In honor of Jimmy McCulloch’s birthday, today’s Rock Pearl comes from Paul McCartney and Wings, a band formed by former Beatle Paul McCartney and his wife, Linda McCartney in 1971. The band proved that there was “life after the Beatles” and when McCulloch joined in 1975 their album Venus and Mars went to the top of the charts in both the UK and The United States.
This band is a really fun band to listen to as they played around with some very different music than what the Beatles produced, and this album is an awesome start-to-finish listen. McCartney purposefully strung the tracks together like Abbey Road and the result is story-like.
Jimmy McCulloch was round a lot of great musicians and played with many different bands. He played guitar and bass and also sang on albums. His life ended due to drugs and alcohol when he was only 26, so there’s no telling how much farther he could have gone. Ironically, today’s pearl is an anti-drug song called “Medicine Jar” and is one of the songs that McCulloch sang. It’s not every day that one of the most legendary singer-songwriters of all time will give up the mic to someone, but McCartney was happy to provide bass for this really fun track. Enjoy a pearl from Wings!
