Prime. Many new interviews were done for the documentary and transcribed for the book. It’s the first time we really hear from the McCartney children, particularly Mary and Stella.
I was expecting a coffee-table book, but this is standard hardcover size, which means that most of the pictures are black & white and smaller-size, although there is an insert with nice color photos. The text is organized chronologically, and includes the time of McCartney and McCartney II which is strange for a Wings book.
As with anything blessed by Macca, there is nothing that speaks ill of him (or Linda). In particular, his spectacular hubris leading to his Japanese arrest gets off lightly. That arrest killed the last incarnation of Wings, which was the first one I can remember experiencing as it happened.
As I was reading the book I was surprised how familiar the events seemed. Then it hit me that earlier this year I read the well-researched McCartney Legacy II by Allan Kozinn. If you’re only going to read one book about Wings, read Kozinn’s.
The book contains a “timeline” of contemporary events and popular music hits of each album’s era, and ends with superfluous capsule biographies of each member of Wings. The useful appendices are a detailed discography and a “gigography” with all the dates of Wings’ performances.
I am looking forward to the film documentary but I suspect I’m going to wonder about ten minutes in why it seems so familiar….
