Mull Of Kintyre    b/w    Girls School

Mull Of Kintyre - Front Cover	Mull Of Kintyre - Rear Cover	Mull Of Kintyre - Label A-side

Label	Capitol
Catalogue No.	R 6018
Country of Origin	England
Release Date	11th November 1977
U.K. Chart Detail :	Entry Date : 19th November 1977 Highest Position : 1 ... from 3rd December .. for 9 weeks ! Weeks in Chart : 17 Weeks
Detail :	Paul's eighteenth solo single. Credited to "Wings" By the time of release Jimmy McCulloch had left the band leaving Paul, Linda, Denny Laine, Joe English and the Campbelltown Pipe Band as the performers. The song was actually started in 1974 and completed some time later at Paul's farm studio, "Spirit of Ranachan" (a converted barn). Wings first double A-sided single, and first credited to McCartney-Laine. By December 10th it had sold half-a-million copies (100,000 a week), and by the following week 800,000 passed over the record counters, obviously making it the fastest selling single of 1977. For the One Millionth copy, EMI had been keeping count carefully, pressed it up and sold it to David Ackroyd who was then presented on December 23rd with a specially pressed Gold Disc. On January 14th 1978, it sold 1,667,000 copies in Britain, which was significant in that "She Loves You" had sold 1.6 million and was the previous best selling single ever in Britain. Now though, it was "Mull of Kintyre". (Since superceded by a number of charity records). By the end of the month it topped 2 million sales (a first, of course), and eventually sold 2.5 million in the U.K. (which means over 1 in 30 people bought it !) Being a huge hit world-wide, took it's total global sales to over six million copies. The title of the song refers to the Scottish county of Kintyre, Campbelltown is the major town from whence the pipers came, and is about 11 miles away from Paul's Scottish farm. And the Mull of Kintyre is the name given to the peninsular, there is not a town called "Mull". The single was promoted with three different videos, either in a studio or on location in Kintyre. Additionally, Wings appeared on the Mike Yarwood Christmas Show in a sketch with Yarwood and miming to the song. The 21 bagpipers were each paid the standard musicians union fee, and after the hugeness of the hit, Paul was criticised in the press for being stingey, so he sent off a cheque for £200 to each piper. Several artists, the most notable being Glen Campbell, have recorded versions of "Mull of Kintyre", none have had a hit with it. The "other" A-side, Girls School was written by Paul and originally was entitled, "Love School", being inspired by newspaper adverts for pornographic movies. The single was released in a picture sleeve which had photography by Graham Hughes. And Paul reverted back to the Capitol labelling again (although, still with a Parlophone number !) Nine years later it was issued again, but this time as part of a double pack single with Only Love Remains.