SONG STORY

Band On The Run

The first one said to the second one there, I hope you’re having fun. I was

Annette was my first serious girlfriend. She had something very special in the eyes of a 16-year old boy: a copy of Paul McCartney’s album, Band On The Run.

Annette had long dark wavy hair, olive skin, almond eyes and a sweet nature. And her own bedroom with a record player. And Band On The Run.

I’m sure she didn’t mind being alone in her bedroom with me while I tried to work the title track out on my guitar while playing the song over and over again to get it right. I never did, but boy did I try.

She was a lovely girl. She understood girlfriends came in third in a young man’s priorities. After music and football. On reflection, maybe understood is not really the right verb here.

However, she had that copy of Band On The Run. So at that time, she had risen into one of the top priority positions. She fell out again as soon as there was a home football match. Naturally.

Nineteen hundred and seventy-four

If you write the name of a year out longhand rather than in numerals, it doesn’t look so bad or so long ago.

In this particular year, Annette and I were starting out in life. She was doing Art and Design studies at a local college. I was an apprentice technician for the UK’s international telecommunications provider.

A year earlier, at my interview for the job, the interviewers noted I showed no aptitude for anything technical. Why then did I want this job? I didn’t, I was going to be a rock star and record a cover version of Band On The Run. Once I worked out how to play it.

I needed some income to tide me over while I sorted the rock thing out. I couldn’t tell them that.

I think I froze for a moment before answering something like, “Dunno really.” I might have shrugged my shoulders too but it was a long time ago.

I did, however, possess something the company needed desperately: language skills. This was an international company. They warily offered me a position based entirely on this and the fact I wasn’t colour blind, (different coloured wires and all that. It helps to avoid electrocution if you can tell the difference which is always useful.)

Annette and I went our separate ways. My salary was good for a teenager. I could now afford my own copy of one of the greatest albums of all time with possibly the greatest song of all time — the title track, Band On The Run.

Annette found a boyfriend who believed she was better than a Paul McCartney song. That’s fair enough for Wild Honey Pie and The Frog Chorus but come on, Band On The Run?

In the town they’re searching for us everywhere

Why was Band On The Run the greatest song of all time in 1974 and possibly still is today?

It was four years after the Beatles’ split and the Band On The Run album was McCartney’s 5th solo offering. It’s fair to say, his first four albums had been met with disappointment in comparison with his exploits with The Fabs.

Whilst that view has since shifted, that was how we felt at that time. In nineteen hundred and seventy-four. Not so long ago surely.

After a slow start, the public woke up to the genius of this album a year after its release. We’d been looking for a Beatles album but we got a McCartney album. And we realised that was a wonderful thing too.

And the title track was as complex and beautiful as anything The Fabs ever did.

All I need is a pint a day

The song, Band On The Run, uses a song structure approach we first saw on We Can Work It Out. The Beatles spliced McCartney’s 4/4 timed verse with Lennon’s 3/4 timed middle-8 section.

They used this approach again on Sgt Peppers with A Day In The Life where the splice between Lennon’s verse and McCartney’s middle 8 was introduced through a crazy orchestrated lead-in.

The Beatles used this stitching-songs-together technique on tracks such as Happiness Is A Warm Gun and on side 2 of Abbey Road.

Band On The Run had its roots in The Beatles’ back catalogue.

The music style of the song ranges from a ballad-style first section to a short funky mid-part before we hit the main final section in a country-rock format. The final piece is reminiscent of The Eagles or the Byrds.

The lyrics, on the other hand, carry the same storyline over the different sections. The theme is of breakout and escape, all too relevant to a young man breaking out from the confines of an industrial town 25 miles east of London and into the wider world of international telecoms.

OK maybe that wasn’t the end goal but it was a start. Of sorts. I got to work with French people which was nice.

Nice again

McCartney always says he wants his lyrics to mean whatever the listener takes from them. His lyrics can often be difficult to decipher, he loves wordplay and literature.

Macca is often contradictory when explaining the meaning of his lyrics depending on the interviewer or his mood.

He’s a little clearer when talking about Band On The Run in his book Lyrics because it’s his book. He explains it’s a song about freedom and the band of the title refers to any group of people looking to escape from restrictions and confinement.

There’s little doubt he was thinking of his problems with authorities and drug laws — “The county judge, who held a grudge, will search forevermore.”

He’s also mentioned influences from the fall out over Alan Klein at the end of the Beatles and how by Band On The Run, their differences were healed.

Stuck inside these four walls

After a slow searing guitar intro, the first section is in the form of a ballad. The protagonist is in his prison, “Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever.”

As is usual with this gifted songwriter, he eschews the chords used by mere mortals and takes us into a tonal world of D major 7s, G major 13s and G minor 6s, among others

The melancholy of the imprisonment is matched by the ballady chord sounds and synth riffs.

If I ever get out of here

The song switches to a new key for the mid-section, A minor. We feel a modicum of hope but also melancholy.

The protagonist is now dreaming of, “If I ever get out of here,” and the music flips into a more upbeat funky riff. He flips between A minor and A suspended 2 and D to D6 with a cool funky riff.

And then we break out with the big band build-up to that grand finale.

Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash

The key changes again, this time to C. We’re free.

C is the relative major chord of the previous section in A minor. This means they are closely related. So much so, the two keys share exactly the same notes.

It’s no coincidence Macca chose to go from minor to major. Minor chords make us feel melancholy (dreaming of freedom) and major chords are used for celebration and the breakout to freedom of the final section — “Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash and we fell into the sun.”

This final section is one of the most beautiful tunes in pop history. We’re led into it by that deliberate key change and the build. Uplifting and celebratory.

But we never will be found

I can now play Band On The Run on guitar. I had the time to work it out and Spotify or YouTube to pause and replay easily until I got it right. It wasn’t easy trying to find the exact place you wanted on a vinyl disc, ask Annette.

Rock stardom never arrived, of course. Writing a song like Band On The Run was way beyond my abilities. And anyone other than Paul McCartney’s I guess.

I did learn how to play tunes on the telecom company’s tone generators though and the French enjoyed my rendition of La Marseillaise. I didn’t play Band On The Run. It was too hard.

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And here’s a look at another classic rock and pop tune: