10 Perfect Rock Albums That No One Saw Coming

For a good few years, it really looked like Paul McCartney was going to be the one Beatle that fell the furthest from grace. While none of the Fabs could generate the same kind of energy that they had when they were together, the formation of Wings was off to a fairly rocky start, with Wild Life being just a jam thrown together as an album and My Love sounding too saccharine for mainstream rock audiences to take seriously. While Band on the Run changed all of that, even the making of this record was fraught with problems.

Going to Nigeria to find new inspiration, half of the band quit before they even got on the plane, leaving Paul, Linda, and Denny Laine as the only core members working on this record. While going through the recording sessions, Paul even got mugged and had to rely on his memory to remember the songs he was working on. By the time that they returned home though, they had come through with a classic, with the title track and Jet launching them into the stadium rock age.

There are even wild experiments on the album that seem to go over without a hitch, like going back to the acoustics on the song Bluebird and then making a groovy as hell closer to the album on 1985. By the time Band on the Run was released, there were already critics lining up to cast the Cute Beatle as yesterday's news. The best way to get back at the haters though is to let the music do the talking.