{"id":923195,"date":"2026-04-28T03:21:15","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T03:21:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/923195\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T03:21:15","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T03:21:15","slug":"the-1972-song-paul-mccartney-said-he-should-have-discarded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/923195\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1972 song Paul McCartney said he should have discarded"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Kurt Schollenberger \/ ETH Library)<\/p>\n

Tue 28 April 2026 2:00, UK <\/p>\n

There was no clear agenda for what Paul McCartney<\/a> was supposed to do after leaving The Beatles. <\/p>\n

Anyone would have wanted to quit music altogether if they broke up their band and the rest of their bandmates ended up hating them<\/a>, but the least that Macca could do was try his hand at recapturing the same magic with his wife, Linda, by his side. He hadn\u2019t burned out by any stretch, but he did have more than a few moments where he had to learn how to become a rock and roller all over again.<\/p>\n

McCartney wasn\u2019t exactly everyone\u2019s first choice when looking at the greatest records ever made by an ex-Beatle, and while RAM was outstanding in most regards, it was going to take a little while before everyone truly caught on to what he was doing there. So if the public couldn\u2019t handle him as a solo artist, Wings was the next best thing when he formed his own band with Linda as his backing vocalist and keyboardist. <\/p>\n

Wild Life was a little more than a typical demo recording when they first made it, but Macca felt he didn\u2019t need to be defined by The Beatles anymore. There was no possible way for anyone to follow that kind of model that they had set, so he may as well have done anything that he wanted. And, folks, there were more than a few times where the McCartney family went a bit bonkers behind the scenes. <\/p>\n

Aside from their massive singles like \u2018Band on the Run\u2019 and \u2018Hi Hi Hi\u2019, McCartney wanted the chance to work on tunes that he wouldn\u2019t have had the chance to do with his old mates. John Lennon would have never approved of the more sentimental side of McCartney\u2019s music<\/a>, but if most people were already having a problem with tunes like \u2018You Gave Me the Answer\u2019 from Venus and Mars, bringing children\u2019s nursery rhymes into the fold on \u2018Mary Had a Little Lamb\u2019 wasn\u2019t going to do him any favours.<\/p>\n

To be fair, his version of the tune is a rearrangement of the version that everyone is taught in preschool, but McCartney felt that there wasn\u2019t anybody at the time that talked him out of it, saying<\/a>, \u201cPeople said, \u2018Oh, he only put that record out because [\u2018Give Ireland Back To The Irish\u2019] was banned.\u2019 It wasn\u2019t like that. I had a baby. We used to sing the song around the house and I thought it sounded catchy. I probably should have thought, \u2018Yes, but is this the record that you want in your portfolio right now? Is it \u2018the move\u2019?\u2019 But I don\u2019t think in terms of \u2018moves\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

But playing a children\u2019s song was already starting to wear on some members of the band when Red Rose Speedway wrapped up. It was going to feel like the Paul McCartney show, no matter who else was in the group, but by the time that Henry McCullough finished with the record, he wasn\u2019t going to spend the rest of his days trying to make music for children when he could be making rock and roll classics.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s one thing that Macca was able to do perfectly, though, it was balance both sides of his music. There were more than a few times where people were going to have to sit through some more lighthearted tunes, but the fact that someone could make a song like \u2018Little Lamb Dragonfly\u2019 on one record and only a few years later come out with tunes like \u2018Junior\u2019s Farm\u2019 or \u2018Beware My Love\u2019 was all that you could have asked for.<\/p>\n

Because while The Beatles weren\u2019t ever going to get back together properly, George Harrison wasn\u2019t joking when he said that seeing Wings was the next best thing. McCartney wanted to put on the kind of show that all Beatles fans could appreciate, and with \u2018Mary Had a Little Lamb\u2019, he felt like you were getting invited into what life was like for the McCartneys when they weren\u2019t on the road all the time. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Kurt Schollenberger \/ ETH Library) Tue 28 April 2026 2:00, UK There was no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":923196,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,269,11693,16,15,28702],"class_list":{"0":"post-923195","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-music","10":"tag-paul-mccartney","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-wings"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116480185947348338","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=923195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/923195\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/923196"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=923195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=923195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=923195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}