Linda McCartney Faced Painful Ridicule Over Her Role in Wings, Said Daughter Stella 

After The Beatles broke up, Paul McCartney started the group Wings with his wife, Linda McCartney. This was a risk for both members of the couple. Paul had big expectations to live up to, and Linda wasn’t a musician. Their daughter, Stella, shared how the criticism Linda faced after joining Wings weighed on her.

Linda McCartney felt hurt by the criticism of her role in Wings

Paul released two solo albums after The Beatles broke up. In 1971, however, he decided to go back to a group effort. He and Linda brought in Denny Laine and Denny Sewell to round out their band. While the three men were experienced musicians, Linda, who was the keyboardist, was not.

“I’m not here because I’m the greatest keyboard player,” she says in the documentary Man on the Run. “I’m here because we love each other.”

Linda’s relationship with the former Beatle opened her up to a great deal of criticism. Her role in Wings was no different. Stella said people could be cruel to her mother.

“She wasn’t a cookie-cutter example of someone you put in a band,” she said. “What they, and she especially, had to go through, like when they isolated her voice and ridiculed her? I mean, it breaks my heart.”

Stella said she could tell the negative attention hurt her mother.

“I know that there was pain there. I knew she hurt,” she said. “She wasn’t like, cold.”

Still, she said Linda showed “her bravery and spirit” in the face of criticism. 

Paul McCartney said having Linda join Wings was a risk

Paul knew that any move he made after The Beatles broke up was risky. The formation of Wings, he admitted, was made riskier because of Linda’s lack of prior musical experience.

“Once that band had finished, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and trying something new was really risky,” he said on his website. “Then, of course, having Linda in Wings, when she was not a ‘musician’, was a risk too.”

He said he found the criticism of his wife painful, but he never doubted her ability to improve.

“When the reviews started to come in a lot of them focused on her, asking, ‘What’s she doing in the band?’ And that was hurtful,” he said. “But I rationalized it by thinking about when we started The Beatles and none of us knew our chords — over time we got better and picked things up. “

She helped keep them afloat in the band’s early years

Paul’s time in The Beatles made him rich, but he said he couldn’t access that money when he first left the band. He was involved in a lawsuit against his former bandmates. As a result, Linda supported them.

“When we started, I had nothing and couldn’t get money for the first two years because it was frozen by lawsuits,” he told Radio Times. “We lived off Linda’s savings in the Chemical Bank.”

He believed this was good for them.

“It was a source of great pride to both of us that she could say she kept me for a couple of years because there was a danger I’d dominate the situation and I’m not out to do that, particularly in a marriage. There were moments we wondered why we were doing it, but there’s a perseverance gene in me and if I’d given up after the Beatles I wouldn’t have written ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ or ‘My Love,’ and I’m glad I did.”