I've been listening to London Town a lot lately and I am noticing that Denny had a lot of influence on this album. A lot of the songs have a folky sort of native american and maybe even a gypsy feel to them. Its definately not Paul's style of writing. On London Town, Paul and Denny wrote a lot of songs together. Songs like Deliver your children(great song!), Don't let it bring you down, Backwards traveller, Famous groupies, Children Children and Moorse moose and the Grey goose definately had a Denny feel to them. The album is definately different from the rest of Wings albums. I've read somewhere that Denny was part gypsy and that might contribute to his folky sort of writing which I think is great. 'Time to hide'(Live version) was probably a noticible start to his folky type of music. London Town os a great album. I still think its wierd Wings didn't put out a harder album considering the type of shows they were playing the previous year. I think Denny deserves a lot more credit than he gets. His style of writing is great and if he did indeed write the majority of 'Mull of Kintyre' then he definately deserves some credit.

Doesnt Denny only get credit for 'London Town', 'Children Children', 'Dont Let It Bring You Down', and 'Morse Moose And The Grey Goose'?

According to Wikipedia, Denny got credit for London town, Children Children, Deliver Your children, Don't let it bring you down, and Moorse Moose and the Grey Goose. But what I'm saying is that Denny obviously helped influnce the sound of those songs. I also think he contributed to Famous Groupies. Just becauses hes not credited for the song doesn't mean he didn't help. Its like in The Beatles, George or John claimed that George had wrote a line in 'Come Together' and he never got credit for the helping with the song.

Quoted from tkitna

Doesnt Denny only get credit for 'London Town', 'Children Children', 'Dont Let It Bring You Down', and 'Morse Moose And The Grey Goose'?

What I've seen agrees with tkitna, Wordno:

Side 1
London Town McCartney-Laine 4:10
Cafe On The Left Bank  McCartney 3:25
I'm Carrying McCartney 2:44
Backwards Traveller McCartney 1:07
Cuff Link McCartney 2:03
Children Children McCartney-Laine  2:20
Girlfriend McCartney 4:31
I've Had Enough McCartney 3:02

Side 2
Track Composer Time
With A Little Luck McCartney 5:45
Famous Groupies McCartney 3:34
Deliver Your Children McCartney 4:17
Name And Address McCartney 3:07
Don't Let It Bring You Down McCartney-Laine 4:34
Morse Moose And The Grey Goose  McCartney-Laine  6:27

from here: http://www.jpgr.co.uk/pas10012.html

What I've seen agrees with me

Track listing

All songs by Paul McCartney, except where noted.

1."London Town" (Paul McCartney/Denny Laine) – 4:10
2."Cafe On The Left Bank" – 3:25
3."I'm Carrying" – 2:44
4."Backwards Traveller" – 1:09
5."Cuff Link" – 1:59
Above two songs originally segued as one track on the vinyl issue of London Town
6."Children Children" (Paul McCartney/Denny Laine) – 2:22
Lead vocal by co-writer Denny Laine
7."Girlfriend" – 4:39
Written with Michael Jackson in mind, Jackson covered "Girlfriend" on his 1979 album Off the Wall
8."I've Had Enough" – 3:02
9."With a Little Luck" – 5:45
10."Famous Groupies" – 3:36
11."Deliver Your Children" (Paul McCartney/Denny Laine) – 4:17
Lead vocal by co-writer Denny Laine
12."Name And Address" – 3:07
13."Don't Let It Bring You Down" (Paul McCartney/Denny Laine) – 4:34
14."Morse Moose And The Grey Goose" (Paul McCartney/Denny Laine) – 6:25

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Town_(album)

Wikipedia wins once a-gain?  
I've taken a look at my copy of the album and you're comple-telly right, Wordno!!!  

... and it says that these 5 songs were written by McCartney and Laine:
London Town
Children Children
Deliver Your Children
Dont Let It Bring You Down
Morse Moose And The Grey Goose

I was just asking. I wasnt trying to prove anything.

Anyways, I like the album alot.

Quoted from tkitna

I was just asking. I wasnt trying to prove anything.

Anyways, I like the album alot.

Who said you was? ... the album is, well, OK for the 70s ... but it's one of their most boring works, in my opinion.

