August 30th, the fifth and final day of recording, was a unique staging meant as an interlude segment in the One Hand Clapping film: a solo acoustic performance by Paul in the backyard of Abbey Road studios! Although Paul again drifted through several impromptu takes of a number of classic 1950s rock songs, he did record fairly complete takes of Beatles classic “Blackbird”, the then-unreleased Wings b-side “Country Dreamer” and the as-yet unreleased “Blackpool.” Afterwards, Paul retreated back into Studio Two to track a tight solo piano version of “Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Five”, which mysteriously morphs into the Band On The Run studio version in the actual unreleased One Hand Clapping film, as well as all known audio recordings.Īnd that was essentially the last anyone heard of One Hand Clapping, aside from archival releases and bootlegs of varying quality. The second day of recording produced takes of “Band On The Run”, “Wild Life”, “Hi Hi Hi”, “Live and Let Die”, “Soily”, “Go Now”, “Blue Moon of Kentucky” and “Bluebird.” Day three of recording saw Paul performing a number of songs alone at the piano, which has posthumously been dubbed “The Cabaret Sequence.” Paul went though supposedly impromptu performances of “Suicide”, “Let’s Love”, “All of You,” “I’ll Give You a Ring” and a ‘proper’ take of “Baby Face.”ĭay four saw the entire band returning to the studio to add overdubs to the live tracks recorded on the 26th and the 27th: “My Love”, “Live and Let Die”, “Band On The Run” “Bluebird” and “Jet”. The first day of rehearsals on August 26th produced full-band versions of “Jet”, “Let Me Roll It”, “Junior’s Farm”, “My Love”, “Little Woman Love”/”C Moon”, “Maybe I’m Amazed” and a short instrumental jam which would become the theme song for the project: “One Hand Clapping”. Rehearsals for the theoretical tour continued across the ocean in late August at McCartney’s old stomp: Abbey Road studios! But McCartney thought a little more of these activities than just simply rehearsals, as he employed boy-genius engineer Geoff Emerick to record the session, as well as David Litchfield to film and direct the sessions for a possible documentary film release. While they were there, Wings also recorded the single “Junior’s Farm” (one of this author’s favorite Wings songs) as well as a handful of country-tinged tracks under the name The Country Hams. Wings finally recruited drummer Geoff Britton and headed to Nashville in July to rehearse for a planned tour of Australia. A month before Band On The Run’s December 1973 release, Wings broke in their new guitarist Jimmy McCulloch by recording some of Linda’s songs as Suzy and The Red Stripes, as well as a session for Paul’s brother Michael, as McGear, in February 1974. This eventually led to the second major change for Wings: a new line-up. Miraculously, the album was a product of the trio of Paul, Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, as drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough quit the band just before the start of the album’s recording sessions. Firstly, it was McCartney’s first post-Beatles “masterpiece album”, finally equaling the quality of a typical Beatles album.

The arrival of Band on The Run signaled a few changes in Paul McCartney & Wings. All tracks have been sequenced in the actual recording order, spread across four sides of a vinyl record. This reconstruction attempts to replicate what a double-LP release in 1974 could have been like, using the best possible sources, including official releases and painstakingly-remastered bootleg recordings. Despite the high quality of live studio performances-especially of the then-unreleased “Soily”-McCartney shelved the entire project, as was the fate of a number of other self-financed Wings film projects throughout the 70s and 80s. Originally meant as the studio rehearsals for a 1974 Wings Over Australia tour that never happened, the proceedings were filmed for a possible film release, akin to The Beatles’ Get Back project eight years earlier. This is a reconstruction of the proposed 1974 live in-the-Abbey Road studio album One Hand Clapping by Paul McCartney & Wings. My how time flies! Why is the pandemic not over yet!? Sorry for the delay, but it’s finally here- the second of a trilogy of famous live albums that never were, in memory of the live music we can’t quite yet experience again.

Paul mccartney one hand clapping