Category Archives: Paul McCartney

Four Recent Ebay Purchases

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We got an email from PayPal the other day saying we’d earned a $10.00 credit that could be used on any Ebay purchase, and so we delved into the collection to uncover some items that were missing.

Turns out we’re drastically under-represented when it comes to early Ringo Starr Apple singles. For some reason or other these were a blind spot in the collection and so these three items have now been added:

Ringo Beaucoups of BluesRingo It Don't Come EasyRingo Back Off Boogaloo

These 7″ 45 rpm singles are all Australian Apple Records releases.

“Beaucoups of Blues” is taken from the 1970 album of the same name.

“It Don’t Come Easy” is a 1971 non-album single produced by George Harrison, and “Back Off Boogalooo” (also produced by Harrison) came out in March, 1972.

The same seller also had a Wings single we didn’t have and hadn’t previously been aware of:Wings Arrow Through Me 2

“Arrow Through Me” is b/w “Old Siam, Sir”, and both songs come from the 1979 album Back to the Egg.

Two Beatle-related Second-hand Finds

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A couple of weeks back we got the chance to re-visit the harbour city of Newcastle in New South Wales. We’ve previously scored some Beatle goodness there (click here, and here) and this time was no different.

The first item came from Rices Bookshop on Hunter Street:DSC03469DSC03470

The Long and Winding Road – An Intimate Guide to the Beatles is a soft cover book (124 pages) by Ted Greenwald*. Published in 1995 in the USA, it details the history of the band from different perspectives. There are biographies, discographies, details of major stage appearances, films, significant books, as well as details about Beatle family and friends. As you can see, the layout inside is rudimentary, but there is a lot of information here:DSC03471

The book is mostly chronological and there are lots of Beatle photographs, record cover images, and examples of memorabilia inside: DSC03472 DSC03473 DSC03474

Just up the road from Rices is the Indigo Bookshop. They usually only sell second-hand books, but this visit they also had some boxes of used LP’s on display which we’d not seen before. In one box we found this little Beatle-related rarity:DSC03475DSC03476

As you can see this example has some water damage to the cover (which looks worse in the photo than in reality), but the vinyl itself is in mint condition. Denny Laine of course was a long-time McCartney collaborator and member of Wings. It’s no surprise then that Paul and Linda McCartney feature on a number of tracks of this 1984 solo album by Laine. Also represented are fellow ex-Wings members Steve Holly, Denny Seiwell, Lawrence Juber and Henry McCullough.

The song ‘Send Me the Heart’ was co-written by Laine and McCartney in 1974 and has Paul on bass. It was recorded during the same Nashville Wings sessions for ‘Junior’s Farm’.

‘I Would Only Smile’ was made at the same time as the sessions for the McCartney/Wings release Red Rose Speedway (1972). Similarly ‘Weep for Love’ was an out-take from the recording sessions for the Wings 1979 LP Back to the Egg. It features backing vocals by Paul and Linda. DSC03478DSC03477

So, once again the second-hand stores of Newcastle come up trumps!

* Ted Greenwald is also the author of The Beatles Companion – The Fab Four in Film, Performance, Recording and Print, published in 1992:Beatles Companion 2

McCartney at Rollins College – Full Video

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In case you missed this…..

In October last year Paul McCartney and two-term U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins sat down for a conversation with an audience of Rollins College students in the Knowles Memorial Chapel on the College’s Florida campus.

McCartney was on stage for an hour-long conversation about his influences, his education, and the art of songwriting. There’ve been a variety of press and other text reports of the event, but now Rollins has uploaded the conversation in full to YouTube.

It’s a wide-ranging, illuminating and interesting conversation – especially when Paul picks up his guitar at about 16 minutes in:

The Beatles in the News

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Stumbled across a blog site that takes an interesting approach to Beatle history.

The Beatles in the News is just that – a site where multiple, random articles from across the decades and from all over the world are aggregated and re-published daily.

There are newspaper and magazine articles, concert reviews, TV news, and advertisements. It’s not only about the Beatles as a group but also as solo artists. Around 500 items from the past are uploaded every month.

One of the posts from January 23 this year caught our attention. It features – in full – a special colour supplement produced by the iconic Australian Women’s Weekly magazine in March, 1964 at the very height of Beatlemania:australia womans march 18 1964 bOf course, being a “women’s magazine” from the day meant you had to have a section dedicated to what to cook for that special Beatles party:australia womans march 18 1964 f

Just love those mop-top muffins with the chocolate hairdo’s! And also how to dress in Beatle fashion:

australia womans march 18 1964 g

Fantastic stuff.

With this site you never know from day-to-day just what gems might pop up.

For anyone interested in the Beatles The Beatles in the News is well worth visiting regularly. You never know what you might find.

‘Only One’ Video by Kanye (featuring Paul McCartney) Goes Live

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The other collaboration project Paul McCartney has been involved with is with Kanye West (see his team up with Rihanna, too).

West has released a video to accompany the song ‘Only One’. It’s a Spike Jonze-directed home video of the rapper and his daughter, North, walking around a misty field:

Read more at junkee.com

Behind the Scenes of FourFiveSeconds – Rihanna, Kanye & McCartney

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Singer Rihanna has made a short behind the scenes video of the filming of her ‘FourFiveSeconds’ music clip, featuring Kanye West and Paul McCartney.

