CLUB SANDWICH 73

that he had some reggae records composed by Lennon-McCartney, including one titled 'Poison Pressure'. "But we never wrote a song called 'Poison Pressure,'" replied Paul.
            Paul bought the record and eagerly took it home to find out what it was. Of course, one listen quickly proved what he already knew - that 'Poison Pressure' wasn't composed by the Lennon-McCartney but by another duo of that name. As Paul said to me, "There are a lot of Lennon-McCartney s out there!"
            Anyway, we carried on chatting about Oobu Joobu, and the type of music Paul wanted to air in his radio series. We talked about everything from a 1920s recording of Pablo Casals playing Saint-Saens' Swan, to the Burundi tribe of Africa and Eddie Cochran - just a small sample of Paul's diverse musical taste.
            Then Paul played me an unreleased tape of Stevie Wonder and him rehearsing 'Ebony And Ivory'. It was fascinating to eavesdrop on these two master musicians developing a song and crafting out a number one record.
            All the while, Paul was expanding on his ideas for Oobu Joobu. It was then that I said to him, "This really is 70 millimetre stuff!" and he promptly replied "Hey! Oobu Joobu - Wide Screen Radio!" which just about sums up the tremendous scope of ideas and material Paul wants to cram into this, his first ever foray into creative radio.
            I was even more excited by our next session: I went along to watch Paul put together the jingle package for Oobu Joobu. When he finished recording the main theme he invited Linda and the studio crew to do some chanting. What a buzz that was! The session finished quite late, with Paul putting down the theme's final touches - brass and guitar licks - before mixing it down.

FROM UBU COCU TO OOBU JOOBU - A TRUE STORY

            You've probably heard this stuff before: Paul watches a Bach concerto one evening on television and sees the trumpet and trumpeter he realises will grace and uplift a new song he has on the blocks, 'Penny Lane'. Paul reads an article about The Who and is inspired to have the Beatles record the wondrous and raucous 'Helter Skelter'. Paul reads a tear-jerking newspaper account of a runaway girl and writes the majestic 'She's Leaving Home'.
            To the list can now be added this latest item: Paul hears a production of Alfred Jarry's Ubu Cocu on BBC radio and, close on 30 years later, unveils a radio series - his first, no less - called (not coincidentally) Oobujoobu.
            Surprised? Well, there were some clues for us all...had we known what to look for.
            For a start, there was the word "pataphysical" dropped into 'Maxwell's Silver Hammer' (on the last-recorded Beatles album, Abbey Road). This was no made-up word - at least, it wasn't made up by Paul. The science of "pataphysics", invented by Jarry for Faustroll, one of his literary creations, could best be defined as "the science of imaginary solutions", and followers of Jarry's work formed the College de Pataphysique to preserve the science and ensure that its author was never forgotten.
            So, "Joan was quizzical, studied pataphysical science in the home" was no nonsense line.
            And remember Rupert And The Frog Song? This award-winning McCartney film was produced and directed by animator supreme Geoff Dunbar (he's since worked with Paul again on 'Once Upon A Long Ago' and Daumier's Law), and Paul was drawn to Geoff because of Ubu, a film Dunbar directed in 1980 based on Alfred Jarry's fictional character.
            Paul's interest in Ubu can be traced back to Monday 10 January 1966. The Beatles were between albums, between tours and enjoying their first real break away from work. At 7.30 that evening, whilst driving from London to Liverpool, Paul switched on the car radio, to what was then known as the BBC Third Programme, and heard an hour-long production of Ubu Cocu, also called Ubu Cuckolded, a play which only came to light after Jarry's death in 1907. The broadcast captured Paul's imagination so much that he soon went along to London's newest bookshop catering for the "underground" and ordered a copy. This happened to be Indica Books, a venture run by Paul's friends Miles, Peter Asher and John Dunbar, which Paul had help finance and set up. (It was also here, in Indica's downstairs art gallery, that John Lennon met Yoko Ono later the same year.) Then, in the summer of 1966, Paul went with Miles to the Royal Court theatre in London to see a new production of Ubu Roi, designed by David Hockney and starring Max Wall as Pere Ubu.
            "But just who was this Alfred Jarry chappie?" you might be asking. (But probably aren't.) Born in 1873, Jarry was one of the founder writers of the modern movement which led to Surrealism, Dadaism and the Theatre of the Absurd. Ubu, a man of immense greed and selfishness, was Jarry's most famous creation, and first appeared in Ubu Roi in 1896. Ubu Enchaine and Ubu Cocu followed, but Jarry - who haunted the cafes of Bohemian Paris - then died early, aged just 34, having drunk himself to death on absinthe. (Clearly, not a case of absinthe making the heart grow fonder.)
            Now, almost 90 years after Jarry's death, his muse strikes again with Paul McCartney's Oobu Joobu, inspired in every sense by that pataphysical "science of imaginary solutions".

MARK LEWISOHN