Paul McCartney, Wings, Beatles: a coexistence to tell

The recent “relaunch” of the name, catalog and Wings legacy (compilation and book recently released, plus a documentary arriving in February 2026) – also due to audience age reasons, given that an increasingly large portion of Paul McCartney’s fans now have no direct experience of the Beatles – also raises the theme of a “dichotomy” between the two bands of which Macca was part. If on the one hand it is undeniable that the group founded by Paul in the summer of 1971 was born in some way on the ashes of the Fab Four (given the need for McCartney to make music at all levels and therefore return to performing live), and that the repertoire of the Sixties was kept “at a distance” in the early years, there is a “historical falsehood” that is worth being refuted, the result of some oversimplification, in the wake of the passing of time. It’s a fake that has distant roots now.

Often, in fact, in the interviews given to the press after his great return to the scene with the 1989-90 World Tour, McCartney referred to the fact that he was finally singing the Beatles’ songs again after having left them aside for decades. Speaking of Wings, he often highlighted the absence of his ex-group’s songs in the live repertoire. Subtitle: it was a cumbersome past, only now has the time come to reclaim it.

If it is true that, in the media, that great world tour of the late 1980s marked an important transition in the collective imagination, Paul had never stopped loving the Beatles and performing their repertoire, albeit in less massive doses than the concerts he has accustomed us to for thirty-five years now.

If the two Wings tours in 1972 did not feature any Beatles songs in the setlist (“I understand that people would like to hear them, but all that talk in the past tense seems like an obituary to me,” McCartney said at the time), the first testimonies of Paul remaking the Beatles are quite early, and date back to the spring of 1973. On the occasion of the James Paul McCartney TV show, Paul inserts “Blackbird” and “Michelle” into an acoustic medley, and presents “Yesterday” again. In the rehearsals the Wings also played “The Long and Winding Road”, which however was excluded from the final version of the show.

The 1975-76 world tour, with McCartney and Wings on top of the world in terms of chart success at the time, featured five strategically placed Beatles songs (“Lady Madonna”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “I’ve Just Seen a Face”, “Blackbird” and “Yesterday”). There are four references to the Fab Four in the setlist of Wings’ British Tour 1979, but with the important novelty that one of these (“Got to Get You Into My Life”) is actually the opening song. The other three songs are “Let It Be”, “The Fool on the Hill” and “Yesterday”.

Lennon’s death in December 1980 marked a change of pace. From that moment, Paul also includes in the interviews supporting his records numerous references to the glorious past and to his relationship with John, also thanks to the renewed collaboration with George Martin – producer of three albums between 1982 and 1984 – and the tribute to his deceased friend, “Here Today”, which appears on “Tug of War”, with an arrangement for string quartet that takes up the famous example of “Yesterday”.

A fundamental moment – and perhaps forgotten today – of this journey came in 1984. The feature film “Give My Regards to Broad Street” and its soundtrack gave Paul the opportunity to show the general public – a few years after John’s death, and at a time when critics seemed to have relegated him to a corner of history, even Beatles history – that that legacy should not only be preserved but also valorised. The Beatles songs featured in the film represent the majority of the repertoire: there are “Yesterday”, “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Good Day Sunshine”, “For No One”, “Eleanor Rigby” and “The Long and Winding Road”. Others, such as “The Fool on the Hill” and “Hey Jude” are considered, but face opposition from Ringo, who wants to avoid any comparisons on his drum performances.

The summer of 1985 saw another noteworthy episode. On 13 July of that year, McCartney closed the Live Aid event at Wembley Stadium in London. His choice falls on “Let It Be”, performed alone on the piano; a performance which, although plagued by the failure of Paul’s microphone for the first minute, is capable of arousing enthusiasm and emotion. Above all, it testifies to the fact that the Beatles’ music is very alive and that McCartney represents its essence.

Behind the scenes, meanwhile (and perhaps this is also why Paul pushes on the accelerator) the unimaginable is taking place. The announcement that Michael Jackson had purchased the ATV catalog (which includes Northern Songs, owner of all the Lennon-McCartney Beatles songs, with the exception of a handful) was dated 10 August 1985, but negotiations had been ongoing since at least autumn 1984. Paul, despite a moral right of first refusal, decided that the catalog was too expensive and waited. Jackson on the other hand – thanks to the advice given to him by McCartney a few years earlier on the opportunity to invest in the field of music rights and considerable liquidity, after the impressive sales of his album “Off the Wall” – steps forward and wins it for the sensational sum of forty-seven and a half million dollars.

At that point, for McCartney it is no longer (and not only) a question of defending an artistic legacy but also an unparalleled heritage in the world of music. On 20 June 1986, when McCartney returned to the stage in London for the Prince’s Trust charity concert, this time he was accompanied by a supergroup of stars and gave his all, with three songs (“Long Tall Sally”, “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Get Back”) all from the Beatles’ repertoire, two of which were “branded” Lennon-McCartney.

And again: November 27, 1987, in full promotion for the single “Once Upon a Long Ago” and the collection All the Best!, McCartney performs live on the TV show The Last Resort. The repertoire does not include solo material (!) but only covers of old classics and “I Saw Her Standing There” again.

For McCartney, therefore, it was never a question of really avoiding contact with the Beatles, but rather of placing them in the background, considering them from a perspective that made them appear even greater. An impeccable management, which prevented Paul from remaining imprisoned in a past whose value and importance have always remained in the hearts.