‘FourFiveSeconds’ is the first single from Rihanna’s still to be named upcoming album.

Read more at Rolling Stone.

UPDATE: And here is the full video – just uploaded to YouTube:

Different Photo Montage for Wings at the Speed of Sound

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In our last post we featured the two Best Buy editions of the recent Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound Paul McCartney Archive Collection reissues.

Darienzo has pointed out that the photo montages of the band on the back of the 2014 reissued Speed Of Sound are not the same as those used for the original sleeve in 1976.

Here’s the original rear cover for the Wings at the Speed of Sound LP:1976

And here’s the 2014 Speed of Sound Archive Edition LP:

2014

Not really sure why they felt the need to re-do all those photos…..

By the way, Mojo magazine last year had a very interesting article about the photo shoot for that rear cover, including these original images (by photographer Clive Arrowsmith) which were used to create the striking over-layed look of the five band members: Wings-3Wings-2Wings-4Wings-1Wings-5

P.S. It was Clive Arrowsmith who took the famous Band on the Run front cover image:band-on-the-run1

Best Buy Wings/McCartney Archive Series

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It’s taken a while to feature these latest Paul McCartney and Wings items because of the convoluted process involved in securing copies for the collection.

These are the Best Buy limited editions of the latest Paul McCartney Archive series of CDs. The CD’s themselves are the standard US triple gatefold two-disc sets consisting of the remastered album on one CD, plus a Bonus Audio CD of rare tracks. Here’s Venus and Mars:Venus BB coverVenus BB rearVenus BB disc1Venus BB disc2

And here’s Wings at the Speed of Sound:ATSOS BB coverATSOS BB rearATSOS BB disc1ATSOS BB disc2

But as you can see by the stickers on the front of each – these were sold with a voucher inside to receive a bonus, limited edition 7″ 45 single – one from each album. The difficult (and time consuming part) for collectors living outside the USA was that these singles (reportedly limited to 5,000 copies each) were only available to customers of the Best Buy chain who were US residents. The process is that you mail back the voucher with a small postage and handling fee included, and Best Buy then mails you a picture cover replica of an original vinyl single from either album. Residents outside the States had to find an accomodating Ebay seller who would do this – and then post the whole lot to you…..hence the delay in being able to show these items on this blog…..ours have finally arrived.

For Venus and Mars the vinyl single is ‘Letting Go’/’You Gave Me the Answer’ (not ‘Venus and Mars/’Rock Show’ as original advertised by Best Buy back in October last year):Letting Go coverLetting Go rearLetting Go labelAnd from Wings at the Speed of Sound its ‘Let ‘Em In’/’Beware My Love’: Let Em In SingleLet Em In rearLet Em In label

Both these vinyl singles have front covers which are replicas of the originals, but the rear covers are dedicated to promoting the 2014 reissues of the Archive Collection CDs. And as you can see in the photos (if you look closely) there’s a sticker on the rear of each saying “Made in Germany”. It appears that subsequent to the Best Buy deal these singles were also made available in limited numbers to some independent record stores in Europe and the UK.

As with previous releases in this series, inside both CDs is a small paper insert advertising what could be the next two releases in the Archive Series Tug of War and Pipes of Peace:Venus BB insert

The other thing to note is that both the Venus and Mars and the Wings at the Speed of Sound Best Buy CDs have stickers pasted over the originals with different barcode/UPC numbers to the usual releases. These are 88072 36382 3 and 88072 36383 0 respectively. The non-Best Buy discs are 88072 35650 4 and 888072 35671 9.

For a video of how Venus and Mars and Wings At the Speed of Sound are packaged, the booklets, etc. have look at these YouTube clips prepared by Jose Miguel Grey:

Hope for the Future – Behind the Scenes & Vinyl Release

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In case you missed this – just before Christmas Paul McCartney uploaded a “behind the scenes”, making-of video for his new single ‘Hope for the Future’:

And here’s the finished result:

paulmccartney.com has confirmed that the new single will be released in physical form on 180-gram, 12″ vinyl next week. Yay! Would much rather have this than just the download….

The song – taken from the video game Destiny – includes the original version of ‘Hope For The Future’ alongside four special mixes. The vinyl will also come with a download card featuring all five tracks. You can find full details here.

Amazing Tower Records Footage from 1970

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For those of us who remember the days of visiting good old “bricks and mortar” record stores to browse and buy the latest vinyl……this amazing footage of the legendary Tower Records on Sunset Strip in West Hollywood in 1970 will take you back (and possibly take your breath away if you’re a vinyl nut!)

In it we spotted literally hundreds of plastic sealed copies of George Harrison’s then new box set All Things Must Pass being put out on display……a fleeting glimpse of Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band in the arms of a female customer…..stacks of McCartney’s McCartney LP…..Badfinger’s  No Dice……a copy of the Beatles Yellow Submarine….and from footage taken outside, a big John Lennon billboard.

Scenes from this great archival film were used to illustrate this spoken word advertisement for Tower Records voiced by John Lennon himself (possibly from 1973) – then promoting his latest LP Mind Games: