During an in-depth conversation with Julian Lennon, this journalist submitted that it's not 1968, but 2022. Meaning, it's important we collectively treat him not as some figment of the distant past, but an artist and human being in the now. To this, Lennon wholeheartedly agreed.

But the fact remains that he called his brand-new album Jude — and even put his childhood self on the cover. That was for a very important reason: recently, he turned a corner in his mind and heart.

"I've reached that point now where I can breathe, and I'm OK with it all. It's all good," Lennon tells GRAMMY.com, looking vibrant and relaxed on Zoom despite weathering, in his words, "promo from hell." He adds that he finally broke his moratorium on his father's ubiquitous peace anthem, and sang "Imagine" in public to benefit Ukraine: "That was just the icing on the cake."

"I'm just making sense of it all," the GRAMMY nominee says. "I'm part and parcel of this steam train. I'm not getting off it, so I might as well enjoy the ride."

That ride just got seriously interesting. On Sept. 9, Lennon released Jude, which acts as both a potent self-examination and an embrace of his past — which, as a Beatles scion, had its share of extremes. Just to recap: Paul McCartney wrote his coaxing, strengthening, galvanizing "Hey Jude" — a song of still-startling emotional clarity — to comfort young Jules after his father's divorce from Cynthia Lennon. ("Hey Jules" was the working title.)

As an adult, Lennon has both weathered a multitude of ups and downs in the music industry — all while expressing himself via paths less trodden. In recent years, he's made eco-centric documentaries like 2020's Kiss the Ground and 2021's Women of the White Buffalo, auctioned off NFTs of Beatle memorabilia and pursued his stark, evocative photography.

And despite swearing off participation in traditional release models on major labels, BMG made him an enticing and holistic offer — one he ultimately accepted. This led to his first offering in 11 years, and on songs like "Save Me," "Freedom" and "Love Never Dies," he established aural and conceptual links to the past while charting a path into his future.

Read on for an in-depth interview with Lennon about how Jude came to be, his complicated relationship with his namesake, and what he thought of Get Back.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Tell me about your psychological state while making your first solo album in more than a decade. Was there any trepidation? Any insecurity?

It's a bit of a weird one, because initially, I wasn't going to do another album. I thought: I'm done with years of working hard emotionally on these albums with nobody really getting to hear anything. So, this is why I ventured off into the land of photography, documentary filmmaking, and children's books, and focusing more on the White Feather Foundation.

Because I didn't know where music was at. I've got to say, the landscape had changed so much over the last 10 years, as well. I thought, "Well, if I do anything again, I'll just do a couple of singles or EPs and just put them out there for the pleasure of doing it."

It's in-built. It's innate. It's unlikely I'll ever stop doing music — because mostly, also, I still work and sing on other people's projects all the time anyway. It's just that not many people get to hear or see that side of things that I've done.

The whole thing about this album is that it comes in two stages. One is Hartwig Masuch, the boss of BMG. Over the course of six months to a year, he met friends of mine — one in America, one in Russia. My name came up, and he said to my friends, "If Jules ever wants to do any music again, tell him to get in touch with me."

Just to interject, I was working with Leica cameras, and I had to go to Berlin for an event. I knew that Hartwig and BMG were based in Berlin. I didn't have his details, and I just thought, "I should check this out — what it's all about."

How did you find Hartwig from there?

I found him on social media, and I just said, "Hi, Jules here. I'm coming to Berlin. Got time for lunch?" I didn't expect a response, but he did. So, I went over and had lunch with him and then met everybody at BMG. I liked him a lot. He made me feel comfortable about the idea of working together with a label, which was an absolute no-no in my book after my previous experiences.

But he was a real lover of music, and you could see that. You could feel that. He was a big fan, too. He'd always thought that I never got my fair share, so to speak. I'd never been supported or sponsored enough to be seen and heard properly. He wanted to make that happen.

The other thing that was key in this was, he said: "Listen, if you do come on board, Jules, we will try our utmost to get all of your albums under one roof with a reversion back to you at the end of it." That alone was something that made me very, very interested.

What was the other factor that inspired you to get back on the horse?

The other part of the story is, my business manager in the UK retired. He'd had boxes and boxes and boxes and stuff in his basement. He sent it over to me, and most of it was financial files. But a couple of boxes were old reel-to-reel tapes and DAT tapes! Every format since the '80s that you could imagine — and there were lots.

