The City Historian

In the summer of 1974, while Wings spent several weeks in Nashville rehearsing and recording new material, Paul McCartney discovered an abandoned Honda motorcycle on the property where he was staying with Linda, a farm in Lebanon rented from songwriter Curly Putman. Without even knowing that Tennessee required helmets by law, Paul began riding along the country roads without anyone around him suspecting who was behind the handlebars. Neighbors in the area still remember those fleeting appearances, such as the time a teenage girl tried to ask him for an autograph while he was riding, and he simply replied that it wasn’t a good time. For McCartney, already a global legend, those motorcycle escapades represented something simple. The chance to move through the world without the constant weight of fame. That stay in Nashville ultimately inspired “Junior’s Farm,” a song written as a direct tribute to Curly Putman, thus bringing to a close a period when even a rock icon could, for a little while, be just another person riding a motorcycle through the countryside.