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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

The unexpected lessons of Paul McCartney’s Wings era

A new exhibit at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame reframes Wings as both a musical success and a fascinating case study

Published June 23, 2026 12:00PM (EDT)

50 years ago, Paul McCartney went on tour in the United States with his band Wings. It was the first time he played live since The Beatles’ last tour in 1966. 2026 has become the year of Wings, with a wave of new historical and archival celebration around Sir Paul’s post-Beatles band. There’s a documentary (“Man On The Run”), a 550-page oral history (“Wings: The Story of a Band On The Run”), and the first major museum exhibit on Wings at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The end result of all of the above is both practical and aspirational: the total effort rounds up all of the loose ends around this era while there are still enough people around to talk about it, and officially induct Wings into McCartney’s larger legacy.

It’s charming to observe within these different archival efforts just how very much Paul McCartney wanted his post-Beatles musical projects to be a band. He didn’t want to be “The Cute Ex-Beatle And Some Other Guys.” He wanted it to be a proper group, where each of the individual members had the opportunity to contribute and have a voice in the songs or the arrangements. This mindset explains his approach to the early days of the band, when they hopped into a van and drove around the UK, stopping at universities and offering to play for 50p at the door, dividing up the bag of coins at the end of the night.

This is absolutely a delightful conceit, except for the fact that the guy who wrote the songs and recruited the musicians was in The Beatles and, short of putting together a “supergroup,” there was never going to be any kind of equal balance of power. No matter how nice you are, no matter how much you want the other musicians to come to the studio with their ideas, no matter how many times you say, “we’re a band!!,” It doesn’t change the immutable fact that the person signing your paychecks is one of the most famous musicians on the planet.

To be fair to Paul, he was trying to figure out what his post-Beatles life was going to look like, and there weren’t a lot of examples out there he could follow. McCartney makes it clear in these new releases that he truly wasn’t sure that he’d ever write another note of music again. There wasn’t an accepted (or any) pathway for what you do when your huge pop group breaks up.

That’s what makes this whole post-Beatles/new band saga interesting to a more general audience who might not care about all the small details of Sir Paul’s post-Beatles music-making: this re-appreciation of Wings is also the story of the evolution of the music business and how it changed as the 1960s turned into the 1970s, everything from writing and recording music as well as touring, promotion and the media.

(Amber Patrick/Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) Paul McCartney and Wings exhibit

The........

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