Wings Over New Orleans: Unseen Photos of Paul and Linda McCartney, 1975

By John Taylor

It's not every day that you get to meet your idol. For John Taylor, that day came in 1975 when he stopped by New Orleans' Sea-Saint Studio on a whim and struck up a relationship with Paul and Linda McCartney. After the breakup of the Beatles, the McCartneys formed the band Wings, which was active through the early '80s. The band had come to New Orleans to record their album Venus and Mars at Allen Toussaint's famous studio, setting the stage for some of the greatest-ever moments for McCartney fans.

The chance meeting with Paul and Linda McCartney led to a prolonged acquaintance, and Taylor, a professional musician, snapped scores of candid photographs of the famous couple. Taylor's recollections, along with those of other locals who spent time with the McCartneys and their children during their New Orleans stay, are included with more than sixty of these photographs, many published here for the first time. The McCartneys' graciousness and unpretentious nature shine through in these vignettes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pelican Publishing
• Release date: Jan 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781455620357

John Taylor

John Taylor (b. 1952) is an American writer, critic, and translator who lives in France. Among his many translations of French, Italian, and Greek literature are books by Philippe Jaccottet, Pierre Chappuis, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Georges Perros, Jacques Dupin, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Voélin, Catherine Colomb, Lorenzo Calogero, Franca Mancinelli, Alfredo de Palchi, and Elias Petropoulos. About the latter Greek writer, he has written Harsh Out of Tenderness: The Greek Poet and Urban Folklorist Elias Petropoulos. Taylor's translations have been awarded grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, Pro Helvetia, and the Sonia Raiziss Charitable Foundation. He is the author of several volumes of short prose and poetry, most recently The Dark Brightness, Grassy Stairways, Remembrance of Water & Twenty-Five Trees, and a "double book" co-authored with Pierre Chappuis, A Notebook of Clouds & A Notebook of Ridges.

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Introduction

In January of 1975, Paul and Linda McCartney along with Wings came to New Orleans to record their new album at Sea-Saint Studio, located in a quiet neighborhood known as Gentilly. In the small parking lot of the studio, a group of people had the rare opportunity to meet and talk to Paul and Linda McCartney. To many of them, this will always stand out as some of the best times in their lives.

I was one of those fortunate few. I met Paul and Linda almost every day that they came to the studio. I took pictures, got autographs, and got to talk to them on many occasions. That will always stand out as one of the most exciting times in my life.

As the years passed, I told the story less and rarely pulled out the pictures to show. Thirty-eight years later, I read an ad on Facebook that asked, Have you ever met a Beatle? I sent one of my pictures, and the person who ran the ad was thrilled.

We began to communicate online, and I sent a few more pictures and told my story. To make a long story short, the man who ran the ad, Dean Johnson, was a singer/songwriter near Liverpool, England. He was writing a book containing pictures and stories of people who had met a member of the Beatles. The publication featured seven of my photographs. That was when I realized that there was an interest in my pictures and the stories of the people who were there when a former Beatle was recording in New Orleans.

It has been several decades since I met Paul. It is time to share these pictures and stories with the rest of the world.

A Little About Me

I was born in 1953 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to John Taylor and Lottie McGovern Taylor. I have four sisters, Charlotte, Barbara, Brenda, and Lisa, and one brother, Kenneth. I had a very happy childhood in Gentilly, and like most boys back then, I would play Cowboys and Indians, Tarzan, and, of course, Superman, jumping off my bed with a towel cape tied around my neck. My good friend, Louis