Don’t Let It Bring You Down

‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ is the penultimate song on Wings’s penultimate album London Town.

Paul McCartney began writing the song in Aberdeen, Scotland, on 22 September 1975, during the Wings Over The World Tour.

We were on tour in Scotland. I think we were up in Aberdeen, sitting in our hotel bedroom, just before we were going to turn in for the night and I had my 12-string guitar with me and I started plonking out a little tune and it became ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’. We did most of the backing track on the boat in the Virgin Islands and then, when we got back to London, Denny and I overdubbed quite a bit of the stuff. I play the little bit of lead guitar you can hear and Denny and I play the tin whistles.

‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ was recorded on 25 May 1977 on board the Fair Carol, a motor yacht stationed at Watermelon Bay in St John’s in the Virgin Islands. It was the final song recorded by Wings in the Caribbean.

The song was completed during overdub sessions at Abbey Road towards the end of the year.

We were there doing ‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’. We had it very basic then, it was just drums and two guitars as I remember. As with most of the stuff we brought it back to London, after we’d finished in the Virgin Islands, did some overdubbing on it. I played electric guitar on it. We did a lot of vocal overdubbing with Denny and Linda, and Denny and I finished it off by playing these little things called flageolets, which is a posh word for an Irish tin whistle.

‘Don’t Let It Bring You Down’ was included on the 2016 compilation Pure McCartney.