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Mull Of Kintyre: The confusing story of a fight that never happened.
- Jul 10
- 8 min read
In 1977, Mull of Kintyre broke the record for the UK’s biggest ever selling single. But it seems like one of the guys who wrote it, and all of the pipers who played on it, got slightly ripped off…
So the first thing I need to say, is that while researching this one… it seems like there's actually a lot of conflicting information out there.
The whole ‘story’ behind this goes like this: Denny Laine was ripped off, fell out with McCartney, and had to sell him the rights to his songs to survive. He even supposedly sold stories to newspapers that painted McCartney in a bad light.
But actually, it’s not clear or not if that's really the case. But it's still a good story and a great song, so let’s get to the bottom of it.
Mull of Kintyre was something of an unlikely hit. A slow, rolling song about a small area of Scotland, backed by a full set of pipers, wasn’t really expected to get much notice.
But Wings did it anyway, because, according to Denny Laine in the Beatles Bible:
“It was madness, but I just thought, ‘Well, sod it.”
The song was co-written by Paul McCartney and Denny Laine, but it's the writing credits and royalties that caused all the trouble. Supposedly… we’ll get onto that.
Paul wanted to write a song about Scotland, but he wasn't sure how people would take to an Englishman writing about Scotland.
Mull of Kintyre is literally about the area of Kintyre. It's a little place in Scotland
With a beautiful coastline and rolling hills.
McCartney had a farm and some land there, and it really is beautiful. It's where he went to collect himself after the devastating breakup of the Beatles.
If you didn't know, McCartney started the band Wings in 1971, shortly after the Beatles disbanded. Featuring him on bass and vocals, his wife Linda on keys, and Denny Laine on guitar and vocals.
The lineup changed a lot over 10 years, but that core trio remained.
McCartney had a lot of love for Kintyre, the place meant a lot to him. According to Denny Laine Paul had written a chorus, but needed some verses - although Paul claims he had the melody and a verse, and he got together with Laine for the guitar parts.
So he and Laine sat down with a bottle of whiskey and just wrote about what they could see:
They sing about green valleys, the mist coming in off the sea, and all that good stuff. It's really an Ode to the place.
It all came together very quickly, but it needed something to make it more… Scottish.
Of course, bagpipes. You can't really do an ode to the Scottish seaside without bagpipes can you?
Kintyre has a rich history of piping, and they enlisted the help of the Campbelltown Pipe Band, which were a full bagpipe and drum band.
They had their roots in being travelling musicians for generations, and had based themselves in Kintyre for a time.
And this is where the song really got unique.
The pipers brought in that rousing energy that only bagpipes can. You don't have to be Scottish to feel it, do you? There's something about bagpipes that just makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.
Denny told the Beatles Bible:
“It was interesting writing for them. You can’t just write any old tune, because they can’t play every note in a normal scale.”
But they figured things out, and he gave one band member a tape to go rehearse with the band, and off they went to do their thing.
They recorded the track at McCartney's farm, where of course he had a barn converted into a professional studio. That's such a Paul McCartney thing to do.
The pipes were so loud they had to be recorded outside, which probably only added to the atmosphere.
Straight away they knew it was a great song - or at the least the Campbelltown band did. McCartney actually needed a lot of convincing.
The pipers certainly thought that it had to be a single, but McCartney thought it was too niche. He felt a single should have a wider appeal, which is usually true. But the band knew they were on to something.
Paul is quoted in the Beatles Bible as saying:
“They kept saying, ‘Oh, the exiled Scots all over the world. It’ll be a big single for them.’ Yet I still thought, ‘Yeah, well, but there’s maybe not enough exiled Scots,’ but they kept telling me, after a few drinks.”
Eventually Paul listened, and now we know they were right. Mull of Kintyre became the biggest selling UK single of 1977 - and at the time, the biggest selling non-charity UK single… ever. It was actually the first single to sell over two million copies in the UK.
Ironically It took that record from a Beatles song, She Loves You. Isn't it amazing that Paul's project after the Beatles actually managed to outsell them, at least in this case. I don't think anybody ever thought that would happen.
Released in November, it became the Christmas hit of the year all over Europe - I was No.1 in at least 10 countries across the world, and in some of them was No.1 in multiple charts at the same time.
It held the best selling record until 1984, when Band Aid overtook it with Do They Know It's Christmas. McCartney was actually asked to take part in that, but couldn't.
