Continuing our series on Paul McCartney’s wacky movie from 1984, here’s my take on the real problem of the film (I’m only a McCartney fan, not a film critic, so don’t sue me. Also, the chances that you’ve seen this movie are almost non-existent).
McCartney’s film showcases 17 songs, including six re-recordings of some of his biggest Beatles songs, and three (THREE) versions of “No More Lonely Nights.” I’ll focus on his solo stuff tomorrow. Let’s’look at the Beatles stuff.
One of the first things you’ll notice in the film is Ringo Starr sitting at the drums in a studio around 12 minutes in. Ringo gets up and Paul records some Beatles songs. I can’t recall if he states a reason why he’s re-recording the six songs or not, because if you recall from yesterday, the whole movie turns out to be a dream.
So, Paul re-recorded six perfect Beatles songs and in my view (and several people’s opinions on some message boards), he greatly screws with “Here, There, and Everywhere,” changing a lyric. But hey, it’s his song, he can do what he will. So, he records “Yesterday,” “Here, There, and Everywhere,” “Eleanor Rigby,” a Little reworked “The Long and Winding Road,” a longer version of “Good Day Sunshine,” and “For No One.” As I said, there was no reason to do these songs and a point could be made that he had amassed quite a solo career of songs to draw from.
This is a jazzy completely unnecessary remake of “The Long and Winding Road.”
Painful.
The odd thing about the beginning of the recording session is who steps out. Ringo. Ringo refused to be in on that action. This is what McCartney had to say about that:
“Ringo wasn’t happy to get involved with it. We had some songs in the film where we wanted him to drum on them, but he didn’t want to attempt a new version. I can see it from his point of view, actually, because it would have been, ‘Did I drum good on version A or version B?’ and he didn’t even want a comparison. From my point of view, I’m looking at a song. I’m looking at one of my songs. I don’t want to be ashamed of anything I’ve written.”
Of course that was Ringo’s point of view. He had to have realized the film and soundtrack were McCartney’s vanity project. Plus, it’s not like Paul was doing a Ringo song. Or one of George Harrison’s. Oh, and speaking of Harrison…
As the movie goes on you’ll notice George is missing. I always thought that was odd, but I was young when I first saw the movie and seeing Ringo was good enough for me, but when I decided to write this series, I had to find out what was going on with the absent guitarist.
In an interview, he was asked if he asked Harrison to be a part of Give My Regards to Broad Street.
“No, I didn’t actually,” remarks McCartney on whether he considered including Harrison. “George was out of the country for that year… tell you the truth, I know George wouldn’t have wanted to do it.”
McCartney continued to describe Harrison’s feelings toward appearing in movies, saying, “George doesn’t really have any aspirations in acting, I don’t think,” he says. “He never really did in the old movies… he was the least keen of us to do some acting.”
Ok.
This was 1984. Paul had to have known of a little film released in 1979 called The Life of Brian with the actors from Monty Python. Being that he knew of the film (it would be impossible not to), he would know that his pal George founded HandMade Films specifically to fund the movie with 3 million dollars of his own money. He appears in a scene (pictured). So, maybe he wasn’t interested much in acting, but he definitely loved film. But McCartney didn’t think to ask him. That makes sense.
This is the re-recording of “Here, There, and Everywhere.”
That, Dear Readers, is the end of the Beatles portion of the series. Tomorrow we will tackle the solo stuff (which McCartney also re-recorded) and some pretty silly stuff.
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