Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun 

Ted Widmer’s Wings book is the sweeping post-Beatles journey of the most influential musician of our time, Sir Paul McCartney. From the trauma of the Fab Four parting ways and the former Beatle feeling “completely lost”, to forming Wings with wife Linda, hitting the road, rediscovering his voice and songwriting magic to release an endless streak of classic tunes over a six-decades-and-counting career.

Here Widmer talks about his humour-filled collaboration with the living legend, why it was important for him to “do a better job by Linda” who was “often dissed by snarky critics”, McCartney’s emotional reconciliation with John Lennon, his impact on social issues, why Maybe Im Amazed is the greatest love song ever and more. He reflects on McCartney the phenomenon – his songs admired by fans and his creative forte revered by his peers too numerous to note – from Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen and Brian Wilson to Oasis, Ed Sheeran, Jacob Collier and Dave Grohl.

HG The book is beautifully designed, did you have access to McCartney’s vast archive?

HG He is admired by the millions who love his songs and idolised by professional musicians for his creative forte – he has revolutionised bass playing and sparked the careers of generations of musicians from Knopfler, Joel and Cobain to Ed Sheeran and Billie Eilish. What makes him the phenomenon that he is? What do you think makes his music ‘magic’?

HG I love how the late Linda McCartney comes across – she is genuine, fun, loving and honest, it is clear that her positivity was instrumental to McCartney and Wings. Given that she was a band member, fellow musician, wife, soul-mate and mother – was she a challenging character to portray?

TW It was important to me to do a better job by Linda. She was often dissed by snarky critics, but I felt that she was a big talent and positively essential to Wings. Both for musical reasons – her backing vocals are great, but also because she had so much courage; who among us would go out onto that stage with so little training? Plus, she just made everyone around her better, all agree that she was a great maternal presence and that means a lot to a band.

TW I can’t think of another example in the entire history of rock, of a young family going out on the road. We have a lot of fake families, like the Partridge family, The Ramones and Archies sort of pretend to be in a family. But this was the real thing, it is beautiful that they pulled it off.

TW It was all a profound honour. We had a great Anglo-American team. I appreciated Paul’s personal involvement, naturally, but also really enjoyed the members of his team, and their fact checking and image searching capabilities. It was just a joy. In a lot of ways, the original friendly spirit of the band was with us. Wings is a gift that keeps on giving.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)