Denny Laine performs in January 2019 on the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Ill. Laine, a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who carried out in an early, pop-oriented model of the Moody Blues and was later Paul McCartney’s longtime sideman within the ex-Beatle’s solo band Wings, died Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023.

Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP file picture

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Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP file picture

Denny Laine performs in January 2019 on the Arcada Theatre in St. Charles, Ill. Laine, a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who carried out in an early, pop-oriented model of the Moody Blues and was later Paul McCartney’s longtime sideman within the ex-Beatle’s solo band Wings, died Tuesday, Dec. 5, 2023.

Rob Grabowski/Invision/AP file picture

NEW YORK — Denny Laine, a British singer, songwriter and guitarist who carried out in an early, pop-oriented model of the Moody Blues and was later Paul McCartney‘s longtime sideman within the ex-Beatle’s solo band Wings, has died at age 79.

Laine, inducted five years ago into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Moody Blues, died Tuesday in Naples, Fla. The trigger was interstitial lung illness, in accordance with an announcement on Laine’s Instagram web page by his spouse, Elizabeth Hines.

His loss of life comes virtually precisely 50 years after the discharge of McCartney’s acclaimed “Band On the Run” album, on which Laine performed guitar and supplied backing vocals. On Tuesday, McCartney posted a tribute to Laine on Instagram, calling him a “great talent with a fine sense of humor.”

“We had drifted apart but in recent years managed to reestablish our friendship and share memories of our times together,” McCartney wrote.

Laine was born Brian Frederick Arthur Hines, and altered his skilled title in his early teenagers, partly in homage to the singer Frankie Laine.

In 1964, across the time he turned 20, he joined Ray Thomas and Mike Pinder in forming the Moody Blues and sang lead on the group’s breakthrough hit, “Go Now.” But the Moody Blues struggled to match their preliminary success, and by 1967 Laine had left, changed by Justin Hayward. The Moody Blues then turned to the formidable, classically influenced sounds of “Nights in White Satin” and different songs.

Laine labored as a solo artist and with such group’s as Electric String Band and Ginger Baker’s Air Force earlier than he was introduced into Wings by McCartney, whom he had identified throughout his time with the Moody Blues.

Founded in 1971, the 12 months after the Beatles broke up, Wings went by means of varied personnel modifications over the next decade, with Laine, McCartney and McCartney’s spouse, Linda. the one ones remaining all through. The band’s No. 1 singles, most of them written by McCartney, included “My Love,” “Listen to What the Man Said” and the title monitor to “Band On the Run.” Laine helped write the million-selling “Mull of Kintyre.”

McCartney disbanded Wings quickly after Laine left within the early Eighties, however Laine contributed to McCartney’s “Tug of War” and “Pipes of Peace” albums and added backing vocals to “All Those Years Ago,” George Harrison’s tribute to the late John Lennon.

Laine continued to tour and file lately, his albums together with “The Blue Musician.”