Paul Mccartney

A friend of mine, Dave Sowerbutts, was chairman of Ents at Salford for a while. One Friday afternoon we were in the Union building when a call came in. Apparently Paul Mccartney was touring up and down the motorways with his new band Wings. They were arriving in Manchester. They had called Manchester Union to see if they could play there but were turned down with 'we are sorry we already have a band booked for tonight, another time perhaps'. So they contacted Salford and of course Dave said yes. We rushed off a couple of hundred flyers and I spent part of the afternoon getting them to as many people and places as possible.

Paul, Lynda and the band arrived in a single white box van with a second row of crew seats. I generally acted as a 'roadie' in terms of helping bands unload if they wanted. Not all bands did as they often had there own roadies and wouldn't trust kit to anyone else, but Wings were travelling light and did everything themselves and so were glad of the help.

I recorded the gig from the projection box on a stereo reel to reel but there were only about 250 people in the audience and the room was echoing and I was well away from the source of the sound so the quality is awful. There are many great bootleg recordings from late sixties early seventies gigs recorded by 'Rag Rooney' in excellent stereo on ferrograph recorders.

The deal was for half of the door takings and so Dave handed over a bag of mostly coins to Paul at the end of the gig. 

Needless to say I was star struck, didn't speak to Paul, but was happy to hump some of his gear and be one of the few in the audience dancing and enjoying the music. A very professional show to such a small group of us.