It was 45 years ago today (February 9th, 1972), that Paul McCartney, along with his new band Wings, performed his first solo show at Britain’s Nottingham University. Although McCartney refused to include any Beatles numbers in the band’s set, he couldn’t resist performing the group’s longtime set-closer, a cover of Little Richard‘s “Long Tall Sally.” Incidentally, the gig was eight years to the day of the “Fab Four’s” debut in America on The Ed Sullivan Show.

McCartney’s idea was to start the band small, “We decided to go back to square one and not form a, sort of, great big ‘supergroup’ and come out the level the Beatles were at. So, it was kinda funny looking back on it. We just stuck everything in a van — dogs, children, potty — and just went up the motorway without any bookings, without any hotels. Anyway, we found Nottingham University and went and did a gig there and (then) did a little, kind of, university tour. So from those small beginnings, we gradually formed Wings.”