Recording: Girls School, Famous Groupies by Wings

Spirit of Ranachan Studio, Low Ranachan Farm, Campbeltown, Scotland
Producer: Paul McCartney
Engineers: Geoff Emerick, Mark Vigars

Following a two-month break, on 3 August 1977 sessions resumed for Wings’ sixth studio album London Town album.

The session took place at Spirit of Ranachan Studio, on the McCartneys’ Low Ranachan Farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. The previous month, Paul McCartney had contracted designers Steve Thomas and Tim Whitmore to convert a barn on the property into a recording studio. The pair had recently renovated MPL’s offices in Soho Square, London, and McCartney gave them one month to do the same in Scotland.

Thomas oversaw the conversion, contracting local building firm Weir, Ferguson, Martin Ltd to complete the project on time. The building work was finished by the final weekend in July, but the installation of the recording studio equipment would take longer. In the interim, he hired the RAK Mobile Recording Unit from producer Mickie Most. The unit was run by Doug Hopkins and Tim Summerhayes.

Although the RAK studio was normally in an air-conditioned truck, Hopkins and Summerhayes were able to install it in a second location within one day. They worked with Geoff Emerick and Mark Vigars to ready the studio control room.

An afternoon jam session took place on 2 August, to iron out any technical issues and allow Wings to acclimatise to their new studio.

They began work the following day by recording overdubs for the 14 March remake of ‘Girls School’.

Work then turned to ‘Famous Groupies’. Jimmy McCulloch added lead and slide guitar parts, Denny Laine recorded acoustic guitar during the choruses, and Joe English performed a bongo overdub. McCartney then double-tracked his lead vocals, and the whole band added harmony vocals.

Paul and I were discussing the guitar solo, and there was an issue with the guitar solo that Jimmy had started. And I said, ‘Well, he should do this, or he should do that.’ Paul said, ‘Go out and tell him.’ I made a remark to Jimmy [and] he was very obnoxious. He swore at me, because he’d been drinking and I asked him to do something… I didn’t take it personally because these musicians are under so much pressure, they need an outlet, whether it’s drinking or drugs. You’ve seen it happen to so many artists.