Wings over America is a triple live album by the British–American rock band Wings, released in December 1976. The album was recorded during the American leg of the band's 1975–76 Wings Over the World tour. It peaked at number 8 on the UK Albums Chart and reached number 1 on the US Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart.
In addition to including several of McCartney's hits with Wings, the album features performances of five of his Beatles songs: "Yesterday", "Lady Madonna", "I've Just Seen a Face", "Blackbird" and "The Long and Winding Road". The album cover was designed by Hipgnosis – who were nominated in 1978, together with McCartney's production company MPL, for a Grammy Award for Best Album Package for this album – and depicts an airliner about to open its cabin door. Wings over America was remastered and reissued as part of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection in May 2013.
Recording
Originally, Wings over America was to be a two-record set of highlight performances, but this was rethought due to the success of a bootleg titled Wings from the Wings, which was released as a triple record set on red, white, and blue vinyl, and contained the entire 23 June 1976 concert recorded at the Forum in Los Angeles. This caused McCartney to release the album as a three-record set, compiled from various shows from the band's North American tour during May–June 1976. McCartney's sound engineer listened to 800 hours of tape and selected the five best performances of each song from the 30-song set list. McCartney chose and mixed the final set of recordings, mostly taken from the 23 June show. The live recordings then received studio overdubs during October–November 1976. According to Wings drummer Joe English, "it took forever to get those 'Wings over America' tapes ready for the live album. We had to go into the studio and overdub most of the backing vocals."
Release and reception
Wings over America was issued six months after the end of the band's US tour. It was another commercial success for Wings, reaching number 1 in the US in early 1977 (the last in a five-album stretch of consecutive chart-topping albums for the band) and number 8 in the UK. Years later John Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono, complained about the same songwriting credit on McCartney's Back in the U.S. album, but neither Lennon nor Ono publicly voiced any disapproval about the change made in 1976.
Wings over America was the first triple set by a group to reach number 1 in the US, and was a critical success. "Maybe I'm Amazed" was released as a single on 4 February 1977,
In a retrospective review, AllMusic critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine explained the wild success of the triple album: "The Beatles mystique was still very much attached to record and artist alike – at the time, John Lennon had seemingly burnt out a major chunk of his talent, George Harrison was losing his popular edge and had done a disastrous 1974 American tour, and no one was expecting great things from Ringo Starr – and it seemed like McCartney represented the part of the group's legacy that came closest to living up to fans' expectations. Thus the album ended up selling in numbers, rivaling the likes of Frampton Comes Alive! and other mega-hits of the period." Limiting their relevance, however, these additional releases appeared three and four years, respectively, after the 1976 live album.|group="nb" The album was first released in the UK on compact disc on 26 May 1987 by Parlophone.