This posting was inspired by meeting a couple recently who hail from Leicester in England. We were talking about the scene in Britain in 1977 with Kevin Keegan being the top footballer in all of Europe, as well as Keegan sparking a national hairstyle craze among men.
In terms of ex-members of The Fab Four in 1977, a significant event happened. That August Paul McCartney and Wings’ guitarist Denny Laine co-wrote “Mull of Kintyre”, a song which has no significance to people in the U.S. It was recorded by Wings in September and appeared on their London Town album.
The song was inspired by the Kintyre peninsula in Argyll, Scotland where McCartney had a home and recording studio since the Beatle days.
The song was a hit before, during and after Christmas 1977, staying in the # 1 position on the British charts for nine weeks. The song overtook “She Loves You” as the biggest-selling single in British history. “Mull of Kintyre” held this distinction until 1984 when Band Aid scored big with their charity hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas.” However, “Mull of Kintyre” remains the biggest-selling non-charity single in British history. The 1977 hit was the first single in UK history to sell over two million copies.
Surprisingly, the song was invisible in the U.S., only reaching # 33 on the charts in 1977 and leaving the Top 40 portion of The Billboard Hot 100 after only one week. McCartney has specifically not played the song on concert dates in the U.S., while playing it in Canada and most other countries. For instance, he could do a concert in New York one night and not play the song, then do a concert two nights later in Toronto and play the song.
Almost forty years after its release, “Mull of Kintyre” remains totally unknown to the American general public. Unrelated to the famous song about this beautiful location in Scotland,, an October 8, 2013 article in the Daily Mail entitled “How Mull of Kintyre Lost Its Magic for Paul McCartney” paints an interesting scenario for the location of the Mull of Kintyre, where McCartney has owned his High Park Farm since 1966.
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