A new book on the music of Paul McCartney contains much revealing detail on the origination, recording and promotion of his song ‘Mull of Kintyre’ featuring the Campbeltown Pipe Band and their Pipe Major Tony Wilson…….
There was one song in particular that had been tugging on Paul’s imagination for at least three years and that he now had an urge to complete. That song, Mull of Kintyre, its melody, in 3/4 time, boasts a distinctive Scottish accent and its simple chords seem to imply the drone of a bagpipe.
On the 1974 piano recording the melody for both the verses and the chorus is complete, as are the chorus lyrics — ‘Mull of Kintyre/ Oh, mist rolling in from the sea/ My desire is always to be here/ Oh, Mull of Kintyre’. But for the verses Paul had only a single line: ‘Far have I travelled and much have I seen’.
‘It was a love song really,’ he later explained, ‘about how I enjoyed being there and wanting to get back.’ The music tapped into the spirit of traditional Scottish folk song and seemed to be begging for a bagpipe accompaniment, a sound not typically heard on rock discs.
Granted, some listeners were bound to find the lilting tune and the nostalgic chorus a bit mawkish. But for Paul that was a risk worth taking, because he sensed that if it were done right, Mull of Kintyre could become the kind of standard that Auld Lang Syne and Amazing Grace were — and mawkish or not, Amazing Grace had topped the British charts for five weeks in a bagpipe-heavy recording by the Royal Scots Dragoon Guard. Nor would it have been lost on Paul, in his capacity as a publisher, that a song with that kind of heartstring-tugging appeal could be a goldmine.
When the song was finished, Paul contacted Tony Wilson, the pipe major of the Campbeltown Pipe Band, and invited him to High Park, the McCartney farm on the Kintyre Peninsula. Paul had never written for bagpipes, but he knew that instruments had specific ranges and limitations. So he had two questions for Wilson: would the band be available to record one of his new songs, and what did he need to know about writing for bagpipes?
‘You’re a bit limited,’ Paul noted after speaking to Tony. ‘They can only play certain notes. So it had to be in a particular key for the bagpipes. So I wrote it all around that idea. I was quite happy with the tune of it; I thought it was reminiscent of Scottish songs, which is what I’d wanted, but it sounded fresh.’
A recording studio, Spirit of Ranachan, was built at the farm in record time with Paul insisting on the use of local labour ‘because there’s so much unemployment up in Campbeltown’. The record had to catch the Christmas market. On August 8, Paul and Denny Laine recorded the basic tracks for Mull of Kintyre, with Paul on acoustic guitar and Denny playing bass.
The next afternoon, the Campbeltown band — seven pipers and seven drummers, all kitted out in traditional dress — filed into the Spirit of Ranachan Studio. The pipers, arranged in a straight line in the barn-turned-studio, recorded their contribution first, completing the task in only two or three takes. Then the mics were set up outside the studio, where at around 10pm the drums were recorded and then double-tracked to fatten up the sound.
Once the drums were successfully captured, the pipe band joined Wings for a post-session party, with Mary and Stella [McCartney] playing waitress. ‘This is going to be the biggest hit record of all time,’ said Paul.
However, except for the ever-supportive American trade press, the critics either disliked the single outright or were at a loss to know what to make of it. The New Musical Express did not hold back. ‘Nice cover pic of the Isle of Davaar on the West Coast of Scotland. This is a tribute-in-song to the area in Argyllshire where Friendly Macca has his twee little hideaway. The Campbeltown Pipe Band, with whom Wings posed for the cover of The Campbeltown Courier, all sound good…… but the song sucks on ice.”
The British public, however, responded more enthusiastically. Mull of Kintyre entered the charts at No 48 on November 19, and it sold 250,000 copies within two weeks of its release — enough to send it to the top of the charts, making it McCartney’s first post-Beatles No 1 single in the UK. By its fourth week it had sold 500,000 copies in Britain. It remained in the Top 100 for 17 weeks.
In October Wings and the Campbeltown Pipe Band had filmed a promotional video for the song on a beach near Saddell Castle, in Scotland, but Paul decided to make a new video, cut to the shorter DJ edit of the single. So the Campbeltown Pipe Band was invited to London, where on December 9 they joined Wings at Elstree Studios, this time ensconced in a plausibly woodsy set, with ‘the mist rolling in’ supplied by a dry ice machine.
The new promo had its premiere on Top of the Pops on December 15. When the music papers hit the stands the day after the shoot, they reported that Mull of Kintyre had qualified for a gold record. All the papers carried an advertisement with a message from Paul: ‘Mull of Kintyre is number one. Thanks a lot, folks! Paul McC’.
Campbeltown Pipe Band remained in London for the taping of the Mike Yarwood Christmas Special on December 10. The show was broadcast on Christmas Day at 8.20pm and was seen by an audience of 21.4 million, making it the most-watched programme in Christmas television history.
NME reported in its December 17 issue that sales of Mull of Kintyre had reached 800,000 in the UK. Paul had reason, beyond the turn of the year, to be in a celebratory mood…..he got word that Mull of Kintyre, still No 1, had sold its millionth copy.
* Extracted from The McCartney Legacy Volume 2: 1974-80 by Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, published December 10 (HarperCollins, £30)
