In an recent interview, former Wings member Denny Laine told writer Michael Witthaus he's at work on an autobiography that will include his time working with Paul McCartney.
“I’ve been given to go-ahead to write about the McCartneys and all of that, but obviously I’ll run it by Paul,” he told Witthaus in the interview published earlier this month. “I’ve written a lot of the early Wings stories. But only versions – they’d have to be extended. I have 100 pages, but that would have to end up being 500 pages. And it’s not just about the Wings period,” but will go up, he said, to the year 2000. But, he says, “finding the time to finish is the problem.”
He also all but confirmed the rumored reissue of “Wings Over America,” which he said he couldn't discuss in his interview with Witthaus. He said he'd been interviewed about it by Rolling Stone.
Back when he was with the Moody Blues performing “Go Now,” the Beatles with Paul McCartney were his competition. But, Laine said, the Beatles were also friends with the Moodies.
“The fact that we went on tour with the Beatles ...of course we were friends of theirs by these parties and that’s why we got invited but also we left our management and went with Brian Epstein. So we were part of that stable, agency and we went out with a lot of other acts,” he said.
“You’ve got to remember that bands weren’t necessarily big fans of other bands. I mean, we respected them, but we had our own careers to think about. We weren’t big Beatle fans or big Rolling Stones fans. They were our friends, I mean it was kind of a friendly rivalry. The Beatles used to come over and play their acetates for us and vice versa. There was all kind of that sort of thing going on.
“When you look back on it, well, it’s history now. At the time we were all kind of struggling together. By going and seeing other people, and especially things like seeing Jimi Hendrix that night at the Saville when I was on, it helped me. It gave Paul an opportunity to see what I was doing and that’s one of the reasons he obviously called me up to join Wings.”
You can read more from Witthaus' interview with Denny Laine here.
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