I agree with Tkitna, its a great album. When I first heard it I hated it. But it grew on me and now I love it. Though I don't think its one of their most boring works, I just think London Town followed up after two great albums.(At the speed of sound and Wings over America). Back to the egg is probably their most boring album. I heard it for the first time this morning in the shower. I'll probably change my opinion once I hear the album more.

I'm glad: this time I included "in my opinon"  

Quoted from Wordno

. Back to the egg is probably their most boring album. I heard it for the first time this morning in the shower.

Okay, I need to know this. You're an avid, maybe even fanatical McCartneyist, so a  "new" album to listen to must be a bit of an event. So either
1. You bought it last night, got drunk in celebration and forgot to play it, and only remembered in the morning?
2. It came in the very early post?
3. You like the accoustics in the bathroom, and figure the water noise is bearable?
4. You're stereo's in the shower?
5. You have access to some very good drugs?

Quoted from Kevin

[...]5. You have access to some very good drugs?

Hope it was this!!!

Quoted from Kevin

Okay, I need to know this. You're an avid, maybe even fanatical McCartneyist, so a  "new" album to listen must be a bit of an event. So either
1. You bought it last night, got drunk in celebration and forgot to play it, and only remembered in the morning?
2. It came in the very early post?
3. You like the accoustics in the bathroom, and figure the water noise is bearable?
4. You're stereo's in the shower?
5. You have access to some very good drugs?

Hehe well, I don't think I'm fanatical. I just like Wings a lot. Well to put things in perspective, I started to listen to Wings a lot about 5 or 6 months ago. I've been a Beatles fan for awhile and wanted to see what Wings were all about, So I bought the Dvd 'Rockshow' and just loved the concert. So thats when I started buying the albums and been putting them on my ipod. I was having a hard time finding the albums and I just recently found London Town and Back To The Egg.

I put the cds on my ipod. I have an ipod stereo that plays my ipod outloud. I like to listen to music in the shower so thats why I heard Back To The Egg this morning. I just got the album yesterday. Music in the shower is cool, try it. I haven't smoked weed in awhile, but maybe thats a good thing. Anyways, hopefully I answered all your questions and cleared things up

Thankyou. I actually forgot about IPods and the like. Have you noticed that when you stopped taking drugs you started liking Wings? The two may not be disconnected.

Quoted from Kevin

Have you noticed that when you stopped taking drugs you started liking Wings? The two may not be disconnected.

Nah, I started liking Wings when I found Amazon.com selling 'Wings Rockshow' on dvd. I bought it and got it in the mail a week later. Then I watched it on my home theater(Big screen TV with six big speakers. No one hardly uses it. So I decided to make good use of it) and I was blown away by how great that concert was. Great opener with Venus and Mars/Rockshow medly into Jet and finishing with Hi Hi Hi and Soily. It was awesome watching it really loud. I'd say thats when I started liking Wings, not when I stopped smoking lol.

Back To The Egg is a great album in my humble opinion. Getting Closer and Arrow Through Me are excellent songs. Oh, if only juniorsfarm was here! (I didn't mean that  )

Quoted from Bobber

Back To The Egg is a great album in my humble opinion. Getting Closer and Arrow Through Me are excellent songs. Oh, if only juniorsfarm was here! (I didn't mean that  )

I think that tkitna likes the album a lot too ... you all know that it's not one of my favourites but I think too that is much better than London Town ... (and don't wake up nobody, Bobber, please  )

Yeah, I like 'Back To The Egg' a lot. I like it a lot better than 'London Town' too. 'BTTE' is close to breaking my top 5 Macca records and I think theres a bunch of cool tunes on it.

I really like London Town! Some great efforts by Denny too! It has a very traditional English folk influence.

London Town is one of my favorite Wings albums, and Denny's songs are some of the best on the album in my opinion.

Welcome to the forums, dirtyoldsod ... hope you'll enjoy them!  

Quoted from raxo

Welcome to the forums, dirtyoldsod ... hope you'll enjoy them!  

Thanks!  

