CLUB SANDWICH 59

SHOELESS IN HAMBURG

GET BACK PREMIERES WITH A SCREAM

A Paul McCartney film premiere is no everyday event. Geoff Baker bears his sole, toes the line and
socks it to Sandwich with his account of The (New) Hamburg Experience

            It's not often that you lose your shoe working for P & L.
            I've lost my senses a few times. Lost consciousness once (Milan). I've lost control. I lose my patience (daily). There was even that one night in Rio when I thought there was some serious danger (hope) of losing my trousers. And there's a considerable body of opinion that I lost my marbles years ago. [This isn't going to be one of your long, rambling 'theme' pieces, is it? - Ed.]
            Anyway, back to this shoe.
            I lost it.
            The left one. Black brogue, size eight, lace-up, $100 a pair but pretty worthless as a right-foot solo act.
            I was outside the Passage Kino - the cinema chosen for the European premiere of Get Back - at the time. Couldn't see the damn thing anywhere. This was on account of the fact that I'd also lost my spectacles.
            I just stood there and silently prayed -please God, let me not hear the sound of breaking glass, please no-one tread on them. I would have asked, politely, "Excuse me, can you see a pair of specs...and a shoe?" but that would have been futile. No-one would have heard, on account of the deafening roar of "WHAAAAAAAA-PAUL-PAUL-YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-PAULI" from the screaming crowd of German fans who'd seconds earlier mobbed Macca and - in the process - bowled me and me specs 'n shoe over.
            A cop went down as well. Knocked flat like a skittle. Big chap he was, but - splat - he ate the sidewalk as all attempts to hold back the baying throng waving autograph books were useless.
            Welcome to Hamburg, home of hysteria.
            "Is this where they invented the hamburger?" asked Linda.
            Yep. The grand old Earl of Hamburg invented it. Blame him.
            It was also, naturlich, where the Beatles invented themselves. (Yes, I know it all began in Liverpool, but it was down in the Kaiserkeller, Indra, Star-Club 'n stuff where, during six-hour sets, they honed the act.) And consequently the Hamburgers like to celebrate this fact with what appears to be the local speciality - viz. near-rioting.
            P, L, Robbie, Wix and Blair were in town to promote Get Back - Richard Lester's movie record of the World Tour (Part I).
            "We'll have a little press conference," said Richard Ogden, managerial-ly, "and a few interviews for TV, and then Paul and Linda and the band can go to a reception for the movie."
            Easy, right?
            Nope. It was Nightmare On Elm Strasse.
            The Macs were meant to arrive at the press conference quietly, slipping in around the back. This, however, proved improbable on account of the back strasse being crammed - and we are talking sardine-tin time here - with what appeared to be the entire teenage population of Germany.
            Peep peep. Paul arrives. The Merc door opens and - WHAP, the arm-linked line of local security is broken asunder by the wildly-shrieking fans. Scuffle scuffle scuffle. Thumbs aloft. Paul grinning. Band lost in the mob. Where's Blair? Security sweating. Management losing 21bs-per-second from stress. Scuffle scuffle scuffle scuffle. Elbow in the eye time. SLAM. Sigh. Relief. Got'em in.
            The little press conference was obviously lost in interpretation; unless you consider a battery of 49 photographers, 14 TV crews and 350 journalists to in any way qualify for littleness (as in the little Pacific Ocean, the little Sahara Desert, the little matter of the Gulf War, etc).