Unlike John’s missus, the former Linda Eastman possessed no musical ambitions of her own. Prior to hooking up with Paul, her melodic interactions came either as a listener or on a more intimate level (sometimes involving photography). Her first vocal with her husband on record came unexpectedly, for “Let It Be.” After Mary Hopkin—the intended singer—left the studio early, Linda was pressed into service to provide the high harmony. (Of course, this came before Paul’s declaration, in the wake of the band’s disharmonious break-up, that he would never put a woman’s voice on a Beatle record.) 

By the time Paul got around to laying down tracks for what would become his first proper studio album, John and Yoko had issued two singles and one live album, establishing musical identities that— to that point—didn’t really rise to the level of collaboration. (There were joint releases, and co-credits even, but the couple didn’t engage in any real duets until 1971’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)” single.) Paul, on the other hand, recruited Linda in late 1969 to flesh out his own vocals and— provide a sort of unschooled element that gave texture against his pop slickness.
 

Linda’s harmonies appear throughout the McCartney and Ram albums. (For the latter release, she is recalled by others present as having actually composing her own vocal lines.)  But not until the formation of Wings in mid-1971 was the complete novice compelled to formally learn an instrument, courtesy of Macca. While it is doubtful that John ever had to coax Yoko onto a stage, Linda had to be badgered, begged, and browbeaten into becoming a full-time member of Paul’s post-Beatles act.

His insistence that she accompany him onstage in Wings compelled the neophyte to take a crash course in keyboards, making her—in spirit anyway—a musical partner. But not until Sir Lew Grade questioned her qualifications to appear on a composition’s byline was Linda actually compelled to sit down and write a song herself. “Seaside Woman,” a reggaefied trifle, was the result. (It was recorded by Wings on November 27, 1972 and released five years later under the pseudonym, "Suzie and the Red Stripes.")

Though Macca was frequently at a loss to explain why he demanded Linda’s presence, the answer is really simple: she was his emotional support (just as Yoko was for John) and he felt that by putting her on an instrument he’d justified her position to the critics— including the ones in the band. It was an entirely thankless role that Paul forced her into, literally subjecting her to a world of abuse, while testing their marital ties as much as it demonstrated her love for her man.

It took a long time for Paul’s compositional stranglehold on Wings’ recorded output to loosen up enough to allow a song authored by Denny Laine to be issued; for Linda, who’d been with the ex-Beatle from the group’s inception, that day never came. Within Wings’ seven studio albums, she received exactly one solo lead vocal, on a song—“Cook of the House”— penned by her husband. Meanwhile, during the Wings years, she recorded some seven original tunes (plus two oldies covers: “Mr. Sandman” and “Sugartime”)—all but one single’s worth went unreleased in her lifetime—and that pair of songs was issued under a pseudonym.

That the band spent studio time laying down songs that Linda had taken the trouble to write (or co-write), only to then languish in the vaults begs the question: why? If Linda was in fact an essential component of Wings, as Paul so defensively proclaimed, why was her work not accorded the dignity of a public issue that even Jimmy McCulloch earned his first time out? The question cannot be answered without a certain disingenuousness creeping in, regarding either Linda’s musical viability or Paul’s protestations that “Wings is a band – I’m not Wings.” It was Paul who ultimately decided what was and wasn’t issued; with the lion’s share of Linda and Denny compositions recorded but unreleased, the hypocrisy is inescapable.

In any event, “Seaside Woman” came out in 1977, during the “dumping” period between Wings Over America and London Town that saw the issue of the similarly shopworn Thrillington  album. The song itself is a pleasant enough novelty, with enough Macca backing vocals slathered on to effectively mask any shortcomings from the song’s author. Given that the McCartney’s had been discussing the song’s existence for years (and even the pseudonym it was produced under), it didn’t really generate much buzz among radio station programmers, peaking at fifty-nine on the U.S. charts; lower than any Wings single but higher than several of Ringo’s.

Her next recorded composition was far more intriguing. “Oriental Nightfish,” recorded by the same Wings trio in October 1973 that produced Band On The Run, was an atmospheric electric piano piece, augmented by flute and electric guitar. Not a song exactly, in that it’s really more of an instrumental in support of a spoken word narrative, it ended up accompanying a rather trippy post-Fantasia piece of animation by Ian Emes, (directed by Linda) in 1978. The clip, featuring a nude blonde, was nominated for a Golden Palm Award at Cannes as best short film.

Other Linda compositions include “I Got Up,” cut in Paris during the late 1973 sessions that served as Jimmy McCulloch’s audition, along with the equally annoying “Wide Prairie”; 1975’s “New Orleans”—a not-bad girl-group type of throwback (like “Seaside Woman” and “Cook Of The House,” it too features a preoccupation with food); and 1980’s “Love’s Full Glory.” This last tune was perhaps the most ambitious song Linda ever recorded, being—as its title suggests—a glorious romantic ballad. It featured orchestration scored by Tony Visconti, as well as his then-wife, Mary Hopkin, on backing vocals (alongside Stiff’s Lene Lovich).
  

All of the songs were collected and issued with later recordings on the Wide Prairie album, released six months after Linda’s death in 1998. (She had literally been working on some of the tunes in her final weeks to prepare them for release.) While like Yoko, Linda’s work isn’t to everyone’s taste, some of it does possess a certain charm. Why nearly none of it was released during her lifetime (when she could have received the feedback that every artist craves) is a question only Paul can answer.

All material copyright 2010 by Robert Rodriguez. No unauthorized reproduction permitted without the express written permission of the author.

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