Quoted from Wordno

I've been listening to London Town a lot lately and I am noticing that Denny had a lot of influence on this album. A lot of the songs have a folky sort of native american and maybe even a gypsy feel to them. Its definately not Paul's style of writing. On London Town, Paul and Denny wrote a lot of songs together. Songs like Deliver your children(great song!), Don't let it bring you down, Backwards traveller, Famous groupies, Children Children and Moorse moose and the Grey goose definately had a Denny feel to them. The album is definately different from the rest of Wings albums. I've read somewhere that Denny was part gypsy and that might contribute to his folky sort of writing which I think is great. 'Time to hide'(Live version) was probably a noticible start to his folky type of music. London Town os a great album. I still think its wierd Wings didn't put out a harder album considering the type of shows they were playing the previous year. I think Denny deserves a lot more credit than he gets. His style of writing is great and if he did indeed write the majority of 'Mull of Kintyre' then he definately deserves some credit.

I think the reason that Wings didn't put out a harder album because by the time London Town came out, Jimmy and Joe had left the band. Jimmy added a hard rock edge to Wings as seen during the Wings Over the World tour. I think London Town would have been a completely different album if Jimmy and Joe had decided to stay in the band. Oh what could have been...

Jimmy and Joe stayed for about half of the album. The songs that they played on were the songs with the heavier guitar. Songs like Moorse Moose and the Grey Goose, Name and Address, I've Had Enough, Cafe on The Left Bank, and Girls' School are the songs Jimmy and Joe played on and are definately the more guitar heavy songs on London Town. I definately agree that Jimmy added a tough rock edge to the band(Joe too! His drumming is so awesome!) and when he left the band Wings just totally fell off. Makes me wonder if Jimmy and Joe stayed in the band what Back To The Egg would have been like. Would it still have tanked the way it did? Plus, would Jimmy's death in 79 break the band up?

that is what i love about the "what if" scenarios. I think with that lineup, Back to the Egg would have been a success. I think the tour in '79 would have been more interesting too. Imagine Jimmy playing Old Siam, Sir (there's a demo of it from 1976 so I assume Jimmy plays on that ) and playing the infamous solo during Let It Be etc


Interesting you brought up Jimmy's death. If Wings had stayed together in my opinion Jimmy wouldn't have passed away. After he left Wings, he joined the reformed Small Faces with Steve Marriot. That lasted a month. After that Jimmy didn't do a whole hell of a lot besides drinking and taking more drugs...then in 1978 he joined a band called the Wild Horses but was let go after a short time because of health problems. In 1979 he joined a band called The Dukes and they released a self titled album (great record by the way) and Jimmy had a song on there entitled Heartbreaker. The Dukes had a minor hit single in the summer of 1979 with "Hearts In Trouble" and they toured, supporting Wishbone Ash. Soon after that, Jimmy passed away.

So basically after leaving Wings, Jimmy's life went into a downward spiral.

some images of Wings during the London Town sessions.

Funny how all the pictures make them out to be one big, happy family, but it sure didnt end up like that.

Great pics, JimmyMcCullochFan!

Quoted from JimmyMcCullochFan

that is what i love about the "what if" scenarios. I think with that lineup, Back to the Egg would have been a success. I think the tour in '79 would have been more interesting too. Imagine Jimmy playing Old Siam, Sir (there's a demo of it from 1976 so I assume Jimmy plays on that ) and playing the infamous solo during Let It Be etc


Interesting you brought up Jimmy's death. If Wings had stayed together in my opinion Jimmy wouldn't have passed away. After he left Wings, he joined the reformed Small Faces with Steve Marriot. That lasted a month. After that Jimmy didn't do a whole hell of a lot besides drinking and taking more drugs...then in 1978 he joined a band called the Wild Horses but was let go after a short time because of health problems. In 1979 he joined a band called The Dukes and they released a self titled album (great record by the way) and Jimmy had a song on there entitled Heartbreaker. The Dukes had a minor hit single in the summer of 1979 with "Hearts In Trouble" and they toured, supporting Wishbone Ash. Soon after that, Jimmy passed away.

So basically after leaving Wings, Jimmy's life went into a downward spiral.

Is pretty sad how Jimmy's life ended up after Wings. You're probably right in the fact that he might not of died if he stayed with Wings. Maybe Wings wouldn't have broken up until much later if Jimmy and Joe stayed in the band. In Wingspan when Paul talks of Jimmy and Joe leaving he seems a bit sad. Probably because that lineup had so much chemistry and was the height of Wings. Laurence Juber and Steve Holly just didn't seem like the right fit for the band and were not a good follow up to great talents such as Jimmy McCulloch and Joe English. I would love to hear that demo of Old Siam sir with Jimmy and Joe playing on it. The album version is awesome but with the best lineup of Wings playing it must have been amazing. I think if Joe and Jimmy played on Back to the egg their influence would have made Back To the Egg what it was suppose to be; A rock album. Back To the egg was intended to be a true rock album but it failed as the majority of songs were far from rock songs. When I listen to back to the egg, it saddens me because it does not really stand up like the rest of Wings album. It just doesn't have a certain feel to it like the rest of the albums.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=D0V32VRP

^^ there's the demo from 1976. It's pretty different from the master version.