I went through all of this stuff. Some of it was demos for [1984's] Valotte and "Too Late for Goodbyes." Songs that I'd forgotten all about. Anyway, my dear, dear friend Justin Clayton and I — I've known him since I was 11 years old; he co-wrote material on the first album; we went on world tours together — he had a great memory.

So, I brought him into this, to go through the tapes and see what was there. And he'd also taken an engineering course, so we were going to dive deep into what was in all these boxes. And the first song that came about was "Every Little Moment." I listened to it and went, "Well, f— me. This sounds great!"

I was worried that the old material was going to be lost, because tapes, if you leave them out,  can really degrade and fall apart. But we were lucky; we did this process called "baking," where they take all the old tapes and digitize everything.

Anyway, the song was in good shape. Real good shape. Literally, we felt that we just needed to upgrade some production elements of it. Obviously, the '80s and '90s were big on drum machines, so I wanted to change that immediately. I got some live players on the track. I only changed the vocal on the chorus, and that's the track.

Same with "Not One Night." The vocals were done in my guest bedroom in my little bungalow in L.A. 30 years ago. Apart from that, all the other songs on the album are broken up into different decades. It's just a collection of songs that never sat quite right on other albums or projects that went before, but were still, in my mind, valuable enough. They deserved a home.

From there, how did things progress with Hartwig and BMG?

Again, Hartwig was the one who said, "Let's do a record." I said, "No, I just want to do singles and EPs. It's going to be easier on me. Less pressure," blah-blah-blah. But as we went through all this stuff, I started playing him stuff. We got to five or six songs, and he flipped. He said, "Jules, this is an album." I said, "No it's not! It's not an album! It's singles and EPs!"

Anyway, by the time we got to seven, eight, nine, I'm going, "Alright, if it's sequenced properly, it could be an album." At the end of the day, I said, "Alright, it does work as an album." BMG loved it, and I said, "Let's go for it, then. Why not?"

I was fortunate enough to get [Mark] "Spike" Stent to mix it. I think he's the one who really brought the glue together and also took it up a notch. I say what he did to the album is he did a Nigel: he turned it up to number 11. He just took all the work that we'd done and gave it that breath of fresh air and punch that everything needed to solidify it and put it all together — and for me to feel comfortable putting it out there as an album.

I appreciate that Jude isn't overproduced; it's actually very sparse in some ways. Can you talk about how you wanted the sound to come across to the listener?

Well, I've got to say, Justin and I started this project in my home studio here. Then, the dreaded Covid hit, and he had to go back to England. Now, I hadn't done any type of engineering for a long, long time. But I was twitching to get back to work, to continue the process of this project.

So, my experiment, if you will, that I did on my own, was the song "Freedom." I fell in love with the whole soundscape of "Freedom." And I just said: This [song] feels, to me, where I hear this album sitting, in many respects. It needs to feel like the old-school journeys we used to go on when we bought a great album back in the day, where the soundscape took you somewhere special.

"Freedom" was the beginning of that journey. That's where it all really stemmed from, for me. I felt like the album needed to have that sense of space. It's quite raw, but there's quite a bit of production on it. But I agree with you: it's not overproduced. It breathes.

*John and Julian Lennon in January 1968. Photo: Keystone Features/Getty Images*

I'm going to make an educated guess that, at other parts of your career, it wouldn't have felt as natural to call an album Jude, with your childhood self on the cover. It seems as if now, it feels appropriate to wholeheartedly embrace that part of your life that so many people globally know you for. Can you talk about reaching that point?

[Hearty laugh] You are right! I don't really know where it all came from, except that, with the whole COVID thing, I've been going through a whole face-yourself, look-in-the-mirror, "Who are you? What are you doing? Are you happy or sad? Where are you going with all this s—?" [process]. That was the main focus, and believe it or not, a lot of the songs dealt with that.

Also, because I've been doing NFTs with Beatle memorabilia, and the original lyrics for "Hey Jude" had been a focus at one point. Then, I started thinking about the lyrics and what they represented — the "weight upon my shoulder" and blah-blah-blah.

I thought about that, also, with the Get Back film, which I was blown away by. Sean and I saw that and we just fell in love with Dad again, because we saw a side of him with Paul and the rest of the band where he was a cheeky monkey, to say the least. Cynical, smart, goofy, fun, talented — you name it, throw it in there, he had it all. That reminded me of how I remembered him as a kid — being just that.

