Sir Paul McCartney was inspired to form Wings after seeing country star Johnny Cash performing with his wife June Carter

McCartney writes in his new book Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run: "I remember thinking: 'Wow, he's put some people around him.' I turned to Linda and said: 'We could do that. Do you fancy being in a band?'"

Linda - who passed away from breast cancer in 1998 - recalled: "I just said: 'Yeah.'

"I must have been out of my mind."

Paul's two solo albums before forming Wings - 1970's McCartney and 1971 follow-up RAM - had both been savaged by the critics and the star admits that he contemplated quitting music before starting the Silly Love Songs group.

The 83-year-old musician recalls in the book: "I did get depressed.

"I seriously considered packing it all in."

McCartney struggled to settle on a name for the Mull of Kintyre band at first until experiencing a moment of inspiration during the traumatic birth of his and Linda's daughter Stella in 1971.

He explained: "Because of the emergency, the vision of an angel with big wings came into my mind.

"I thought: 'Wings, that'd be good', with no 'The', to avoid The Beatles."

Wings - which also featured Denny Laine alongside Paul and Linda - "dissolved" in 1981 but McCartney felt that the Jet band had proved that he could be successful away from The Beatles.

He writes: "I tried to prove we could do something successful after The Beatles and we pulled it off... we achieved the impossible."

McCartney also recalls in the book how he felt "dead" when The Beatles split.

Addressing the long-running 'Paul is dead' conspiracy theory that exploded in popularity in 1969, he said: "The strangest rumour started floating around just as The Beatles were breaking up, that I was dead. We had heard the rumour long before but, suddenly, in that autumn of 1969 stirred up by a DJ in America, it took on a force all of its own, so that millions of people around the world believed I was actually gone."

He continued: "Now that over half a century has passed since those truly crazy times, I'm beginning to think that the rumours were more accurate than one might have thought at the time.

"In so many ways, I was dead, a 27-year-old about-to-become-ex-Beatle, drowning in a sea of legal and personal rows that were sapping my energy, in need of a complete life makeover."