HOWZAT

Denny Laine, the former guitarist from the Moody Blues, introduced McCullough to Paul McCartney, and they jammed for three days. “Then Paul asked me would I like to be in a band with him and I said, ‘F***, aye!’” Following the disintegration of the Beatles — a subject that was never broached — McCartney toured the embryonic Wings around England unannounced.

“First stop was Leicester University. I went into the students’ union and said, ‘Can Paul McCartney and his new band play here?’ I had to bring the students out to the van to prove I wasn’t joking. By evening, the place was packed. We got paid in 50p pieces. Then we toured Europe in an open-top bus. When that was over, McCartney said, ‘Who wants to go to Morocco in my Learjet?’ So off I went, with 40 quid in my pocket.”

McCartney’s reputation for parsimony is, it seems, entirely justified. “Everyone in the band was paid £70 a week,” says McCullough. “Paul said, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll do a record, do a tour, then we’ll sit down and work out what’s what.’ But we never did. A great businessman — he’s been down to his last £800m for years.”

That, and McCartney’s musical control-freakery, caused McCullough and drummer Denny Seiwell to quit just before Wings flew to Lagos to record Band on the Run. “I loved Paul, and Linda, dearly. But half the band was leaving and he never asked why.”

McCullough’s guitar solo on the 1973 Wings single My Love is widely regarded as one of the best of that genre, yet he had had to face down McCartney in front of the producer, George Martin, and a 50-piece orchestra to be allowed to play it his way.

“Wings was 100% McCartney’s band. When I talked to George Harrison, we found we had an awful lot in common.”

McCullough alternated between England and America, recording and touring with Ronnie Lane, Marianne Faithfull, Roy Harper, Donovan and the experimental outfit Spooky Tooth. But as the 1970s drew to a close, tastes started to change.

“I always went with the flow, but the river dried up a bit,” he says. Worse, his spoken contribution to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where he says “I was very drunk at the time”, turned out to be prescient, when, after returning to Ireland in 1984, he nearly severed three fingers with a kitchen knife. His surgeons thought he might never play again, and he couldn’t hold a plectrum for three years afterwards. Penniless, and living on a council estate after two decades of the rock’n’roll lifestyle, this was to be the long comedown.

“I went down to my mother’s grave in Portstewart and said a prayer, and told her I really needed help. I stopped drinking and, for five days, I thought I was going to hell.”

Slowly the music came back — through busking. “The open air strengthened my hand and strengthened me. Being back on my own doorstep, busking in the street, did me the world of good.” He began recording his own material, which reflects his huge range of influences and experiences.

Now McCullough finds himself courted by a new generation — he has a project coming up with youthful blues act the Deans — and tours regularly. “I’ve lasted the course. And since I got sober, I’m playing better than ever.”

He still gets Christmas cards from McCartney, and feels sorry for his current predicament. “It’s as big a knock as Linda passing away. I wish I could stick my hand out and say, ‘Listen, why don’t we do what we used to — go to a pub unannounced and play Blackbird?’ I think he needs that.”

Henry McCullough’s current album, Unfinished Business, is available through www.henrymccullough.com