Read More: There's Not Much Left To Reveal About The Beatles' End. Let's Use The Get Back Doc As A Manual For Moving Forward.

So, it was the culmination of so many things. And the other thing that really, I guess, was the stamp on the seal, was, initially, my birth name on my passport was John Charles Julian Lennon. When I went to the airport, through security, or this, that, or the other, people wouldn't always recognize me and they'd go, "Oh, John Lennon! Haaa! That's funny! Are you related?" A gazillion comments.

That would always make me feel incredibly anxious, because I'd always been called Julian. These moments at security checkpoints, the passport, "John, John, John" — I was sick of it. So, in 2020, I changed my name. But I still liked the J-C-J-L — the rhythm of my initials — and I respected my parents' decision to give me those names. But I wanted to be me, finally, so I just switched "John" and "Julian." And when I did that, it was like a whole weight came off my shoulders. I felt, "I'm finally Julian! I'm finally Jules, or Jude!"

It all made sense to me that this was just a reflection of the past. It was about how far I'd come, or I'd grown, and how I feel, quite possibly, now, more balanced, more focused, more at peace, and with purpose than I'd ever been in my life before. It just seemed like the right thing, and the right time. Getting to a point where I can just say, "Ask me anything! I don't care anymore!"

Whether your answer falls under the umbrella of the Beatles or your old man, which songwriters are your lodestars — the ultimate combiners of words and melodies?

That's a tough one, because it's so varied, and music leans in so many directions, depending on what genre they are, as well. Keith Jarrett, musically, speaks to me massively. Steely Dan…

Such a Keith Jarrett fan.

The Köln Concert — I'm done.

Zero 7's Simple Things was a great album — I would take that on a desert island as well. Billy Joel… listen. The reason I kind of worked with Phil Ramone was because of Billy Joel's earlier work. I love bands like America. There's so much great stuff out there. New stuff, not so much. I'm a fan of Foo Fighters. I like what Dave does, lyrically and musically. It's really, really strong — excellent stuff.

The list goes on. It's impossible! There's so much great stuff out there!

What are you working on, musically or extramusically? What are your next steps?

Well, I'm doing promo from hell for the next few months. I have been doing this [gestures to Zoom] for just weeks now! I'm going insane! I'm going to lose my mind! But I'm hanging in there, and I've got a break coming up, which I'm thankful for.

But, September and onward: performing, promo, TV shows and stuff like that. Getting up there and trying to sing a few songs. Aside from that, more photography work. There are more collections and projects coming out that I'm involved with.

Documentary-wise, the last one was Kiss the Ground on Netflix, which was — without being modest — one of the best docs out there, because it actually turned into a platform for people honoring and trying to change the world right now. White Feather Films, I just started, so that's a whole other [deal] — like I don't have enough work.

And then, the White Feather Foundation has a lot of ongoing projects that we keep following through with. And the list goes on! Probably more books of some sort are coming up. We'll see how that goes. When I have time, by the way! When I have time! I'd like a break, that's what I'd like! Maybe I'll get one by Christmas, if I behave.

*Paul McCartney and Julian Lennon in 1967. Photo: Central Press/Getty Images*

I think the most natural endpoint for the interview is to the last song on the album, "Gaia." Can you tell me about that tune, and collaborating with Paul Buchanan and Elissa Lauper?

Of course. Listen: how that came around is, I saw this band called Snarky Puppy.

Big fan!

They're amazing! Amazing! Anyway, I befriended a couple of the guys — Michael League and Bill Laurance. And Bill came up to my place and we started working on some tracks that will end up on something down the road; we never ended up quite finishing them.

But while he was there, I was commenting on how much I loved his solo album, which was called Cables. There was one song on there — the title track — that I mentioned to him. I said, "I hear this differently!" And when I explained it to him, he didn't get it, which I thought was weird for a predominantly jazz guy.

I said, "Listen, just play on the little white upright, and I'll play and sing what's on my mind." He played it and went, "Oh, I get it!" I said, "Just, do me a favor before you leave. Put it down on tape and I can fiddle with it later."

I kept hearing a French voice in my head. A French woman's voice from the '30s, '40s or '50s. Very broken up, like on an old radio or TV. I was scrolling through social media, I heard this voice and went, "F— me! That's her! That is her!" I wrote to her and found out she lived 20 minutes away. What! Twenty minutes away!

