Wings live: Lancaster University

The fifth date of Wings’ first tour took place on 14 February 1972 at Lancaster University in England.

The university tour was really a public practice. The Beatles made all their mistakes in private, at the little clubs before we were watched by any critics. With Wings, I knew that when we went public all the critics would be sitting there with their sharpened pencils – ‘Oh, he’s not as good as he was.’ It was like I had returned to amateur status, trying to relearn the whole game.

• ‘Lucille’
• ‘Give Ireland Back to the Irish’
• ‘Blue Moon Of Kentucky’
• ‘Seaside Woman’
• ‘Help Me Darling’
• ‘Some People Never Know’
• ‘The Mess’
• ‘Bip Bop’
• ‘Say, Darling’
• ‘Smile Away’
• ‘My Love’
• ‘Henry’s Blues’
• ‘Wild Life’
• ‘Long Tall Sally’

This was with Wings on the Students’ Tour doing those crazy, crappy little gigs was hairy. Nottingham, Lancaster, any of those gigs. Those were mad. We only had like 11 numbers and we had to repeat ‘Lucille’ to pad out the show by saying ‘We’ve had a request from Willie from the languages course, he wants to hear ‘Lucille’ again’. We just made it up; 50p on the door, no hotels booked, no gigs booked, no nothing booked. Even the lowliest group throughout history has had a hotel booked for them, but we were just mad.

The Wings University Tour took place in the UK over eleven days in February 1972, and visited Nottingham (9 February), York (10), Hull (11), Newcastle upon Tyne (13), Lancaster (14), Leeds (16), Sheffield (17), Salford (18), Birmingham (21), Swansea (22), and Oxford (23).