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Sometimes you can be over rehearsed. You know the material too well. Sometimes you just have to embrace the panic of not knowing what you are going to play, to just go with it.
The late Henry McCullough could testify to that. He had enjoyed a stellar career, jamming with Jimi Hendrix, working his magic in the Grease Band, playing in Spooky Tooth and alongside Denny Laine as Paul McCartney’s six-string lieutenant in Wings.
But many would argue his solo to My Love was his finest hour – and it was a hinge moment in Wings’ history.
Hitherto, McCartney’s say was final. He was the master of all he surveyed. There was a sense that he needed a guitarist only because playing bass, singing and playing guitar at the same time was even beyond the powers of the Beatle.
He had his own ideas of how the solo would go down for My Love and so it came as a bit of a shock when McCullough suggested he wanted to play something different. Also, he didn’t know what that exactly was.
“I mentioned to Paul that I wanted to change whatever was suggested,” McCullough told Classic Rock Here and Now in 2012. “The conversation between Paul and I went like this: ‘What are you gonna’ play?’ ‘I don't know.’ ‘You don't know what you’re gonna play?’ ‘No.’”
Well, that settled that. Some players come alive when the red light’s on, others fall to pieces. You’ve got to imagine that it could go either way for most players.
However McCullough felt ordinarily, he was not wholly unaware of the kind of setting this was in. He was working with a Beatle, one half of the greatest songwriting partnership that in popular music’s young history, and the producer who found the Fab Four a sound, in Studio Two at Abbey Road
“Now, there’s Paul, George Martin et cetera in the control room, a 50 piece orchestra waiting on me in the studio,” recalled McCullough. Not only did he have to record his solo – which the aforementioned exchange with McCartney establishes, he did not have ready – he had to do it with an orchestral accompaniment.
You don’t want to be that guy, the one out of 51 players to screw up the take. McCullough had his Les Paul, maybe a cold sweat, too, and stepped up.
“So, in I went and plugged in the Gold Top, took a deep breath, and when I exhaled it was all over, a bit like going to the dentist,” he said. “It was a one take wonder, a gift from God? I don’t know…”
Everyone else was made to sweat over the track. The record says that 20-odd takes were done. It was easy listening and a slog to record. But McCullough just needed one. There was magic in the room
“Somebody, something happened,” he said. “Everybody saw it, felt it. Ask Sir Paul and I think you would get a similar answer.”
Released as a single, My Love topped the Billboard 100. And McCartney knew he had a band he could rely on to contribute.
