Video: 'Paul McCartney & Wings - Live at Nottingham University, United Kingdom (February 9, 1972)'

(Wednesday, February 9, 1972, noon GMT; during the Wings University Tour) — Paul McCartney’s new group Wings performed for the first time today in the Portland Building at The University of Nottingham in Nottingham, England.

It was the first stop of an impromptu tour of the United Kingdom’s universities. Wings would arrive — often unannounced — at destinations McCartney would later refer to as venues which simply “sounded [interesting]” to the band, and would subsequently perform live for whomever happened to be on campus on the date of their arrival.

He would later reflect on the mechanisms and motives of this tour as being a phase in the construction of the band he had formed, stating: “For me, it was like building the whole thing from square one.”

The band’s intended first stop on the tour, Ashby de la Zouch, had no suitable venue, so the band moved on to the more receptive Nottingham, with McCartney performing his first paying concert since The Beatles’ final show at Candlestick Park in San Francisco on Aug. 29, 1966.

The lunchtime audience comprised 700 curious students who file m to see this new band.

“It was a spur of the moment thing. One of the group said he had played at Nottingham University and liked it so that’s where we ended up. It was 50p at the door, and a guy sat at the table taking the money. The kids danced and we all had a good time. The Students’ Union took their split and gave us the rest. I’d never seen money for at least ten years. The Beatles never handled money… we (Wings) walked around Nottingham with £30 in coppers in our pockets,” McCartney later recalled.