1972 WINGS OVER EUROPE TOUR Archives

“My ideal is to play off the back of a bus” – Paul McCartney

The open top deck of Paul McCartney’s 1972 Wings Tour Bus WNO 481 has been re-imagined and engineered so that WNO 481 now has an amazing new super power; the ability to transform into a performance stage fit to grace any festival or event from Glastonbury to Woodstock. Paul McCartney’s ‘Ideal…’ is now possible.

50 years of rock’n’roll history re-imagined for the 21st century

In July and August 2022 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Wings Over Europe Tour when Paul McCartney chose WNO 481 to become the 1972 Wings Tour Bus we are delighted to announce that the Legend Of Rock & Road is at this time approaching the final stages of a major restoration and will soon emerge from the workshop.

The lower deck is being restored to its McCartney layout but the open top deck has been re-imagined and engineered so that WNO 481 now has an amazing new super power; the ability to transform into a performance stage fit to grace any festival or event from Glastonbury to Woodstock… oh, how it would have fitted in at Woodstock.

WNO 481 has even been called “Woodstock on Wheels” and Glastonbury have shown interest in seeing photo’s once the transformation is complete. Just as the artwork on the bus was inspired by and is a tribute to The Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour and Yellow Submarine so the McCartney Stage was inspired by and is a tribute to The Beatles concert on the roof of the Apple Building in 1969 and Sir Paul’s quote. “Ideal” is now possible. Having always pushed to create exciting new audio and visual concepts we hope The McCartney Stage meets with Sir Paul’s approval.

ABOUT WNO 481
In his first major tour after the glory days of The Beatles Paul McCartney chose 20 year old open top double decker WNO 481 to be the 1972 Wings Tour Bus. It carried Paul McCartney, Linda, Heather, Mary and Stella McCartney, Wings members Denny Laine, Henry McCullough, Denny Seiwell, wives and girlfriends to play 25 concerts in 25 cities in 9 countries across Europe racking up over 12,000 km’s over 7,500 miles. An amazing family and band adventure. With a world-famous rock star on board and hotly pursued by the world’s press 1972 Wings Tour Bus WNO 481 became a Legend Of Rock & Road and arguably the most famous bus in the world.

1972 WINGS TOUR BUS VIDEO

Enjoy this excellent compilation of video footage to the soundtrack of Sir Paul’s Yesterday.

PAUL McCARTNEY & WNO 481

“We knew we were going to tour in Europe and that the weather would be nice, and the idea of being stuck in a bus all the time, going from city to city, hotel to hotel, wasn’t too appealing so we decided to travel around in an open-top bus and get some sunshine as we travelled from one place to another.”

– Paul McCartney.

The first show of the European tour was booked for a deliberately out-of-the-way location – a 2,000-seat Roman amphitheatre at Châteauvallon, high in the pine-forested hills above Toulon on the south-eastern coast of France. Here, before the gig, on Sunday, 9 July 1972, Paul gave an informal press conference. ‘I’m starting all over again and working my way upwards,’ he accepted. ‘You don’t fight Cassius Clay on your first time out.’ He hinted at his recent crisis of confidence and the worry of being smothered by the weight of his reputation:

‘A year ago, I used to wake up in the morning and think, I’m a myth. I’m Paul McCartney. And it scared the hell out of me.’ “We painted the outside psychedelic, like a magic bus,” McCartney says of their tour transport on that halcyon trip. “If you look at it very straight, very conventionally, it was quite a mad thing to do, to put a playpen on the top deck of the bus and put all the children in there while driving around Europe. It was not what you’d expect from a normal band. But we weren’t a normal band.”