Wednesday, February 23, 1972
Concert • By Wings • Part of the Wings University Tour
Last updated on February 16, 2022
Location: Oxford University
Concert Feb 21, 1972 • United Kingdom • Birmingham
Concert Feb 22, 1972 • United Kingdom • Swansea
Concert Feb 23, 1972 • United Kingdom • Oxford
Single Feb 25, 1972 • "Give Ireland Back To The Irish" by Wings released in the UK
Interview Feb 26, 1972 • Linda Eastman / McCartney interview for Melody Maker
Next concert Jul 09, 1972 • France • Ollioules
This was the eleventh and last performance of Wings’ University Tour. The reality of this concert is questioned though:
There isn’t much to reveal I’m afraid. Everyone in the band (including Paul) says the tour ended in Swansea. When I spoke to the various colleges in Oxford none had any record of a Wings concert in 1972. More on this in Vol.1 in October.
I have no idea where that information came from. Let’s just say, the diary of someone who was on the tour notes it ending in Swansea.
From McCARTNEY LEGACY on Twitter, February 16, 2022
Wings had planned to tour for another week, but they decided to stop after this date.
Denny Seiwell: At the end, we had been planning to go on another week, but the last few concerts showed it was time to take a break from playing the same material the same way under those pressures.
Denny Laine: Anybody who goes out with that kind of pressure can only do two weeks. The Moodies used to go to the States and do it all in two weeks. These three-month things wreck you.
From the “Wings Over Europe” tour book
The exact setlist for this concert (and for most of the concerts of the Wings’ university tour) is unknown. Only two audience recordings surfaced on bootlegs (one for the first concert of the tour, in Nottingham, on February 9, 1971; the other one for the concert in Hull, on February 11, 1971), even if all the concerts had been taped by the band.
The gigs were pretty much the same. We taped them all.
Denny Laine
We didn’t have many songs. To be precise, we had eleven, which – at about three minutes a song – is a 33 minute act. They wanted longer so we repeated things. ‘We’ve had a request to do Lucille. We did it earlier but now we’re gonna do it again for Jenny Babford on the science course’. Whatever. We just repeated things, especially our new single Give Ireland Back to the Irish. The gigs went quite well but it’s funny to look back and realise that we had such little material.
Paul McCartney – From “Wingspan: Paul McCartney’s Band on the Run“
The setlists were a mix of new songs, oldies and some blues jams. Paul McCartney made sure to not play any Beatles song. It’s likely the setlist of this concert was similar to this:
This was the 1st and only concert played at Oxford University.
Wings Live - On tour in the 70s
This is the first detailed study of Paul McCartney's Wings on tour in the 1970s. It covers every single concert from the University Tour of 1972, ending with the abandoned tour of Japan in January 1980. A wide variety of primary sources have been consulted, including all available audio and video recordings; press reviews; fan recollections; newspaper reports and tour programmes.
Maccazine - Volume 47, Issue 1 - The birth of Wings
"Maccazine is a hard copy magazine (a bound paperback) about Paul McCartney. It is published twice a year. Due to the fact that the Internet has taken over the world and the fact that the latest Paul McCartney news is to be found on hundreds of websites, we have decided to focus on creating an informative paper magazine about Paul McCartney."
"In this issue we take you back to the early days of Paul McCartney’s solo career when he decided to form a new group. With Wings he proved there was life after The Beatles. This Maccazine features a detailed timeline of ‘the birth’ of the band with interesting entries including many new facts and unpublished photos. Follow-up timelines will be published in the upcoming years."
If we modestly consider the Paul McCartney Project to be the premier online resource for all things Paul McCartney, it is undeniable that The Beatles Bible stands as the definitive online site dedicated to the Beatles. While there is some overlap in content between the two sites, they differ significantly in their approach.
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