Band on the Run should have been a disaster. Two of Wings' original members quit in a huff just before its production. The whimsical decision to record in Lagos, Nigeria, became a nightmare when McCartney and company found themselves in a decaying studio, then had many of the project's demos stolen by armed bandits. Despite these hardships--perhaps because of them--Band on the Run remains the most focused and consistently satisfying record of McCartney's wildly uneven post-Beatles career.