Wingspan
Members: John Shearer (guitarist/bassist - 'Jimmy McCullough'), Johnny Heywood ('Paul McCartney'), Geoff Coxon (drums), Lucy Campling-Shingles (keyboards - 'Linda McCartney'), Adrian Doyle (guitarist/bassist - 'Denny Laine') and Rhett Warwick (keyboards).
Location: Surrey, England
Website: www.wingstribute.com
Liverpool Beatle Week Appearances: 2005
Biography: (Taken from the Beatle Week 2005 programme)
The group was the brainchild of guitarist/bassist John Shearer back in 2002. He organised everything, choosing the various members for the band and setting up rehearsals. John set about reproducing the many different guitar parts needed for all the different line-ups of Wings, which also gave him an excuse to buy lots of guitars. He realised that multi-instrumentalist Johnny Heywood was the ideal man for the job of recreating McCartney's voice and character and so quickly involved him in the band. Johnny strives for musical authenticity and accuracy in all McCartney's different styles (or as one band member puts it: "He's an anorak, more like!")
Drummer Geoff Coxon had actually auditioned for Wings back in 1973 and was down to the last 3 before being pipped by Geoff Britten. He brings an authentic 70s feel to the band and a great sense of humour. Recently, he has started bringing electric percussion to gigs, which the other members view rather suspiciously.
Lucy Campling-Shingles is the baby of the band playing Linda McCartney's keyboard lines and vocal parts to a tee, plus doubling on flute too, which nobody recalls the real Linda doing! In fact, she sneaks many orchestral lines into the music to recreate original recorded parts and is well known for her big tambourine!
Guitarist/bassist Adrian Doyle joined recently and quickly learned all Denny Laine's contributions. Adrian sings lead vocals on a couple of numbers, plays acoustic & electric guitars, bass, drums and keyboards where needed and is responsible for the bands web site. He didn't write this though or it would have gone on and on.
Rhett Warwick is a man of many instruments. On keyboards he becomes a one-man orchestra making it possible to play songs like Live & Let Die and My Love, provides backing vocals, doubles on bass and would probably play lead guitar too if he wasn't stopped.
Wingspan recreates the magic of the Wings Over America tour of 1976, covering songs from albums like Band On The Run, Venus & Mars and Wings At The Speed Of Sound plus several Beatles songs that Paul McCartney still plays in concert to this day.
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