McCartney band is successful without guitar lead (5)
I believe the answer is:
wings
'mccartney band' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps there's an association between them I don't understand?
'successful without guitar lead' is the wordplay.
'successful' becomes 'wins' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'without' means one lot of letters goes inside another ('without' can be similar in meaning to 'outside').
'lead' indicates taking the first letters.
The initial letter of 'guitar' is 'g'.
'wins' placed around 'g' is 'WINGS'.
'is' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for wings that I've seen before include "Award at end of pilot's course" , "Damages members" , "Sidelined player's" , "theatrical part" , "Birds' limbs" .)