So, I sent her the song idea. She fell in love with it. I told her what I was looking for, and she wrote some lyrics. The idea was that it's a song between Mother Earth and humanity, disguised as a love song. She literally did the thing where she took her iPhone and did the spoken word in front of a bunch of speakers, listening to the music. I heard it back and said, "That's it!" So, I edited it into the song.

What about Paul Buchanan?

Paul Buchanan, I had wanted him to write the bridge, but he wasn't in that headspace. So I said, "Just sing it for me!" He said, "Jules, there are no studios up here around Glasgow. Everything's closed." I said, "Listen: You got an iPhone?" "Yes." "You got headphones?" "Yes," "Sing it six times for me into your iPhone and send it to me."

I edited his six pieces together and made it sound like it was a real mic. Then, Spike made it even better. Then, Elissa, the girl, said, "Do you mind if I write some other words?" I said, "Go ahead!" So, we worked on it together and she sent me her lyrics. I was blown away, because I never, in a million years, would have come up with her verse. It was typically French — very, very French.

The song has a bit of a unique arrangement. It does its own thing; I guided it a little bit. And I just thought it was the perfect end to the album — especially after "Stay." I didn't want to finish the album with "Stay," and "Gaia" seemed to be the perfect exit for this particular album.

I've been plagued by the number 11 for a couple of years. So, I said, "Right, well, I'm going to have 11 songs on the album. What are you going to do? Whether you believe in that or not, I figured, "Why not?"

We've Thrown Everything We Could At John Lennon's "Imagine." The Song Nonetheless Endures 50 Years Later.

As the train of Beatles remixes and expansions — solo or otherwise — chugs along, a fair question might come to mind: why John Lennon's Mind Games, and why now?

When you consider some agreed-upon classics — George Harrison's Living in the Material World, Ringo Starr's Ringo — it might seem like it skipped the line. Historically, fans and critics have rarely made much of Mind Games, mostly viewing it as an album-length shell for its totemic title track. 

The 2020 best-of Lennon compilation Gimme Some Truth: The Ultimate Mixes featured "Mind Games," "Out the Blue," and "I Know (I Know)," which is about right — even in fanatical Lennon circles, few other Mind Games tracks get much shine. It's hard to imagine anyone reaching for it instead of Plastic Ono Band, or Imagine, or even the controversial, semi-outrageous Some Time in New York City.

Granted, these largely aren't A-tier Lennon songs — but still, the album's tepid reputation has little to do with the material. The original Mind Games mix is, to put it charitably, muddy — partly due to Lennon's insecurity about his voice, partly just due to that era of recordmaking.

The fourth-best Picasso is obviously still worth viewing. But not with an inch of grime on your glasses.

The Standard Deluxe Edition. Photo courtesy of Universal Music Group

That's all changed with Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection — a fairly gobsmacking makeover of the original album, out July 12. Turns out giving it this treatment was an excellent, long-overdue idea — and producer Sean Ono Lennon, remixers Rob Stevens, Sam Gannon and Paul Hicks were the best men for the job. Outtakes and deconstructed "Elemental" and "Elements" mixes round out the boxed set.

It's not that Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection reveals some sort of masterpiece. The album's still uneven; it was bashed out at New York's Record Plant in a week, and it shows. But that's been revealed to not be its downfall, but its intrinsic charm. As you sift through the expanded collection, consider these reasons you should give Mind Games another shot.

The Songs Are Better Than You Remember

Will deep cuts like "Intuition" or "Meat City" necessarily make your summer playlist? Your mileage may vary. However, a solid handful of songs you may have written off due to murky sonics are excellent Lennon.

With a proper mix, "Aisumasen (I'm Sorry)" absolutely soars — it's Lennon's slow-burning, Smokey Robinson-style mea culpa to Yoko Ono. "Bring On the Lucie (Freda Peeple)" has a rickety, communal "Give Peace a Chance" energy — and in some ways, it's a stronger song than that pacifist classic.

And on side 2, the mellow, ruminative "I Know (I Know)" and "You Are Here" sparkle — especially the almost Mazzy Star-like latter tune, with pedal steel guitarist "Sneaky" Pete Kleinow (of Flying Burrito Brothers fame) providing abundant atmosphere.

And, of course, the agreed-upon cuts are even better: "Mind Games" sounds more celestial than ever. And the gorgeous, cathartic "Out the Blue" — led by David Spinozza's classical-style playing, with his old pal Paul McCartney rubbing off on the melody — could and should lead any best-of list.

