Wings live: Town Hall, Leeds

The sixth date of Wings’ first tour took place on 16 February 1972 at the Town Hall in Leeds, England.

Although they had few original songs, the tour was intended to road test the band with low-key, impromptu performances.

We went off on our little university tour, which was great. It was very ballsy to do, really, I couldn’t think of anything else. It didn’t feel ballsy at the time, it just felt like, well, what else do I do?

The aim was to perform at university towns and cities in England and Wales. Midway through the tour, however, press attention had led to widespread public anticipation of Wings’ next stop.

The band had abandoned a planned show at the Leeds University refectory building on 10 February due to the attention, but a concert at the Town Hall was hastily scheduled instead. It was the only non-university date on the tour.

Wings did eventually perform at the University of Leeds refectory, on their 1973 tour promoting Red Rose Speedway.

The Leeds date was the scene of one unfortunate and memorable event on the tour.

The Students’ Union in Newcastle [sic] had booked the City Hall, which was quite a big gig – a few thousand people. It wasn’t big by today’s standards perhaps, but it was big for us then. We went to play ‘Wild Life’ and I said, ‘Ah one-two-three…’ Nothing. Just silence. I looked around at Linda and she mouthed to me, ‘I’ve forgotten the chords.’ By this time the audience was starting to giggle, thinking we were doing a comedy routine. So I walked over to the keyboard and when I got there I also couldn’t remember the bloody chords. By this time the audience were rolling with laughter. Then suddenly Linda remembered them and we went into the song, our hearts beating fast. There were quite a few moments like that. That was the problem of going back to square one – you’ve got to go through the baptism of fire. Eventually we got a bit better, started to actually know our songs and even perform more than eleven of them.

• ‘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’

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).