1975 · Behind the Songs
A sax solo, a Traffic guitarist, and the Crescent City — how Wings found their groove in New Orleans.
In the spring of 1975, Paul McCartney’s second act was officially bigger than anyone had dared to predict. Wings, the scrappy band he had built from scratch after the Beatles, had already conquered the world with Band on the Run. Now came the follow-up album, Venus and Mars, and its sunniest single: “Listen to What the Man Said.” Released in May 1975, the song was pure uplift — a breezy, soul-kissed pop record that floated to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the sound of that summer. It was McCartney doing what he does best: making joy sound effortless.
The song was born in New Orleans. Rather than record in London or Los Angeles, McCartney took Wings to the Crescent City in early 1975, booking time at Sea-Saint Studios — the fabled room owned by producer Allen Toussaint and his partner Marshall Sehorn, where so much of the city’s R&B magic had been bottled. The idea was partly practical and partly romantic: New Orleans in the run-up to Mardi Gras was alive with music, and McCartney wanted the band to soak it in. The sessions were loose, humid, and happy, and “Listen to What the Man Said” carries that atmosphere in every bar.
Musically, the track is a masterclass in lightness. McCartney’s bass — always his secret weapon — dances through the song with a melodic buoyancy that most bassists wouldn’t attempt, while the keyboards and guitars interlock in a groove that feels like a second-line parade filtered through pop. The lyric is disarmingly simple: a man advising anyone who will listen that love is the answer, delivered with a wink. McCartney has never been a cryptic songwriter, and here he leans all the way into directness: listen to what the man said, indeed.
The sax solo that stole the record
But the song’s most famous thirty seconds belong to a guest. The soaring saxophone solo that lifts “Listen to What the Man Said” into the stratosphere was played by Tom Scott, the jazz-rock saxophonist whose horn had already graced records by the biggest names in the business. Scott was in New Orleans, McCartney needed a solo with personality, and the pairing was instant magic. His playing is joyful and slightly wild — the sound of a musician grinning through his instrument — and it gives the record its unforgettable peak. It remains one of the great pop sax solos, up there with the best of the era.
Scott wasn’t the only ringer. Dave Mason, the Traffic guitarist whose fingerprints were all over the rock of the late 1960s and early 1970s, added guitar to the track, bringing a rootsy counterweight to the studio polish. The New Orleans sessions were full of such collisions — British rock royalty meeting Crescent City session culture — and “Listen to What the Man Said” is the happiest evidence of what happened when those worlds mixed.
The single’s flip side was “Love in Song,” a dreamy album track that showed the quieter side of Venus and Mars — proof that McCartney was thinking in terms of complete statements, not just hits. Radio, of course, played the A-side into ubiquity, and the song’s breezy confidence made it one of the defining singles of 1975, the rare record that felt both meticulously crafted and completely spontaneous.
The crown jewel of “Venus and Mars”
The song arrived with enormous expectations on its shoulders. Venus and Mars was the follow-up to Band on the Run, the album that had transformed Wings from a punchline into a powerhouse, and the whole world was watching to see if McCartney could do it again. The album — recorded between London and New Orleans — was a sprawling, ambitious affair, but “Listen to What the Man Said” was its beating heart: the single that proved the magic hadn’t been a fluke.
It didn’t disappoint. “Listen to What the Man Said” went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1975, giving Wings another American chart-topper and confirming McCartney as the most commercially reliable ex-Beatle of the decade. It was the kind of hit that seemed to play everywhere at once — on AM radio, in convertibles, at backyard barbecues — and it cemented the song’s place as one of the definitive feel-good records of the seventies.
The song has never really left. McCartney has kept “Listen to What the Man Said” in his live repertoire across the decades, and it never fails to lift a stadium — a testament to a melody that was built to travel. It has been covered, sampled, and sung along to by generations who weren’t born when it was recorded in that humid New Orleans studio. There is something about its good cheer that refuses to date; it belongs to no era and every era. Some songs are hits; this one became weather.
What to listen for
Put the record on and listen for the details: McCartney’s bass, which never sits still, constantly embroidering the groove; the way the backing vocals stack up like sunlight; and then, of course, Tom Scott’s saxophone, which enters like a guest who immediately becomes the life of the party. Notice how the whole track seems to swing without ever pushing — the sound of musicians who are completely relaxed. That ease was hard-won, and it is the rarest thing in pop.
Fifty years on, “Listen to What the Man Said” remains the purest distillation of Wings at their peak: a great band, a great city, and a songwriter who understood that sometimes the most profound thing you can say is the simplest. It is a reminder that McCartney’s greatest gift was never complexity but clarity — the ability to make the whole world sing along. Listen to what the man said, indeed — and then play it again.