This song was a huge hit in the UK, spending 9 weeks in the number 1 spot in the UK singles chart during Dcember 1977 & January 1978 and selling over 2 million copies in the UK alone. It remained the best selling single in the UK until Band Aid's 'Do they know it's Christmas' was released 7 years later.
Paul McCartney has owned High Park Farm in Kintyre, Scotland since 1966. It is a working farm that he bought as a refuge to get away from the trappings of fame with the Beatles and he credits it with keeping him sane during the break-up of the band and helping him quit drinking. He has also written and recorded some of his solo/Wings music there during the decades since, although he is purportedly less of a visitor there since the passing of his first wife, Linda, in 1998, preferring to spend his time on his farm in Sussex, England.
According to McCartney himself, he wrote the basis for this song three years earlier in 1974 but didn't get round to finishing it and recording it until August 1977 during a summer break from recording his 'London Town' album (released in March 1978). The video itself was shot in Saddell Bay, only a few miles from McCartney's farm, in October 1977, with the Campbeltown Pipe Band (who played the bagpipes on the record) also appearing.