To You

Released: 8 June 1979 (UK), 11 June 1979 (US)

Available on:
Back To The Egg

Personnel

Paul McCartney: vocals, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar
Linda McCartney: vocals, organ
Denny Laine: vocals, electric guitar
Laurence Juber: electric guitar
Steve Holley: drums, percussion

‘To You’ is the ninth track on Wings’ last album Back To The Egg.

Recording for Back To The Egg began at the Spirit Of Ranachan Studio at the McCartneys’ Scottish farmhouse on 29 June 1978, lasting for five weeks until 27 July.

The barn had a mobile RAK recording unit, which had previously been utilised for London Town. Backing tracks for at least eight Back To The Egg songs were recorded there: ‘To You’, ‘Again And Again And Again’, ‘Arrow Through Me’, ‘Winter Rose’, ‘Spin It On’, ‘Old Siam, Sir’, ‘Maisie’, and a rough version of ‘Love Awake’.

That was the first song we recorded, and when we did my guitar solo on that, Paul was manually operating an Eventide harmonizer (which offered such new-fangled options as pitch shifting, delay and feedback regeneration). So, I was hearing everything in the headphones, but it wouldn’t necessarily be the note I actually played. I would hear what had been manipulated. We were doing it in real time. It created this really cool dissonant thing. It was actually a bit of a precursor to what Trevor Rabin did on ‘Owner Of A Lonely Heart’ [by Yes], with the harmonized guitar solo. Whether there is any direct connection, I couldn’t speculate. But the fact is, in terms of the art of it, it was very cool. One of the things I was very self-consciously trying to do was to make the guitar not just another generic rock guitar sound but in general, not just on that tune. What I was trying to do was to not be generic, but to absorb what else was going on at that time – and what else I had absorbed in my own experience, and to bring all of that to the forefront.