Spanish holidays for the McCartney family, and Wings

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From El refugio valenciano de Paul McCartney – Beat Valencia:

The story we’re dealing with started 50 years ago. The Beatles say goodbye with an outstanding album of sharp rock and roll on their A-side, and sparkles of rock opera on their B-side, with an ending where Ringo’s first and only drum solo is intertwined with a succession of scores from the rest of the group, ending with a single suspended piano note while Paul bids farewell on behalf of the group by singing The End.
McCartney announced the official separation on April 10, 1970 announcing that he was leaving the group. Lennon, who had been more inside than outside the months after the movie Let it Be, never forgave his companion to step on the news of the dissolution of the band he created in 1957. From that moment on, John Lennon would start an unjust hunt for everything his former partner did, scorning his music and even reneging on George Martin himself.
In those moments Paul finds himself isolated, depressed and insecure, fed up with unfounded attacks from a musical press that initially takes John’s side, calling him soft, commercial, inconsistent, and even conservative, despite the fact that this was always the most consistent Labour beatle of the four, and the most introduced into the artistic avant-garde of the sixties. Diego Manrique tells us that “while the other three beatles languish in the mansions of the outskirts for millionaires, it is Paul who pushes the evolution of Swinging London towards underground culture”, (Rolling Stone, nº149, March 2012).
In 1972, after the beating of his album Wild Life (first by Wings), Paul sets off with his inseparable Linda and his daughter Stella, to a country whose political and cultural isolation will be the best help to re-compose at the level that his genius deserves: the Spain of the end of Franco’s regime. The chosen locality is the municipality of Vila Joiosa, in the Marina Baixa, staying at the Hotel Montíboli. The visit of the beatle was picked up by the press of the time. Thus, the newspaper Información, from Alicante, interviewed him at the end of June 1972, giving Paul the opportunity to advertise his new postbeatle stage. The photographer José Crespo Colomer was able to photograph an excursion of the orphaned children of the Casa de Beneficencia de Alcoi, and its nuns caretakers, together with Linda and Paul in the beach of the coastal city.
Paul’s stay in Vila Joiosa will be absolutely fruitful and will mean McCartney’s return in style. It is in the Hotel Montíboli where he will compose songs that will integrate two of his best solo albums Red Rose Speedway and Band on The Run. Both albums, although recorded respectively in Great Britain and Lagos (Nigeria), were conceived in his Valencian retreat. He rediscovered the canon of beatle music and once again embroidered works that will be fundamental in the history of rock. He expanded his new band with more than solvent musicians such as guitarists Denny Laine and Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Joe English. Lennon himself said that “Band on The Run is a great album. Wings is a band almost as conceptual as the Plastic Ono Band. You can still call them Wings, but it’s just Paul McCartney’s music. And it’s excellent music” (Lapuente, Luis. “Paul McCartney. The bow of emotion:1970-1980”. EfeEme Notebooks, no. 16. Summer 2018). Initiated in the second half of the 70’s, Lennon would be aware of the misguided and false nature of his attacks, initiating a timid approach to McCartney, recognizing his composer genius. In fact, it will be a song by Macca (Coming up) that will encourage Lennon to return to the studios.
The song composed at the Hotel Montíboli with the greatest repercussion was undoubtedly “Hi, hi, hi”. The BBC, which had already banned in 1972 the policy and claim “Give Ireland Back To The Irish”, returned to the burden by banning the song written in Valencian lands. The motive in this case was not political, but to make apology of drugs and sex. Thus, phrases in which McCartney literally talks about “getting high” or “doing it” are forbidden by obscene and irreverent. In this way, Paul not only reaffirms his musical quality, but also gets two of his best songs banned by censorship, something that will never happen to any other beatle, not even Lennon’s rebel. And the best thing is that the ignorance of Shakespeare’s language on the part of Franco’s censorship at the time will make “Hi, Hi, Hi” number one on the Spanish charts for five weeks.
Few would imagine that it would be in that backward, grey Spain, where Paul McCartney would find the necessary inspiration to return in style and claim the place he deserved in rock and roll. And all thanks to the hotel that gave him back the inspiration of a town on the Alicante coast called Montíboli, and to which he would dedicate his song “Hotel In Benidorm”. Paul saw as fulfilled what he sang at the end of Abbey Road: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make”, (and in the end, the love you receive is equal to the love you give).

From The true story of Paul McCartney and the Hotel Montíboli (montiboli.com):

It’s been no less than 45 years since the famous pop-rock star Paul McCartney stayed in our Hotel for the first time, we have fond memories of the mutual affinity between the singer and ourselves and like to reminisce now and again.

It was way back 1972 when the Liverpool Star was looking for a quiet hotel near to Benidorm. A brief retreat where he could relax with his wife and baby, and a place which would also serve as an inspiration to continue composing. That’s how Paul McCartney came to the Montíboli.

This was his first stay with us, accompanied by his wife Linda McCartney and their baby, Stella McCartney who was just a few months old at the time.

In fact, it was the  Hotel Montíboli in Villajoyosa where  Paul McCartney composed the “controversial” theme Hi, Hi, Hi, included in his next album with the Wings album, the band that he joined a year after the breakup of The Beatles, his wife Linda was also part of the group, (Linda McCartney collaborated in the band as a background singer, on keyboards and percussion) The song reached number 1 in the Spanish Charts for five weeks, and reached number 1 on the Hot 100 list in the U.S.A.   

As the story goes, Linda and Paul spent many hours composing their song in the Montíboli, combining work with rest and relaxation on the Caleta of Villajoyosa.

In the small photo on the right you can see Paul McCartney with his baby and José Manuel Castillo, our manager of the hotel for nearly four decades. 

Paul McCartney, has mentioned on numerous occasions the special bond he had with Spain and everything relating to our country, years later he composed a song which he named Hotel in Benidorm.

In fact, in Paul McCartney’s Biography “Paul McCartney. Much more than a Beatle”, which has recently seen the light thanks to Jorge San Román and Cruz Delgado Sánchez, talks about the stay in the Montíboli in the section titled as the song Hotel in Benidorm.

A few days after the McCartney’s stayed in our hotel they commenced a very successful tour with the group Wings. […]

Last updated on September 20, 2023