The Performances Are Killer

Part of the fun of Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection is realizing how great its performances are. They're not simply studio wrapping paper; they capture 1970s New York's finest session cats at full tilt.

Those were: Kleinow, Spinozza, keyboardist Ken Ascher, bassist Gordon Edwards, drummer Jim Keltner (sometimes along with Rick Marotta), saxophonist Michael Brecker, and backing vocalists Something Different.

All are blue-chip; the hand-in-glove rhythm section of Edwards and Keltner is especially captivating. (Just listen to Edwards' spectacular use of silence, as he funkily weaves through that title track.)

The hardcover book included in Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection is replete with the musicians' fly-on-the-wall stories from that week at the Record Plant.

"You can hear how much we're all enjoying playing together in those mixes," Keltner says in the book, praising Spinozza and Gordon. "If you're hearing John Lennon's voice in your headphones and the great Kenny Ascher playing John's chords on the keys, there's just no question of where you're going and how you're going to get there."

It Captures A Fascinating Moment In Time

"Mind Games to me was like an interim record between being a manic political lunatic to back to being a musician again," Lennon stated, according to the book. "It's a political album or an introspective album. Someone told me it was like Imagine with balls, which I liked a lot."

This creative transition reflects the upheaval in Lennon's life at the time. He no longer had Phil Spector to produce; Mind Games was his first self-production. He was struggling to stay in the country, while Nixon wanted him and his message firmly out.

Plus, Lennon recorded it a few months before his 18-month separation from Ono began — the mythologized "Lost Weekend" that was actually a creatively flourishing time. All of this gives the exhaustive Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection historical weight, on top of listening pleasure.

"[It's important to] get as complete a revealing of it as possible," Stevens, who handled the Raw Studio Mixes, tells GRAMMY.com. "Because nobody's going to be able to do it in 30 years."

John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Central Park, 1973. Photo: Bob Gruen

Moments Of Inspired Weirdness Abound

Four seconds of silence titled the "Nutopian International Anthem." A messy slab of blues rock with refrains of "Fingerlickin', chicken-pickin'" and "Chickin-suckin', mother-truckin'." The country-fried "Tight A$," basically one long double entendre.

To put it simply, you can't find such heavy concentrates of Lennonesque nuttiness on more commercial works like Imagine. Sometimes the outliers get under your skin just the same.

Read more: We've Thrown Everything We Could At John Lennon's "Imagine." The Song Nonetheless Endures 50 Years Later.

It's Never Sounded Better

"It's a little harsh, a little compressed," Stevens says of the original 1973 mix. "The sound's a little bit off-putting, so maybe you dismiss listening to it, in a different head. Which is why the record might not have gotten its due back then."

As such, in 2024 it's revelatory to hear Edwards' basslines so plump, Keltner's kick so defined, Ascher's lines so crystalline. When Spinozza rips into that "Aisumasen" solo, it absolutely penetrates. And, as always with these Lennon remixes, the man's voice is prioritized, and placed front and center. It doesn't dispose of the effects Lennon insecurely desired; it clarifies them.

"I get so enthusiastic," Ascher says about listening to Mind Games: The Ultimate Collection. "I say, 'Well, that could have been a hit. This could have been a hit. No, this one could have been a hit, this one." Yes is the answer.

Throughout his ongoing Got Back tour, Paul McCartney has reliably opened with "Can't Buy Me Love."

It's not the Beatles' deepest song, nor their most beloved hit — though a hit it was. But its zippy, rollicking exuberance still shines brightly; like the rest of the oldies on his setlist, the 82-year-old launches into it in its original key. For two minutes and change, we're plunged back into 1964 — and all the humor, melody, friendship and fun the Beatles bestowed with A Hard Day's Night.

This week in 1964 — at the zenith of Beatlemania, after their seismic appearance on "The Ed Sullivan Show" — the planet received Richard Lester's silly, surreal and innovative film of that name. Days after, its classic soundtrack dropped — a volley of uber-catchy bangers and philosophical ballads, and the only Beatles LP to solely feature Lennon-McCartney songs.

As with almost everything Beatles, the impact of the film and album have been etched in stone. But considering the breadth of pop culture history in its wake, Fab disciples can always use a reminder. Here are six things that wouldn't be the same without A Hard Day's Night.

All Music Videos, Forever

Right from that starting gun of an opening chord, A Hard Day's Night's camerawork alone — black and white, inspired by French New Wave and British kitchen sink dramas — pioneers everything from British spy thrillers to "The Monkees."

