The song is a fixture of Paul’s live performances and was in the setlist for last year’s ‘Got Back’ tour
Paul McCartney performs at The O2 Arena on December 18(Image: Jo Hale/Redferns)
During the break up of The Beatles, Paul McCartney spent a lot of his time at his farm in Campbeltown, Scotland. When John Lennon told his bandmates he wanted a “divorce” from The Beatles in September 1969, a devastated Paul retreated to Scotland to write what became his first solo album – ‘McCartney’.
The release of that album in April 1970 confirmed Paul’s departure from The Beatles and saw him receive much of the blame for the band coming to an end – as John’s 1969 decision to quit had not been made public. After the release of ‘McCartney’, Paul continued to spend plenty of time at his Scottish farm and he decided to write a song about the quiet life there.
Paul bought the 183-acre site on the Kintyre Peninsula in 1966 and it became a sanctuary for him away from the pressures of fame. He wrote plenty of Beatles songs there, as well as Wings and solo hits.
In 1974, Paul recorded ‘Junior’s Farm’, a song about life on the farm. Taking inspiration from Bob Dylan’s ‘Maggie’s Farm’, Paul came up with a character called Junior who had escaped the city for a new rural life.
It represented Paul’s happiness to get away from the meetings that surrounded The Beatles’ split. In the 2021 book ‘The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present’, he explained: “It was such a relief to get out of those business meetings with people in suits, who were so serious all the time, and go off to Scotland and be able just to sit around in a T-shirt and corduroys.
“I was very much in that mindset when I wrote this song. The basic message is, let’s get out of here. You might say it’s my post-Beatles getting-out-of-town song.”
The song was recorded by Wings in Tennessee in July 1974 and was released by Apple Records that November. The single came after Wings’ successful third album ‘Band on the Run’ and it charted at three in the United States.
It has become a fixture of Paul’s live tours and one of his favourites to perform live. He played it during last year’s ‘Got Back’ world tour and it features early in the setlist to set the tempo high.
About playing the track on stage, Paul said: “‘Junior’s Farm’ remains a good live song, and we usually put it in at the start of the set. It’s got a lot of elements that work well – a recognisable introduction and a good steady rock and roll beat, and then these interesting, slightly surreal lyrics and a rousing chorus of ‘Let’s go, let’s go’.
“That gets people in the mood to set out, ‘just in the nick of time’, for their own version of ‘Junior’s Farm’, whatever that might be – wherever they want to disappear and hide out and just lie low.”