Back to the Egg is the seventh and final studio album by the British-American rock band Wings, released on 8 June 1979 on Parlophone in the UK and Columbia Records in North America (their first for the label). Co-produced by Chris Thomas, the album reflects band leader Paul McCartney's embracing of contemporary musical trends such as new wave and punk, and marked the arrival of new Wings members Laurence Juber and Steve Holley. Back to the Egg adopts a loose conceptual theme around the idea of a working band, and its creation coincided with a period of considerable activity for the group, which included making a return to touring and work on several television and film projects.
Recording for the album began in June 1978 and lasted for almost a year. The sessions took place at Spirit of Ranachan Studios in Campbeltown, Scotland; Lympne Castle in Kent, London's Abbey Road Studios, and Replica Studio – the last of which McCartney built as an exact replica of Abbey Road's Studio Two when the latter became unavailable. Wings returned to Abbey Road in March 1979 to complete the album, before filming a series of promotional videos in Lympne and elsewhere, for what became the Back to the Egg TV special.
Back to the Egg received unfavourable reviews from the majority of critics, with Rolling Stone magazine deriding it as "the sorriest grab bag of dreck in recent memory". With the new line-up – Wings' sixth since its formation in 1971 – McCartney intended to record a raw rock and roll album and return to touring, for the band's first concerts since their successful Wings Over the World tour of 1975–76. McCartney also hoped to realise his longstanding plan of making a film adaptation of the Rupert the Bear cartoon series, for which he owned the commercial rights, and commissioned English playwright Willy Russell to write a feature film starring Wings.
Holley and Juber were recruited by Wings co-founder and guitarist Denny Laine, who had appeared as a guest on The David Essex Show in 1977 when Juber was working as a guitarist in the house band. Holley, a neighbour of Laine's, joined Wings in time to appear in the promotional video for London Towns lead single, "With a Little Luck", having turned down a position with Elton John's band. According to Wings biographer Garry McGee, Juber and Holley were each paid a weekly sum less than one-fifth of that paid to McCartney, his wife Linda (the band's keyboard player) and Laine. This was the first time Wings recorded with an outside producer since their 1973 single "Live and Let Die", which George Martin had produced. After working with the Pretenders and the Sex Pistols, Thomas brought a punk rock and new wave influence to Wings' sound, matching McCartney's desire to reflect contemporary musical trends.
Songs
Back to the Egg received predominantly negative reviews on release; Timothy White described it as "the sorriest grab bag of dreck in recent memory" and lamented that none of the songs were "the least bit fleshed out", with the listener instead given "an irritating display of disjointed images and unfocused musical snapshots". After opining that, since 1970, "this ex-Beatle has been lending his truly prodigious talents ... to some of the laziest records in the history of rock & roll", White wrote: "Who, one felt compelled to ask, is in charge here? Back to the Egg provides the final, obvious answer: no one."
According to Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, many critics considered the variety of musical styles "diffuse" rather than "varied". Record Mirror Ronnie Gurr called the album "a tremendously muddled lucky bag of half-baked concepts" that lacked "strong direction" and "instant classics". In The New York Times, John Rockwell did not find Wings' punk experiments persuasive: "Punk is... about passion [...] an intermittent quality in Mr. McCartney's pop confections. Here the pop is less shiny and smooth, but there isn't much real emotion to compensate."
In a more positive assessment, for Creem magazine, Mitchell Cohen highlighted the album's second side as "a collection of McCartney performances that string together like abbey roadwork", and praised McCartney's vocals relative to his past work, writing: "all of the current tracks are terser, sung better, have less of what I suppose would be called the recording artist's equivalent of camera consciousness." Billboards reviewer gave Back to the Egg "Spotlight" status (meaning "the most outstanding new product of the week's releases and that with the greatest potential for top of the chart placement") and commented: "The music features typical McCartney fare of late with nothing here that will distinguish it as one of his classics. The arrangements, though, are interesting, encompassing a variety of styles." To NME critic Bob Woffinden, the attempt at an album-wide concept was "a pretty half-baked one" and Hipgnosis' cover photo was "easily the album's strongest point".
Retrospective reviews have remained generally unfavourable. AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine views Back to the Egg as "a set of [McCartney's] most undistinguished songs" that "have no spark whatsoever", and bemoans "the weak sound of the record and Wings' faceless performances". Among McCartney biographers, Vincent Benitez writes that the songs are "uneven in quality", Perasi remarks that the album "represented another stylistic turning point for McCartney... and offers a fresh style" but at the same time it "contains the usual genre diversity which had always distinguished McCartney’s productions".
Aftermath and reissues
With the album falling well short of Columbia's and McCartney's expectations commercially, McCartney spent the remainder of the summer of 1979 recording in Peasmarsh and Campbeltown, without Wings, creating his solo album McCartney II (1980). the first leg of the proposed world tour.
The band were scheduled to tour Japan during January and February 1980, were cancelled after McCartney was arrested for possession of drugs when entering the country. Around this time, "Rockestra Theme" won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. a compilation that McCartney had suggested when CBS sought to recover part of its financial losses from Back to the Egg.