Berlin • Thursday, August 24, 1972

PAUL McCARTNEY in Berlin

by Robin Denselow

SEVEN WEEKS on the road, and Paul McCartney’s new band Wings is dramatically improved since the first performance I reported in this column from the South of France. Trailing across Europe and playing every night has transformed the band from weak apology to an excellent vehicle for McCartney’s at last revived talent. At the Deutschlandhalle – a massive concrete barn that is Berlin’s answer to the Wembley Pool – Wings faced a large, suspicious audience for the first time and defeated them by two encores after a painful uphill fight.

At their best, they are now a straightforward rock dance band with a good line in harmonies, reminiscent at times of the Beatles of “Rubber Soul.” McCartney is rightly relying more and more on his guitarists Henry McCulloch and Denny Laine and the interplay between the three of them is now far tighter and more enthusiastic. His songs are at last giving them some leeway: “The Mess I’m In,” for instance, had echoes of The Who in parts, with changes in pace and harmony, a welcome contrast to the nursery rhymes he has been writing of late. Another new song, “1882,” was a slow, tuneful narrative ballad, a bleak horror story about Victorian England a thousand times more impressive than his ghastly “Give Ireland Back to the Irish.” There was a change in McCartney’s stage act as well: faced with hostility, he lost his temper and worked harder than ever.

The good material and hopeful finds were all there, but so were some of the early problems. He still includes four or five simplistic songs (presumably so that his wife Linda can play them) which destroy his act and obviously bore the band. Linda’s singing was still sub-standard with a tendency to go flat as soon as she moved away from the piano. If McCartney could overcome problems like that he will be ready for a successful British comeback.

From The Guardian, August 26, 1972