When The Wind Is Blowing

Song facts

“When The Wind Is Blowing” is a song recorded during the 1971 sessions for RAM, which had remained officially unreleased till its inclusion on the 2018 reissue of Wild Life.

This song was considered to be on the soundtrack for a full-length animated film focused on Rupert The Bear, project that was ultimately shelved and transformed into a short film. It was then recorded by Wings in 1978, and available on bootlegs.

It was also considered for inclusion in some instances of the Cold Cuts project (a collection of outtakes), again project that would never see light.

In 1999, during a TV Show with Michael Parkinson, Paul played a few notes of “When The Wind Is Blowing“, and explained how he was inspired to write the song by looking at a Picasso print (The Old Guitarist) when he was in the hospital room where Linda was staying after giving birth to Mary in 1969:

I remember when Linda and I had just had our first baby which was Mary – we already had Heather but our first baby together was Mary. And Mary was born and I was at the hospital basically the whole week, you know, just while Linda recovered and took it easy – and we liked the chips in this place too – so we’re sitting around all week and enjoy just having had this lovely baby… And there was this Picasso print on the wall of an old man playing the guitar and I looked at it all week, and towards the end the week I thought what chords he’s playing on the guitar what was he playing. I noticed he’s just had two fingers here… You get that chord there guys… Just two fingers there and so I thought well I’ll try and see you know what the chord is… How it sounds anyway… I tried to use that as the inspiration and tried to write a song that only had used two fingers so I’ll play a bit of these. Note carefully, two fingers all the time, my hand never leaves my wrist. That’s how it goes anyway…

Paul McCartney

The melody of “When The Wind Is Blowing” became the instrumental hook for Kanye West’s All Day, released in 2015.

Last updated on March 5, 2022