It’s a collection of songs and the basic idea about the band on the run is a kind of prison escape. The first track they recorded at Apapa was “ Mamunia“, the title for which McCartney appropriated from the name of a hotel in Marrakesh where Wings had stayed in April 1973. To make up for the departed band members, Paul would play drums and lead guitar parts with Denny playing rhythm guitar and Linda adding keyboards. The band would be driven to the studio in the early afternoon where recording would last into the late evening and sometimes early morning. Paul temporarily joined a local country club, where he would spend most mornings. The group established a routine of recording during the week and playing tourist on the weekends. Paul, Linda and their three children stayed in one, while Laine, his wife JoJo, Emerick, and Wings’ two roadies stayed in another. The band rented houses near the airport in Ikeja, an hour away from the studio. The control desk was faulty and there was only one tape machine, a Studer 8-track. EMI’s studio, located on Wharf Road in the suburb of Apapa, was ramshackle and under-equipped.
The band and their entourage arrived in Lagos on 9 August 1973. McCartney had chosen Lagos, as he felt it would be a glamorous location where he and the band could sun on the beach during the day and record at night the reality, however, was that after the end of a civil war in 1970 Nigeria was run by a military government, with corruption and disease commonplace. This left just the core of the band – Paul, Linda and Denny Laine – to record in Lagos, assisted by former Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick. Seiwell left a week later, the night before the band flew out to Nigeria. During one rehearsal session, McCullough and McCartney argued, and McCullough quit. In August, the band – consisting of McCartney and his wife Linda, ex-Moody Blues guitarist and pianist Denny Laine, Henry McCullough on lead guitar, and Denny Seiwell on drums – started rehearsals for the new album at the McCartneys’ Scottish farm. He selected Lagos in Nigeria and was taken with the idea of recording in Africa. Keen to record outside the United Kingdom, McCartney asked EMI to send him a list of all their international recording studios. After completing a successful UK tour with his band Wings, in July 1973, he planned their third album as a means to re-establish himself after the mixed reception given to Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway. – Linda McCartney to Sounds magazineīy 1973, having been the one to announce the break-up of the Beatles three years before, Paul McCartney had yet to regain his artistic credibility or find favour with music critics for his post-Beatles work. Paul thought, I’ve got to do it, either I give up and cut my throat or get my magic back. It was Paul McCartney’s last album issued on the Apple label. A contemporary review by Jon Landau in Rolling Stone described the album as “ with the possible exception of John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band, the finest record yet released by any of the four musicians who were once called the Beatles“. In 2012, Band on the Run was voted 418th on Rolling Stone’s revised list of “ The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time“. In 2000, Q magazine placed it at number 75 in its list of the “ 100 Greatest British Albums Ever“. After the band’s return to England, final overdubs and further recording were carried out at AIR Studios in London.
On arriving, it was discovered that the studio was below standard, and conditions in Nigeria were tense and difficult the McCartneys were robbed at knife-point, during which a bag containing unfinished song lyrics and demo tapes was taken. Shortly before departing for Lagos, however, drummer Denny Seiwell and guitarist Henry McCullough left the group with no time to recruit replacements, McCartney went into the studio with just his wife Linda and Denny Laine, doubling on drums, percussion and most of the lead guitar parts himself as well as bass. The majority of Band on the Run was recorded at EMI’s studio in Lagos, Nigeria, as McCartney wanted to make an album in an exotic locale. It remains McCartney’s most successful album and the most celebrated of his post-Beatles works. Although sales were modest initially, its commercial performance was aided by two hit singles – “ Jet” and “ Band on the Run” – such that it became the top-selling studio album of 1974 in the United Kingdom and Australia, in addition to revitalising McCartney’s critical standing. It marked the fifth album by Paul McCartney since his departure from the Beatles in April 1970. Band on the Run is the third studio album by Paul McCartney and Wings, released in December 1973.
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