Paul McCartney and Wings: One Hand Clapping (2LP)

What's on the Album: A 1974 Session Released 50 Years Late

One Hand Clapping was recorded by Wings at Abbey Road Studios from 26 to 30 August 1974 and officially released on June 14, 2024, almost exactly 50 years later. The 2CD edition runs 83 minutes 20 seconds across 26 tracks. The sessions were filmed by director David Litchfield for a documentary that was never released, and the audio became one of the most widely bootlegged Wings recordings.

The band is the short-lived 1974 lineup: Paul, Linda and Denny Laine, with lead guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton. Howie Casey, a Liverpool friend from the Hamburg days, plays saxophone, the Tuxedo Brass Band appears on 'Baby Face', and Del Newman conducts the orchestral arrangements. Britton left during the New Orleans sessions for Venus and Mars in early 1975, so this album and the 'Junior's Farm' single are the main record of his time in the band.

By mid-1974 Band on the Run was a worldwide hit, but Wings had made it as a trio after Henry McCullough and Denny Seiwell quit on the eve of the Lagos trip in 1973. McCulloch, formerly of Thunderclap Newman, came in on guitar, and Britton, a karate black belt with a rock and roll background, won the drum chair at auditions. The new lineup spent the summer of 1974 in Nashville, where it cut 'Junior's Farm' and 'Sally G'. 'Junior's Farm' reached number 3 in the US and number 16 in the UK that winter. One Hand Clapping, filmed a few weeks later, was meant to show what the new Wings could do at Abbey Road.

The setlist opens with the title instrumental and mixes Band on the Run material ('Jet', 'Band on the Run', 'Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five', 'Bluebird', 'Let Me Roll It'), the two Nashville sides ('Junior's Farm', 'Sally G'), earlier Wings songs ('My Love', 'Live and Let Die', 'Hi, Hi, Hi', 'Wild Life', 'Tomorrow', and 'C Moon' paired with 'Little Woman Love'), 'Maybe I'm Amazed' from McCartney, and a run of rarities that make the album matter to longtime fans.

The Rarities: Why Longtime Fans Care

For collectors, the unfamiliar songs are the core of the album. 'Let's Love' is the song Paul wrote and produced for Peggy Lee, who released it in 1974. 'I'll Give You a Ring' finally surfaced in 1982 as the B-side of 'Take It Away'. 'Soily' became the closing number of the 1975 to 1976 world tour and appears on Wings Over America. 'All of You' and 'Love My Baby' were known only from bootlegs until now, and 'Power Cut', the last part of the Red Rose Speedway medley, gets a rare full-band outing.

There are covers and oldies too: Bill Monroe's 'Blue Moon of Kentucky', the Moody Blues' 'Go Now' sung by Denny Laine, who had taken it to number one in the UK with the Moody Blues in early 1965, and 'Baby Face'. Paul also plays 'Let It Be' and runs 'The Long and Winding Road' into 'Lady Madonna', at a time when he was still reluctant to play Beatles songs in concert.

Two Wild Life songs are also here. 'Wild Life' and 'Tomorrow' come from the band's 1971 debut, an album Paul has rarely drawn on since, and this lineup gives both more drive than the original recordings. With 'Sally G' and 'Bluebird' also in the set, the album leans towards the gentler, less familiar side of early Wings as much as the hits, which is what separates it from Wings Over America.

Parts of the film footage had surfaced before, notably on the DVD in the 2010 Band on the Run deluxe edition, but this is the first time the audio has been properly mixed and released as an album. Fans who knew it only from rough bootleg copies will notice the difference immediately.

Sound and Mixing: Giles Martin and Steve Orchard

The original sessions were engineered by Geoff Emerick, and the 2024 release was mixed from the multitracks by Giles Martin and Steve Orchard, with a Dolby Atmos version for streaming. The mix keeps the band audibly playing together in one room while giving the bass and drums a weight the bootleg copies never had. Britton's drumming, busy and hard-hitting, is much easier to judge here than on any earlier source.

Critics were warm. The album scored 84 on Metacritic, Pitchfork gave it 8.4, and AllMusic four stars out of five. Many reviews pointed to the spirited performances as evidence of how good Wings were between Band on the Run and the 1975 to 1976 tour. It reached number 10 in the UK, number 2 in Scotland, number 4 in Germany and number 74 on the US Billboard 200.

For anyone who loves live Wings, this sits alongside Wings Over America as essential listening, though the two capture different bands: the 1976 lineup had Joe English on drums and a horn section, and played arenas. Our roundup of the best McCartney live albums explains how they compare.

The Bonus 7-Inch: Paul in the Abbey Road Garden

The online-exclusive vinyl edition adds a 7-inch, titled The Backyard, of six solo performances Paul recorded in the garden behind the studio: 'Blackpool', 'Blackbird', 'Country Dreamer', 'Twenty Flight Rock', 'Peggy Sue' and 'I'm Gonna Love You Too'. They were filmed for the documentary as informal moments and bring the total running time to 94 minutes 29 seconds.

They are loose rather than polished, which suits them. Hearing Paul run through Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly on an acoustic guitar links the 1974 McCartney to the teenager who impressed John with 'Twenty Flight Rock' at St Peter's Church hall in Woolton in July 1957.

'Country Dreamer', the B-side of 'Helen Wheels' in 1973, is the pick of the six, and it suits the stripped-down voice and guitar treatment better than the band version. 'Blackbird' shows the solo acoustic spot that would become a fixture of most McCartney tours from 1975 onwards. Because the EP was an online exclusive, it is the version collectors should look for; the standard 2LP and 2CD do not include these tracks.

Which Format Should You Buy?

The 2LP plus 7-inch edition is the best choice for vinyl buyers, because it is the only complete physical version. The standard 2LP is fine if you missed the exclusive and can live without the garden tracks. The 2CD is the budget option and gives an uninterrupted 83-minute listen, and the streaming version adds the Atmos mix.

The packaging is plain, without the books, facsimiles and DVDs of the Archive Collection boxes, which is why it scores lower on Packaging. The music is the point, and at around the price of a standard double album it is one of the best-value Wings releases of recent years.

If this album leaves you wanting more of 1974 and 1975 Wings, the 2025 compilation covered in our Wings box set review includes the One Hand Clapping version of 'Soily', and our Band on the Run 50th Anniversary review covers the album much of this setlist came from.

Who It's For

One Hand Clapping is for Wings fans who think of the band mainly as a singles act. It shows a working group that could rock, swing and play ballads in the same session, and it fills a real gap in the official catalogue, because the McCulloch and Britton lineup barely appears on record otherwise.

It is less essential for listeners who want studio polish, since this is a live session with rough edges, and a few of the oldies are more fun than necessary. For everyone else it is the Wings release we would recommend right after Band on the Run itself, and the best single case for the 1974 band.