Across the film's 87 minutes, you're viscerally dragged into the action; you tumble through the cityscapes right along with John, Paul, George, and Ringo. Not to mention the entire music video revolution; techniques we think of as stock were brand-new here.

According to Roger Ebert: "Today when we watch TV and see quick cutting, hand-held cameras, interviews conducted on the run with moving targets, quickly intercut snatches of dialogue, music under documentary action and all the other trademarks of the modern style, we are looking at the children of A Hard Day's Night."

Emergent Folk-Rock

George Harrison's 12-string Rickenbacker didn't just lend itself to a jangly undercurrent on the A Hard Day's Night songs; the shots of Harrison playing it galvanized Roger McGuinn to pick up the futuristic instrument — and via the Byrds, give the folk canon a welcome jolt of electricity.

Entire reams of alternative rock, post-punk, power pop, indie rock, and more would follow — and if any of those mean anything to you, partly thank Lester for casting a spotlight on that Rick.

Read more: Living Legends: Roger McGuinn On The History Of The Byrds, His One-Man Show And Editing His Own Wikipedia Page

The Ultimate Love Triangle Jam

From the Byrds' "Triad" to Leonard Cohen's "Famous Blue Raincoat," music history is replete with odes to love triangles.

But none are as desperate, as mannish, as garment-rending, as Derek and the Dominoes' "Layla," where Eric Clapton lays bare his affections for his friend Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd. Where did Harrison meet her? Why, on the set of A Hard Day's Night, where she was cast as a schoolgirl.

Debates, Debates, Debates

Say, what is that famous, clamorous opening chord of A Hard Day's Night's title track? Turns out YouTube's still trying to suss that one out.

"It is F with a G on top, but you'll have to ask Paul about the bass note to get the proper story," Harrison told an online chat in 2001 — the last year of his life.

A Certain Strain Of Loopy Humor

No wonder Harrison got in with Monty Python later in life: the effortlessly witty lads were born to play these roles — mostly a tumble of non sequiturs, one-liners and daffy retorts. (They were all brought up on the Goons, after all.) When A Hard Day's Night codified their Liverpudlian slant on everything, everyone from the Pythons to Tim and Eric received their blueprint.

The Legitimacy Of The Rock Flick

What did rock 'n' roll contribute to the film canon before the Beatles? A stream of lightweight Elvis flicks? Granted, the Beatles would churn out a few headscratchers in its wake — Magical Mystery Tour, anyone? — but A Hard Day's Night remains a game-changer for guitar boys on screen.

The best part? The Beatles would go on to change the game again, and again, and again, in so many ways. Don't say they didn't warn you — as you revisit the iconic A Hard Day's Night.

Whether it be "Band on the Run" or "Jet" or "My Love," chances are you've heard a Wings song at least once — in all their polished, '70s-arena-sized glory. More than four decades after they disbanded in 1981, we're getting a helping of raw, uncut Wings.

Last February, Wings' classic 1973 album Band on the Run got the 50th anniversary treatment, with a disc of "underdubbed" remixes, allowing Paul McCartney, spouse and keyboardist Linda McCartney, and guitarist Denny Laine to be heard stripped back, with added clarity.

After a few months to digest that, it was time to reveal a session that, for ages, fans had been clamoring for. On June 14, in came One Hand Clapping, a live-in-the-studio set from August 1974 that captured Wings at the zenith of their powers.

Back then, Wings had the wind in their sails, with a reconstituted lineup Band on the Run at the top of the charts. They opted to plug in at Abbey Road Studios with cameras rolling, and record a live studio album with an attendant documentary. The film wouldn’t come out until a 2010 reissue of Band on the Run; the music’s popped up on bootlegs, but had never been released in full.

That long absence is a shame; while One Hand Clapping is a bit of a historical footnote, it absolutely rips; Giles Martin shining up the mixes certainly helped. Epochal Macca ballads, like "Maybe I'm Amazed" and "Blackbird," are well represented, but when Wings rock out, as on "Jet," "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five," and "deep cut "Soily," they tear the roof off.

Basically, in range and sequencing, One Hand Clapping shows McCartney prepping Wings like a rocket; soon, it'd rip through the live circuit. If you've never taken a spin through McCartney's post-Fabs discography, though, you may not know where to go from here.

So, for neophytes (or just fans wanting a refresher), here's a framework through which to sift through the Wings discography — with One Hand Clapping still ringing in your ears.

