2007: The McCartney Years

In 2007 Paul McCartney released the compilation dvd The McCartney Years, with more than 40 music videos that Macca had released since the early seventies. Most of them hadn’t been released before, some of them could be watched on YouTube, although most of the time in poor quality. The idea for releasing a video compilation came in fact from the fans, who had repeatedly written to McCartney’s company requesting such a release. 




McCartney and his team put a lot of work in it, because The McCartney Years is much more than just a collection. A really nice aspect are the menus, they are practically another collection in itself with some unique footage. Paul: 

Once the project began we then realized that we could go beyond the usual DVD idea and that we could do more interactive stuff. The director Dick Carruthers and I came up with more and more ideas and thought OK, on the menus let's have little hidden things for fans and let's have a cover of this hidden there. It's much more than just a collection of DVDs, much more than just a collection of videos. It's now kind of the world of McCartney.”

When the whole project was mentioned, I think everyone at first just thought well take the videos, clean them up. There a lot of them, well put them sort of back to back, well present them, that's it. But as you started to get into that, Dick Caruthers and Ray particularly, started to say well you know if I was a fan watching this, when the menus come up, it would be really good if we have a little bit of that film that no one ever seen before. We can’t really use it as a full video but we could use it there.”

There is stuff I didn't even know existed. I should know most of it existed but it's like oh, I didn't know they filmed that. Oh yes, we found that in an old tin somewhere. And so the exciting thing about the whole exercise was them occasionally ringing me up, guess, you'll never guess what we've found you know, and I'd go alright wait, save it, so when I'd come they'd say look here, what about this for the third menu and we'd like to put this in. So yeah there are some lovely things.”

The use of music videos for promotional purposes started already in the sixties, famous examples are the ones by The Beatles, such as Paperback Writer, Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever (although these were made on film, Queen’s video for Bohemian Rhapsody was actually the first one shot on video). But in the seventies they started to become more and more important. In the first place because it gave musicians the opportunity to promote their work without the need to travel much. But in the eighties the videos became indispensable, especially with the arrival of MTV. And the videos themselves started to change as well: In the beginning their were more like a simple registration of a band playing their song, but they developed more into little movies. Not every singer or band was happy with that, including McCartney:

In the very early days life was so uncomplicated. You would just, you know you'd have a record and you'd just say well we all just stand there and well like sing it. Yeah that a good idea! So it was almost like live, just a fake live. Then things began to develop and it became like a short film so it became a bit of art and what would happen is there'd be a preamble so you know you'd be singing, walking down the street, and the little streets twinkling on the Embankment of the Thames, then and you'd go into a musical. (…) The advent of the music video was kind of a double-edged sword really because in one way it was exciting, making a little film. In another way it was not what we did. The only reason we'd been on film was live, covering a live show, or TV shows. You hadn’t ever really made little films, you'd been in Hard Day Night or something like that. So it was kind of good and it was bad.”

Director Keith McMillan did a lot of stuff with me, he did Pipes of Peace and Ebony and Ivory, Coming Up. We did quite a lot of work together and Keith's a very enthusiastic guy. He's great to work with so the team got the hang of it. We got the hang of it together so that wasn't so much him presenting a script. It would be more just him and me getting together and trying to work it out.”

Compiling the video collection turned out to be quite emotional for Paul:

As you say there is that feeling of drowning, just seeing all these images from your life flashing by and some of it is very emotional, obviously seeing Linda in a lot of the work. In a way it's lovely and it's very happy memories but the fact she's no longer here is very sad so it's mixed emotions.

That was always going to happen if we were going to put together a collection of old videos. She was in them and I knew that would be one of the factors that I would have to deal with the emotional side but it actually was kind of pleasant process like going through old snapshots.

It's sad but it's great because you're looking at these great memories and you're thinking oh we did this and when I’m doing the commentaries, I'm remembering little things about it so in the end it was actually very pleasant, although emotional.

The McCartney years consists of three dvd’s. The first two with music videos and the third one features two hours of historic live performances, like Live Aid, the Wings over the World-Tour and Glastonbury: 

We thought we've never seen this before or this hasn't been released, this ought to be in the collection and once the whole thing was called the McCartney Years then you had a wider brief. I really like the live stuff. It gives the other side of what I do really, there is me writing records and you see that in the videos but I think in many ways it a more true thing of what I do. So we've included quite a lot of live material in The McCartney Years.

(Blog based on an interview by Paul du Noyer, November 2007)


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André Homan

André Homan is a Dutch writer and journalist.

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