rigby@mail.ru
Главная Дискография Интервью Книги Журналы Аккорды Заметки Видео Фото Рок-посевы Викторина Новое

   CLUB SANDWICH 68

страницы


1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

MINING THE FILM AND VIDEO ARCHIVE

Mark Lovisohn mulls over the content of the McCartney video vault

MULL OF KINTYRE

PHOTOGRAPHS: ROBERT ELLIS

            Back then, it was said about 'Mull Of Kintyre' that you either loved it or you loathed it.
            But if you'll excuse the somewhat brazen casting aside of all modesty, it must have been loved by rather a lot of people, for not only did 'Mull Of Kintyre' sail, with some ease, to the number one slot on the British singles chart but it also became the biggest selling single of all time in the UK.
            Yep. Though all those Sixties reports about the Beatles selling singles by the lorry-load were true, 'Mull Of Kintyre' outsold them all. Bar none. It sold more copies than 'She Loves You', more than 'I Want To Hold Your Hand', more than 'Hey Jude', even. And it remained the all-time best-seller until the inestimably worthy Band Aid 45 'Do They Know It's Christmas?' overtook it in 1984.
            That opening use of the phrase "Back then", incidentally, refers to December 1977, the concluding month in a year which had seen the rise and rise of new wave and punk, when it was hip to snarl and to sing about hate. 'Mull Of Kintyre' wasn't exactly stuffed with invective, and it certainly couldn't be sung with a grimace, but it did sell well over two million copies, staying at number one for nine weeks. So much for fashion.
            Actually, as you may remember, the single was officially labelled a "double-A-side", with 'Girls' School' sharing equal status. Much more new wave in style, 'Girls' School' was also given plenty of airplay, especially in America where the questions "What's a 'mull'?" and "Is a 'kintyre' an abbreviated curse you utter when your car has a flat?" sprang readily to minds. In America, indeed, 'Girls' School' was the clear A-side, with 'Mull' relegated to clear B-side status. Club Sandwich 68
            But not so in Britain, where a song about a Scottish peninsula was always likely to be more easily understood. This is borne out when one scans along the racks of the McCartney video archive. For while there's no clip at all for 'Girls' School' there are three for 'Mull Of Kintyre', plus a BBC recording which, to all intents and purposes (well, we're going to call it so, anyway), could be classified as a fourth.
            Pulling the videos down from the shelf and watching them again after all this time is truly a rewarding experience. The first thing that grabs is the notion that, as a song, 'Mull Of Kintyre' has weathered extremely well. In fact, it sounds better today than it did in 1977. The second grabber is the fine, reassuring quality of the videos. They evidently managed to match the song's mood to perfection, and this shows, still. In short, it's high quality stuff.
            Video one is the best known and most seen of them all, shot on 13 October 1977 in Kintyre itself although not, as almost all viewers mistakenly thought, at the McCartneys' famous own farm. Filming actually took place on the foreshore near Saddell Castle, courtesy of the castle's owner, Colonel Morton.
            It took a heck of a lot of arranging, with all the filming personnel, camera rigs, lights, sound equipment and catering facilities being bussed, Range Rovered, trained and planed up from London to north-west Scotland, to a wild and windy outdoor place where – in the days before mobile phones -contact with civilisation as we know it was not possible. But it certainly was worth the effort.
            As the video opens, the camera is pulling across a beautifully sunlit, rugged Scottish shoreline, back to the mainland beyond, where it stops and focuses on Paul. He's sitting on a fence, strumming and singing the opening verse while the wind whips the hair off his forehead. In the background is a rustic farm cottage, two chimneys proud, from which Linda emerges, mother proud and babe in arms (James McCartney had been born 31 days earlier). It's an entirely apt scene: unpretentious, familial, warm. The farmer, the minstrel, is singing his travellers' tale to his wife, mother of their bairn. (That's Scottish for child, for those not of the kilt-wearing persuasion.)
            Still singing and playing his acoustic guitar, Paul climbs down and meets up with fellow minstrel Denny, Wings at this point being a trio. Then, from over their shoulders, the camera zooms in on the Campbeltown Pipe Band, awae in the distant distance. Twelve bagpipers, eight drummers and a drum major, 21 healthy Scotsmen good and true, a-striding up the beach in full regalia and blow. After "sweeping through the heather like deer in the glen" P, L & D wander down to join the Band on the sand.
            Now it's time to "cue the crowd" -40 locals brought in as extras by the Band's president, Malcolm Laing, mostly for the song's "flickering embers" finale, when it's suddenly night-time and everyone is gathered around a monster-sized bonfire, faces orangely lit.
            This 'Mull Of Kintyre' promo has a distinct touch of class about it - partly, one suspects, because it was directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg. Michael it was who directed the Beatles' movie Let It Be, not to mention (although we will) Fab promos for 'Paperback Writer', 'Rain', 'Hey Jude' and 'Revolution', who worked on Ready, Steady, Go! in the Sixties and Brideshead Revisited in the Eighties. What with this and the McCartneys' magic, how could it have failed?
            Regular readers of this column will know that Paul is prone to making more than one video for some of his songs. So, on the second day of December 1977, Wings made a second promo for 'Mull Of Kintyre'. The band were working in Studio Two at Abbey Road at the time, doing overdubs for the London Town album, and it was also the time when Melvyn Bragg and his team from London Weekend Television were filming Paul for the first ever edition of their new arts series The South Bank Show.
            Also,
it was the time when Paul and Linda decided to take a donkey from their nearby London home, along the roads, over the famous zebra crossing and into Abbey Road Studios. You'll probably have seen the photographs. Stranger sights there must have been...but none spring to mind at present. Naturally, said mule found its way into the finished video, along with (what else?) a waxwork dummy dressed up as Santa Claus.
            This rare video - I'd not seen it before - opens with a snatch of animated mice (from Paul's never-