Recording History
Originally, Wings over America was to be a two-record set, but this was rethought due to the success of a bootleg called Wings from the Wings, released on a bicentennial red, white and blue triple record set, recorded on 23 June 1976 at The Forum (Inglewood, California). This caused McCartney to redo the official release as a three-record set covering the entire concert, including Denny Laine's "Go Now", a song from his time as a member of The Moody Blues. This song was only performed 21–23 June 1976 at the Forum.
Compiled from all recorded shows of the band's Wings Over America Tour that spring, Wings over America was another success for Paul McCartney and Wings, reaching number 1 in the US in early 1977 (the last in a 5-album stretch of consecutive number 1 albums for Wings) and number 8 in the UK, and selling several million copies.
Wings Over America was reissued as a double-CD in 1984 on Columbia Records, although few copies were made since few people had CD players in 1984, and soon McCartney would leave Columbia/CBS and go back to Capitol Records. The Columbia double-CD went out of print soon after it hit stores; the Capitol double-CD is much more common.
A 1999 reissue of the album by Toshiba-EMI in Japan reinstated the three-disc format from the original LP issue. This coincided with a new remastering of the album from the source tapes, which greatly improved the sound quality of the album. As of 2008, this remastered set has not been issued anywhere other than Japan.
On 14 April 2008, the album was released as a digital download on both iTunes and Amazon. It was removed for some time off of digital music sites in 2010 and 2011, but as of August 2011 it is available for sale on iTunes.
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