(The Hit Hammer is where I'm reviewing each #1 song on the Billboard Hot 100. Starting from when the chart started in 1958 and eventually working my way to the present. To see my inspiration and more information about this blog, please CLICK HERE)
Paul McCartney & Wings - "Band on the Run"
Hit Number 1: June 8, 1974
Stay at Number 1: 1 Week
Back when the Beatles were still together, they had many business meetings of course. One of those meetings, however, was a grueling one, and one where the band members were getting annoyed at how long they had to be there. George Harrison of all the members, likely in response to a question someone had asked, said "if we ever get out of here." For some reason, that statement by Harrison lodged itself into Paul McCartney's brain. He had no idea that the Beatles would soon break up, but he he did know he wanted to use that phrase spoken by Harrison in a song one day. He would later say in an interview that Harrison said they were all prisoners in some way, and this particular meeting dealt with the Beatles' ongoing issues with their Apple label. Without even being there, I imagine that that atmosphere was hectic as hell. But McCartney shared Harrison's frustration, and he would eventually write a song based off of it.
Fast forward to 1973, and the Beatles had broken up, and McCartney was struggling with legal battles involving pot possession. He saw all the drug busts in the late '60s and early '70s, and was beginning to relate to them. He got further inspiration from that to write a song about "breaking free," and making a song about breaking out of a prison. Or, you know, being on the run. Eventually at some point, everything clicked at once. Everything I just brought up came to McCartney at once, and he decided he'd combine all of that into one song. That end result is "Band on the Run", and while most of the song sounds like pure gibberish, it's easy to put all the pieces together, now knowing all of this.
It's interesting to wonder if "Band on the Run" could've ever worked as a Beatles song, but all along it was something that was perfect for Wings. Wings appeared in this blog once before with "My Love", but that song, in my opinion, doesn't truly show you what they were all about. Wings was a big experiment for McCartney, and it reflected in their music. Wings had some weird music, and weird is a decent way of describing "Band on the Run". The song is three songs in one. The first part is a melancholic, psychedelic-sounding song about feeling trapped and missing interacting with people. The second part is more funk, and the song gets more agitated. That's when the George Harrison line, "If we ever get out of here," comes in. Then finally, the main song comes in, and it's a lot more "folky" sounding. The band presumably escapes from this prison, and people keep trying to hunt them down, but stay unsuccessful. It's the part of the song that sounds the most happy.
Even though you put the pieces together on the plot of "Band on the Run", it's still a strange piece of work, and that has a lot to do with the lyrics. I'm not sure who the "Sailor Sam" is, but maybe I'm missing something, I'm open to that idea. Still, there's some weird lines in this song that I can't decipher the meaning of. "Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash as we fell into the sun." What does that even mean? But I guess that's the Wings for you, and it makes the story of "Band on the Run" rather impressive. It's not easy to pull off something like this, but if anyone was gonna do it, it was Wings. And they pull it off about as well as they could have. "Band on the Run", as weird as it may be, stays interesting. I like how the song changes based off of what's going on. There's really a lot going on in the song, and if you really listen, maybe you can get the message out of it. Wings was on the run, and no one was gonna stop them.
Maybe the most impressive thing was that "Band on the Run" was kind of improvised. Sure, the song was written out by McCartney, but when Wings was on tour in Lagos, Nigeria, the demo tapes for "Band on the Run" were stolen from them after they were robbed at gunpoint. They no longer had anything to go off of anymore, and pretty much had to wing the recording. You wouldn't be able to guess that from the song though. The finished product is a different, strange little piece of songcraft, but it also sounds polished and professional. Like Wings knew they were about to get away with something here. But they were just getting started with their fancy experiments, and they'll appear in this blog again. I've always thought "Band on the Run" was a pretty good song.
GRADE: 7/10
IN POP CULTURE:
Here's the Foo Fighters' surprisingly well done cover of "Band on the Run" they released in 2007. (They apparently played the song with McCartney at a show in Liverpool in 2008, but unfortunately I can't find that video, if there even is one) Here's their cover:
(It seems rather hard to believe, but Billboard won't tell me how many songs the Foo Fighters had on the Billboard Hot 100. It's almost as if they had none, but I'm not buying that. So unfortunately, I'm not sure what their highest-peaking song is)
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