Studio One, AIR Studios, London
Producer: Paul McCartney
Engineer: Geoff Emerick
Wings recorded overdubs for the Band On The Run songs ‘Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five’ and ‘Let Me Roll It’ on 10 October 1973.
The backing track for ‘Nineteen Hundred And Eighty Five’ had been recorded on 5 October. On this day Paul McCartney re-recorded his lead vocals, replacing a temporary recording from the earlier session. Linda McCartney and Denny Laine added backing vocals, and Paul and Denny recorded bass guitar and lead guitar respectively.
Wings then turned their attentions to ‘Let Me Roll It’, which had been recorded in Lagos the previous month. On this day Paul double-tracked the lead guitar riff which runs throughout much of the song.
Critics later interpreted it as ‘McCartney trying to out-Lennon Lennon,’ but if Paul was deliberately trying to sound like his former bandmate when he recorded the song, he never said a word about it. In fact, there was no talk of Lennon or any of the other Beatles at all during the Band On The Run sessions. Paul didn’t ask for the ‘Lennon’ tape echo, he just told me to add some special tape echo. It was actually very similar to the effect we had put on his vocal on the Abbey Road track ‘Oh! Darling’.The lead guitar part in ‘Let Me Roll It’ is phenomenal, and it’s even more amazing considering that it was double-tracked. Paul played that, not Denny, and he did an excellent job of doubling the part with exactly the same phrasing and attitude. The guitar sound is a little reminiscent of John’s ultra-distorted guitar on ‘Revolution’, but it just happened that way – we weren’t specifically trying to duplicate the sound. More eerily, there’s a bad edit after the last chorus that adds an extra beat, just as happened on ‘Revolution’. It was just a mistake that Paul liked; it wasn’t designed to poke fun at Lennon’s proclivity for odd time signatures.
McCartney also overdubbed a bass guitar part and lead vocals, with backing vocals added by Laine and Linda.