Paul McCartney: Heather was at the perfect age for punk. She was in her mid-teens when punk hit and really got into it. She was into the music and the fashion; the tartan and safety pins and all that. To be honest, I was a bit unsure about it at first. It was a bit weird, and I worried she was just following her friends. She had this lovely long blond hair down to her shoulders, but that all got cut off and she went short and spiky. But then, she played us some records – her favourites were The Clash and The Stranglers – we listened to some more and ended up liking it. But it was just that generation’s way of rebelling. We had rock and roll, Heather had punk. They’re pretty similar in many ways, though we had much less spitting.
Paul McCartney: Punk did feel like it was necessary. I think it was more important than a lot of the stuff that had happened leading up it – all that glitter. It had more spirit to it. But, like with any fashion or trend, it would have been silly if we’d tried to reinvent Wings as a punk band. I could hear early Beatles in the music, and The Who. You could hear Dylan and Lou Reed and Velvet Underground in it too – that New York kind of stuff. They were just moving things along by reinventing rock and roll at a faster speed. So, instead of sitting down, they were jumping about.
Paul McCartney: I can’t remember when I found this out, but The Ramones must have been fans of The Beatles, and that’s kind of how they got their name. Apparently it was my Paul Ramon that inspired them. That was when we first went out on tour ever with The Beatles, which must have been around 1960. And we thought when you get in showbiz, you change your name. So we all did. Just for this little Scottish tour. I became Paul Ramon. George became Carl Harrison, after Carl Perkins. John became Long John Silver. Which didn’t last very long. And Stuart, our bass player, became Stuart de Staël. After Nicolas de Staël, his favourite painter. I love the idea of The Ramones doing that. It’s super energetic. That’s what we’d liked about rock and roll. A new energy. But then, the spitting is a bit unhygienic, lads. Just knock that bit out, and we’ll go with the music. It was just rebellious. In art, that’s always a good thing. Because it’s going to get you noticed. A lot of them couldn’t play. Chris Thomas used to tell us that Sid Vicious couldn’t really play it, and he had to play the bass part on some of the songs. We had this incident when ‘Mull of Kintyre’ came out at the height of the punk era, and we’re in London in a car and we stopped at the lights, and there’s a big group of skinheads marching like a phalanx. And I tried to avoid eye contact. But one of them saw me. ‘Hey, Paul! What’s up, mate?’ ‘Great, come up to the car.’ ‘ “Mull of Kintyre”. Love that, great record!’ All those little things you wouldn’t expect. But it was a good shake-up. It shook up things that were getting a bit stale. It shook up a lot of people and a lot of music and it became a new phase, which I think in the end was a good thing.
John Lennon: I love all this punky stuff. It’s pure. I’m not, however, crazy about the people who destroy themselves.
Paul McCartney: If you listen to the music, that’s the enthusiasm for me. The music’s really good rock and roll, and a lot of other people try it, but it took kids like that, and the energy that they could bring to it, to really rock out.
-Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run