I listened to the demo and it in fact....sounds like a demo lol. I thought it was pretty cool though to hear it being developed. Paul at the end doesn't use that screaming/straining voice that he uses in the album version. He sings more with a deeper voice that you can hardly recognize.

I found this interesting. I wonder what songs Wings would have done on the '77 tour?

After the commercial zenith of 1976 with Wings at the Speed of Sound and its euphorically-received Wings Over the World tour, leader Paul McCartney planned on making 1977 a similar year. Unfortunately, things did not quite work out as planned...

In February 1977, sessions began at Abbey Road Studios and continued until the end of March. McCartney's initial plan of touring the US again was thwarted by wife Linda's discovery that she was pregnant with the couple's third child

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Town_%28album%29

Quoted from Wordno

I listened to the demo and it in fact....sounds like a demo lol. I thought it was pretty cool though to hear it being developed. Paul at the end doesn't use that screaming/straining voice that he uses in the album version. He sings more with a deeper voice that you can hardly recognize.

yeah it is really cool.

Makes me wonder too what they would have played. I'm guessing they would have taken some songs out of the Wings over America setlist and added some songs from "London Town'' lp. I think they would have used from 'London town' Definately the song 'London Town', 'Cafe on teh left bank', 'Name and Address', 'Deliver your children' and 'With a little luck'. I think the would have saved a section of the concert to promote the 'London Town' lp(Like they did with At The Speed Of Sound in Rockshow). A 1977 tour with Jimmy McCulloch and Joe English would have been way better than the 1979 tour with Laurence Juber and Steve Holly. I've seen a show from 1979 and its very very weak compared to 1976.

yeah the tour in 1979 was very weak compared to the 1976 tour...part of that is the setlist that was chosen for the '79 tour. I think Paul was getting fed up with the yet another new lineup and by the time the 79 tour came around, he just didn't care anymore.


1976 setlist

   1. "Venus And Mars"/"Rock Show"
   2. "Jet"
   3. "Let Me Roll It"
   4. "Spirits of Ancient Egypt"
   5. "Medicine Jar"
   6. "Maybe I'm Amazed"
   7. "Call Me Back Again"
   8. "Lady Madonna"
   9. "The Long and Winding Road"
  10. "Live and Let Die"
  11. "Picasso's Last Words"
  12. "Richard Cory"
  13. "Bluebird"
  14. "I've Just Seen a Face"
  15. "Blackbird"
  16. "Yesterday"
  17. "You Gave Me the Answer"
  18. "Magneto and Titanium Man"
  19. "Go Now"
  20. "My Love"
  21. "Listen to What the Man Said"
  22. "Let 'em In"
  23. "Time to Hide"
  24. "Silly Love Songs"
  25. "Letting Go"
  26. "Band on the Run"
  27. "Hi, Hi, Hi"
  28. "Soily"


1979 setlist

   1. "Got to Get You into My Life"
   2. "Getting Closer"
   3. "Every Night"
   4. "Again and Again and Again"
   5. "I've Had Enough"
   6. "No Words"
   7. "Cook of the House"
   8. "Old Siam, Sir"
   9. "Maybe I'm Amazed"
  10. "The Fool on the Hill"
  11. "Let It Be"
  12. "Hot As Sun"
  13. "Spin It On"
  14. "Twenty Flight Rock"
  15. "Go Now"
  16. "Arrow Through Me"
  17. "Wonderful Christmastime"
  18. "Coming Up"
  19. "Goodnight Tonight"
  20. "Yesterday"
  21. "Mull of Kintyre"
  22. "Band on the Run"




Here's a sad but ironic quote from Jimmy about the future of Wings in late 1976.


"Wings are settled for years," Jimmy McCulloch proclaimed in late 1976. "It would be a shame if anything happened. I can't see anything cracking Wings in the foreseeable future."