The Essentials

Remember, as you get into Wings: don't cordon off their catalog from McCartney's solo work as a whole. In other words: if you haven't heard masterpieces like 1971's Ram yet, don't go scrounging through Back to the Egg deep cuts yet: check all that stuff out, then return to this list.

That being established: the proper Wings entryway is almost unquestionably Band on the Run. Like Sgt. Pepper's and Abbey Road before it, it's an exhilarating melodic and stylistic rush, a sonic adventure — whether you go for the original or the "underdubbed" version.

In the grand scheme of solo Beatles, Band on the Run is also the one McCartney album that slugs it out with John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band and George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, in terms of artistic realization.

That being said: despite slightly inferior contemporaneous reviews, its follow-up, 1975's Venus and Mars, is almost as good — and if grandiosity isn't your bag, you might actually enjoy it more than Band on the Run. (Think of Harrison following up All Things with the sparser, more spacious Living in the Material World, and you'll get the picture.)

Between those two albums, you've got a wealth of indispensable Macca songs — "Jet," "Let Me Roll It," "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five," "Rock Show," "You Gave Me the Answer" — as well as satisfying deep cuts, like doomed Wingsman Jimmy McCulloch's "Medicine Jar."

From there, it's time to understand Weird Wings — which rewinds the clock to their beginnings.

The Weirdness

As the McCartney canon goes, Ram's stock seems to shoot up every year, single handedly inspiring new generations of psych-pop weirdos. By comparison, Wings' debut, Wild Life, was critically savaged in 1971, and its reputation isn't much better today.

As you'll learn so often in your solo Macca voyage — you've just got to ignore the critics sometimes. Even McCartney himself said "Bip Bop" "just goes nowhere" and "I cringe every time I hear it." What he leaves out it's a maddening earworm — to hear this loony, circuitous little sketch once is to carry it to your deathbed.

Indeed, Wild Life is full of moments that will stick with you. In the title track, McCartney screams about the zoo like his hair's on fire; "I Am Your Singer" is a swaying dialogue between Paul and Linda; "Dear Friend" is one of McCartney's most moving songs about Lennon.

Wild Life's follow-up, Red Rose Speedway, is a little more candy-coated and commercial — but outside of the polarizing hit "My Love," it has some integral McCartney tunes, like "Little Lamb Dragonfly" and "Single Pigeon."

In the end, though, Wild Life is arguably the early Wings offering that will really stick to your ribs. It's not a crummy follow-up to Ram, but an intriguing off-ramp from its harebrained universe — and as the opening statement from McCartney's post-Beatles vehicle, worth investigating just on that merit.

The Deep Cuts

McCartney has always been a hit-or-miss solo artist by design — digging through the half-written pastiches and questionable experiments is part of the deal.

1976's Wings at the Speed of Sound features a key track in the irrepressibly jaunty "Let 'Em In," and an (in)famous disco-spangled hit in "Silly Love Songs." From there, with tunes like "Cook of the House" and "Warm and Beautiful," your mileage may vary wildly.

The ratio holds for 1978's London Town: you could put the gorgeous "I'm Carrying" on your playlist and scrap the rest, or you can go spelunking. And McCartney being McCartney, despite 1979's Back to the Egg being choppy waters, he nailed it at least once — on the lithe, sophisticated, Stevie Wonder-like "Arrow Through Me."

Today, at 81, McCartney is an 18-time GRAMMY winner and an enormous concert draw — charging through his six-decade catalog in stadiums the world over. These albums only comprise one decade in his history, where he flourished as a mulleted stadium act alongside his keyboarding wife. But his catalog would be so much different if he never got his Wings.

5 Lesser Known Facts About The Beatles' Let It Be Era: Watch The Restored 1970 Film

What is about the Beatles' Let it Be sessions that continues to bedevil diehards?

Even after their aperture was tremendously widened with Get Back — Peter Jackson's three-part, almost eight hour, 2021 doc — something's always been missing. Because it was meant as a corrective to a film that, well, most of us haven't seen in a long time — if at all.

That's Let it Be, the original 1970 documentary on those contested, pivotal, hot-and-cold sessions, directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Much of the calcified lore around the Beatles' last stand comes not from the film itself, but what we think is in the film.

Let it Be does contain a couple of emotionally charged moments between maturing Beatles. The most famous one: George Harrison getting snippy with Paul McCartney over a guitar part, which might just be the most blown-out-of-proportion squabble in rock history.