It had a lot of impact for the Campbelltown Pipe Band as well. This is the song that got them famous. The song also caused a surge in tourism for Kintyre.
So its impact was massive. Even the punks liked it - remember the seventies was huge for punks in the UK. McCartney tells one story where a scary looking group of punks walked up to his car to bang on the window, only to tell him how great Mull of Kintyre was.
Right, so that's the story of the song. But what’s all this about writing credits and people getting ripped off?
Well, It was later alleged that despite the song selling millions and therefore obviously making millions… The pipers and even Denny Laine didn't see much of it.
The Campbelltown Pipe Band were brought in as session musicians, and reportedly paid a flat rate of £350, plus £30 for being in the music video.
This seems a bit harsh, but remember at the time, they were just coming in to do a job. That's how it works as a session musician: agree a rate, do the work, get paid (hopefully).
When it became a massive hit, McCartney apparently sent them a bonus - of £200 each. That’s not something he had to do but a lot of people see that as not enough, given how much impact the pipes have on the song.
In fairness, the band didn't seem to hold a grudge. Apparently, in a 1978 interview, Tony Wilson said:
“All the boys are proud to have played on the record. McCartney’s a genius. Paul’s song has done wonders for Kintyre but we won’t be earning royalties from the song. We were paid as session musicians for the job. We did the job and got paid for it and that’s that.”
They later said in interviews that they would have done it for free. So, I think it’s safe to say the pipers were happy with how things turned out.
This is where it starts getting confusing about Denny Laine and his royalties.
Supposedly, he got a bad deal on his royalties for the song. At least, that’s the story. Certainly the story that my viewer Steffan has heard. But it’s quite hard to find any actual evidence of that.
The details are a little murky, but I've pieced together what I can find.
What we do know is that Laine was having financial problems.
Even before the release of Mull of Kintyre, Wings had begun to slow their touring down after years of grinding away. The band hadn't broken up, but they massively slowed down activity.
Reduced touring means reduced money.
Around this time, in the late 70s, Laine was smacked with a massive tax bill he couldn't pay.
Things seemed to be looking up when they got a new line-up together and announced a big tour of Japan for 1980. But this didn't work out.
As they tried to enter Japan, Paul McCartney was arrested for Marijuana possession. He was facing serious jail time, but as so often happens, was released after 9 days. The tour, however, was cancelled.
Laine was understandably frustrated about this whole thing. He needed money badly, here was his solution, and now it was down the drain because McCartney didn't take some weed out of his pocket.
After John Lennon’s death in 1980, McCartney became more reluctant to tour as well.
Now this is where the narrative makes it out like they had the big falling out because supposedly Laine wanted to keep touring and earning money but McCartney didn’t. But Laine has directly said this didn't happen. While he did leave wings in 1981, he always insisted that there wasn’t a big fall out and that he and McCartney just drifted apart.
But , the story goes, and again, can’t be sure if it’s true or not, that Laine got a loan from McCartney to pay his massive tax bill. The agreement was, if he couldn’t pay it back, McCartney could have his song writing credits, including on Mull of Kintyre, and earn all future royalties.
The thing is… I can't find proper proof of that from Laine or McCartney that that happened anywhere.
Plus, if you search the ASCAP Songview database - both McCartney AND Laine (or Laine’s real name at least) are listed as songwriters. ASCAP is the company that makes sure people get paid for their songs when they need to, in the US. So, it looks like Laine always maintained his credit.
Then there's the story that Laine sold stories to The Sun newspaper, which painted McCartney in a bad light.
The Sun did indeed run a story in 1984 and it does look to be an interview from Laine which slams McCartney.
But, according to Laine, he says the Sun took parts of a book he was writing at the time, out of context, cut them up, and printed their stories.
He vehemently denies selling anything to them.
But, on the other hand, maybe the sun interview IS genuine and Denny DID say all those awful things about McCartney and regretted it later on, and tried to cover it up? We can never really know the truth.
The Sun article does back up everything my viewer Steffan says about Paul denying him a good deal on the song and Paul being generally awful… but again - can’t tell what’s true.
As for leaving Wings, one of the reasons was that he had to leave the country due to tax reasons, not some big fallout
Now, whether or not Laine and McCartney ever fell out is something only the people involved could ever really know. We do know that in later years, McCartney spoke fondly of Laine up until his death in 2023.
And we also know that Mull of Kintyre remains a truly loved song to this day.
I’d love to hear your interpretations of this whole McCartney and Laine saga in the comments, as the information out there is very messy and confusing…
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