In a real departure for Paul, there were no guitars at all on this, with even the bass line being played on a keyboard. The heavy, guitar-driven ‘Old Siam Sir’ had stiffed as a single in Britain, so it was relegated to the b-side here and they opted for ‘Arrow Through Me’ instead – a song from the other end of the musical spectrum completely. While the backbone of Back To The Egg was composed of hard rock numbers, it was a stylistically diverse set, even by McCartney standards. However, Wings were still very much an active entity at this point, and in August Columbia wanted a second single from the album. In later years he would say his enthusiasm for Wings began to wind down around this time, and the fact that he retreated to his home studio to start recording new tracks on his own (to be released as McCartney II the following year) is perhaps an indicator of that.
On the other hand, his first album with Columbia, Back To The Egg, hadn’t set the charts alight in the same way previous Wings efforts had, while the lead-off singles in both the UK and the States had failed to create much of a stir. He’d recently signed an eye-watering deal for Columbia Records to release all his work in the USA, had just enjoyed yet another transatlantic chart smash with ‘Goodnight Tonight’, and was about to receive an unheard-of rhodium disc from the Guinness Book of Records to coronate him as the most successful songwriter in history. The summer of 1979 must’ve been a strange time for Paul McCartney.