But superfans smelled blood in the water: the film had to be a locus for the Beatles' untimely demise. To which the film's director, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, might say: did we see the same movie?

"Looking back from history's vantage point, it seems like everybody drank the bad batch of Kool-Aid," he tells GRAMMY.com. Lindsay-Hogg had just appeared at an NYC screening, and seemed as surprised by it as the fans: "Because the opinion that was first formed about the movie, you could not form on the actual movie we saw the other night."

He's correct. If you saw Get Back, Lindsay-Hogg is the babyfaced, cigar-puffing auteur seen throughout; today, at 84, his original vision has been reclaimed. On May 8, Disney+ unveiled a restored and refreshed version of the Let it Be film — a historical counterweight to Get Back. Temperamentally, though, it's right on the same wavelength, which is bound to surprise some Fabs disciples.

With the benefit of Peter Jackson's sound-polishing magic and Giles Martin's inspired remixes of performances, Let it Be offers a quieter, more muted, more atmospheric take on these sessions. (Think fewer goofy antics, and more tight, lingering shots of four of rock's most evocative faces.)

As you absorb the long-on-ice Let it Be, here are some lesser-known facts about this film, and the era of the Beatles it captures — with a little help from Lindsay-Hogg himself.

The Beatles Were Happy With The Let It Be Film

After Lindsay-Hogg showed the Beatles the final rough cut, he says they all went out to a jovial meal and drinks: "Nice food, collegial, pleasant, witty conversation, nice wine."

Afterward, they went downstairs to a discotheque for nightcaps. "Paul said he thought Let it Be was good. We'd all done a good job," Lindsay-Hogg remembers. "And Ringo and [wife] Maureen were jiving to the music until two in the morning."

"They had a really, really good time," he adds. "And you can see like [in the film], on their faces, their interactions — it was like it always was."

About "That" Fight: Neither Paul Nor George Made A Big Deal

At this point, Beatles fanatics can recite this Harrison-in-a-snit quote to McCartney: "I'll play, you know, whatever you want me to play, or I won't play at all if you don't want me to play. Whatever it is that will please you… I'll do it." (Yes, that's widely viewed among fans as a tremendous deal.)

If this was such a fissure, why did McCartney and Harrison allow it in the film? After all, they had say in the final cut, like the other Beatles.

"Nothing was going to be in the picture that they didn't want," Lindsay-Hogg asserts. "They never commented on that. They took that exchange as like many other exchanges they'd had over the years… but, of course, since they'd broken up a month before [the film's release], everyone was looking for little bits of sharp metal on the sand to think why they'd broken up."

About Ringo's "Not A Lot Of Joy" Comment…

Recently, Ringo Starr opined that there was "not a lot of joy" in the Let it Be film; Lindsay-Hogg says Starr framed it to him as "no joy."

Of course, that's Starr's prerogative. But it's not quite borne out by what we see — especially that merry scene where he and Harrison work out an early draft of Abbey Road's "Octopus's Garden."

"And Ringo's a combination of so pleased to be working on the song, pleased to be working with his friend, glad for the input," Lindsay-Hogg says. "He's a wonderful guy. I mean, he can think what he wants and I will always have greater affection for him.

"Let's see if he changes his mind by the time he's 100," he added mirthfully.

Lindsay-Hogg Thought It'd Never Be Released Again

"I went through many years of thinking, It's not going to come out," Lindsay-Hogg says. In this regard, he characterizes 25 or 30 years of his life as "solitary confinement," although he was "pushing for it, and educating for it."

"Then, suddenly, the sun comes out" — which may be thanks to Peter Jackson, and renewed interest via Get Back. "And someone opens the cell door, and Let it Be walks out."

Nobody Asked Him What The Sessions Were Like

All four Beatles, and many of their associates, have spoken their piece on Let it Be sessions — and journalists, authors, documentarians, and fans all have their own slant on them.

But what was this time like from Lindsay-Hogg's perspective? Incredibly, nobody ever thought to check. "You asked the one question which no one has asked," he says. "No one."

So, give us the vibe check. Were the Let it Be sessions ever remotely as tense as they've been described, since man landed on the moon? And to that, Lindsay-Hogg's response is a chuckle, and a resounding, "No, no, no."

The Beatles' Final Song: Giles Martin On The Second Life Of "Now And Then" & How The Fab Four Are "Still Breaking New Ground"