10 Rock Bands That Saved Their Careers With One Album

For a little while, it actually looked like Paul McCartney was going to become the joke of the post-Beatles solo careers. Yeah, the man who had written Yesterday and Let It Be was now starting to be looked at as passe by the critics, as his former bandmates George Harrison and John Lennon blew past him on the charts with songs like Imagine and My Sweet Lord. Critics were itching to call Macca a relic of the '60s, and Band on the Run shut them all up in just one go.

Which is strange because every single thing pointed to this album going wrong. As the band were set to record in Nigeria, half of the members announced they were quitting before even getting on the plane, and Paul even had a bronchial spasm and was robbed at knifepoint during the recording of the record. Despite all of the chaos surrounding it, Band on the Run might be the culmination of everything that made Wings special, as Paul delivers one great rocker after another, from the piano led bombast of 1985 or giving us echoes of Abbey Road with his suite of songs on the title track.

From this point on, the rest of Wing's discography put Macca back on top again, becoming one of the greatest touring acts of the '70s before Paul decided to stick with his solo career as he entered the '80s. The whole world seemed to be waiting to turn on McCartney, but it's that trademark optimism of his that carried him through. He couldn't just play around in the rock field...he could own the entire genre if he wanted to.