Pete Townshend shared the role he believes he played in the death of Jimmy McCulloch, the former Wings guitarist who died in 1979 at the age of 26, in a recent chat with Variety.
“I think if I hadn’t come into Jimmy McCulloch’s life, he might still be alive today,” said the Who guitarist. “I think the fact that he went on to work with Paul McCartney and Wings [from 1974–77, including the massive ‘Wings Over the World’ tour] was the death of him.”
McCulloch gained fame through his involvement with Townshend’s Thunderclap Newman in 1969. The then-16-year-old played guitar along with jazz pianist Andy Newman and drummer John ‘Speedy’ Keen on the band’s number one hit ‘Something in the Air.’
This early success led to the young guitarist joining Paul McCartney’s Wings, where he played from 1974 until 1977 before passing away in 1979 from a drug-related heart attack.
Townshend said McCulloch “wasn’t fit for stardom. When I first met Jimmy he was 14, maybe even younger, and he was in a band with his older brother, Jack, who was his protector. And because he was so young, we didn’t notice that he potentially was an alcoholic. At that particular time—despite the fact that Paul and Linda [McCartney] tried very, very hard to help him—there was no machinery to help him. Speedy, the same story.”
Jimmy McCulloch’s final record with Wings was ‘London Town’ in 1978. The next album, 1979’s ‘Back to the Egg,’ featured Laurence Juber as the guitarist. Two years later, the band broke up.
