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The 20th of February 1974

Official U.K. Albums Chart results from Sunday the 17th to Saturday the 23rd of February 1974

Cut-off for sales figures was up to the end of Saturday the 16th of February

Results counted from Sunday the 17th,

and published on Wednesday the 20th of February 1974.

Paul McCartney & Wings

Band On The Run

At No.6, on the “The Top 50 U.K. Albums Chart”, the week of my 2nd Birthday, are Paul McCartney & Wings with Band On The Run.

Things were definitely looking up…

…for Paul McCartney by this point. Mainly due to the fact that finally, just shy of a year ago, the rest of the members of the last band he’d been part of, namely The Beatles, collectively came to terms with the fact that they had to get rid of their manager Allen Klein, and thus proving Paul had been right all along not to trust him as far as they could throw him.

Going by the ever decreasing success of the other solo projects of that band as the years had progressed, it seems it wasn’t just McCartney who’d been struggling. Since that time when that foursome had fragmented and ultimately disintegrated, he’d just been kicking aimlessly around, trying to find some sort of grip on things to pull him back. No wonder it felt like a prison sentence.

In fact, since that process had been actioned, some of the others had managed to get a bit more artistic clearance and were now beginning to improve again in their craft.

So when the time came for the unceremonious kicking of Klein out of the Apple offices, it’s not surprising Paul himself felt like something significant had lifted. No longer did he feel like he was the enemy, presumed guilty before being proved innocent. His time inside of that artistic prison had finally run its course.

It wasn’t so much the Shawshank, as more the Showbiz Redemption.

John Lennon – No.43 in the UK Albums Chart on My 2nd Birthday

The Beatles – No.18 in the UK Albums Chart on My 2nd Birthday

Ringo Starr – No.16 in the UK Albums Chart on My 2nd Birthday

Although this was good news…

…for all the recent things which had happened in his past life, it didn’t mean this new one was any easier at present. After going through that period of almost sympathetic uncertainty, the self-confidence came bounding back with such conviction, that both the guitarist and the drummer of Wings came to disagreements with him, realising they were never going to be equal shareholders in a band which held such an iconic musical mastermind, and so both promptly left.

The timing of this immediately left the core three members of Paul, wife Linda, and Denny, to fly unsuspecting into what they assumed would be a freer sunnier Nigeria to begin recording on their next project, only to fall into the aftermath of a highly menacing political fall-out situation where they were eventually robbed at knife-point of some of their work-in-progress.

Still, with Paul continuing to be feeling like he was walking on air, he probably did really think ‘what’s the use of worrying’; and so, after a few weeks of recording, they ultimately decided to leave the dilapidated studios behind them, and fly back to the far more civilised Blighty, to finish this album.

Apparently named after a comment…

…once voiced by old chum George Harrison when the whole Apple mess really started to kick off, the title would be a fitting one for the artist who now felt justified, rehabilitated and renewed, finally breaking free from the shackles and smears of the masses who’d made him out to be the bad guy.

The album was interlaced with relief, happiness, and a vilified hope that he could now move forwards a free family man, vindicated in his beliefs, and genuinely look forward to a brighter future.

Paul had finally got his mojo back.

The album…

…had a relatively quiet first week to its run, when it snuck into the Top 50 at No.45, last year on the 9th of December 1973, but by the following week, it had leapt straight over that Top 10 barrier to land at No.9.

As this new year of 1974 was just bedding in, the LP would settle well into mid-Top 10 territory, and would stay there comfortably as it carried on into this month of February, and to where I meet it this week.

From here,..

…as winter is left behind, and spring begins to warm our world, it will begin to notch up a couple more places, eventually hitting No.2 by the end of March, and then getting there again at the beginning of May, before it begins to slip away towards the edge of that Top 10 window at the beginning of June.

With the summer now beginning to take hold, so the heat begins to lift this album back up the numbers, along with a lift from the title track being released as a single around this time.

The tactic does the trick, and so on the 21st of July, just in time for the escape of all the children who’ve been stuck behind their four walls of their own classrooms, the album strikes the pinnacle of the charts, and keeps itself there for the duration of the summer holidays, only slipping away when the schools begin to open their doors again.

When it enters into autumn, the LP settles back into the mid-Top 10, and it’s only when the first cold snaps of winter begin to loom in, that the album begins to slip a little further back and out of that upper echelon of the chart as the end of this year approaches.

With that sort of good conduct while serving its parole, it’s no surprise that I’ll be revisiting this album on another birthday in the near future, so I’ll catch up with it then.