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Wings over America is a triple live album by Wings, released in December 1976. The album was recorded during the American leg of the band's acclaimed 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 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 and depicts an airliner about to open its cabin door.[1] Wings over America was remastered and reissued in May 2013.
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 called 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.[2] 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.[3] McCartney chose and mixed the final set of recordings, mostly taken from the 23 June show.[1] "Soily" was recorded on 7 June 1976 at McNichols Sports Arena in Denver.[4] The live recordings then received studio overdubs during October–November 1976.[5] 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."[6]
