There's no doubt that McCartney could have lived off his fame with the Beatles or he could have put together a group of rock luminaries, traveled in limos and toured, singing Beatles' songs for the rest of his life. Instead, he chose to begin at square one with his best friend - his wife Linda - and some musicians that they could enjoy playing with, in a band that did not include his name in the moniker. These were not easy decisions to make. As he says, "The easy option would have been: supergroup, Beatles' numbers, boarding school, but we went against all that."

The band name Wings came to Paul when his daughter Stella (now head designer at The fashion house Chloe in Paris, and designer of Madonna's wedding gown) was born, "Whenever you have a baby you're always very thankful and in tune with the mysteries of life, realizing that nature is pretty hot stuff. I was just musing on in that hospital, thinking of angels and things like that, and I thought of Wings. It seemed to be a good name for a band," he recalls.

"When the Beatles finished, it was such a shock to me and my system," McCartney says. "Besides being out of work, to my mind, I'd lost one of the greatest jobs in the world. I thought that I just must continue in music because I just love it too much. The most difficult thing was to follow the Beatles. In the Beatles, we'd always laughed when people had said, 'This band is the next Beatles.' I'd been on the other side of that and it had always been a laugh for us to see people try and follow us. But here I was now, about to try and do just that."

In 1972, during Britain's "Three Day Week," a period of nationwide blackouts caused by a power strike, it all began. Paul and Linda got into the van with their kids, dogs and their band and headed north up the motorway. There were no promoters, no booking agents, no publicity. They just showed up at various universities and asked if they could play in the student union buildings, charging 50p (33 US