Description
Paul McCartney – Give My Regards To Broad Street 1984
There’s no justifying, let alone explaining, Macca‘s disastrous 1984 film Give My Regards to Broad Street — a nearly impenetrable “farce” involving stolen tapes, ghosts, and funny moustaches — and the soundtrack, if anything, is even messier. With just a few exceptions, this relies on older McCartneymaterial from Revolver to Tug of War, with one significant touch — everything has been re-recorded. And that doesn’t just mean that “Yesterday” has a new solo McCartney version, it means that he’s recut songs as recent as “Ballroom Dancing” and Pipes of Peace‘s “So Bad.” Perhaps if he reinterpreted them, this would at least be interesting, but he replicates the original recordings, down to the same solos. This would be an unmitigated disaster if it wasn’t for “No More Lonely Nights,” an absolutely lovely mid-tempo tune graced by a terrific David Gilmour guitar solo. Of course, he has to diminish that tune by including three versions of it (five on the CD reissue), which means that it’s a much better bet to pick that up on All the Best instead of here.
The majority of the album is a retrospective – which is sequenced in the order of the songs’ appearance in the film – features re-interpretations of many of Paul McCartney’s past classics of the Beatles and Wings: “Good Day Sunshine“, “Yesterday“, “Here, There and Everywhere“, “Silly Love Songs” , “For No One“, “Eleanor Rigby” and “The Long and Winding Road“. There were also interpretations of songs from McCartney’s more recent albums; “Ballroom Dancing” and “Wanderlust” from Tug of War and “So Bad” from Pipes of Peace.[8] Besides “No More Lonely Nights” (also heard in a dance version), the only previously-unheard tracks were “Not Such a Bad Boy”, “No Values” and a symphonic extension of “Eleanor Rigby” entitled “Eleanor’s Dream”. The album running time was so long that its vinyl release had edited versions of the songs.[citation needed] The cassette and the later CD edition preserved the tracks’ full lengths, while the CD went one further by including a bonus 1940s-styled piece called “Goodnight Princess”. A notable switch from past album song credits is the crediting of song writing to ‘McCartney-Lennon‘ as opposed to the usual ‘Lennon-McCartney’ on all other albums. The Beatles cover-versions are dedicated to Paul McCartney’s friend John Lennon, who was killed 4 years before the soundtrack was released.
