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   CLUB SANDWICH 69

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MY BRAVE FACE

            Ah, the beauty of the Video Archive column - one can jump years within sentences, leaping from the inexpensive, somewhat innocent promo for 'With A Little Luck' to the slick video for 'My Brave Face', the lead single from Flowers In The Dirt five years ago. (Yikes.)
            And, like the song itself, what a clever piece of work the 'My Brave Face' video was. Inside four minutes it gave viewers first sight of the newly assembled World Tour Band, by way of some terrific B&W rehearsal footage, and insight into Paul's attitude towards the mini-industry that is collecting McCartney and Beatles memorabilia. And some superb Beatles film clips were thrown in along the way too.
            The memorabilia business became big business at the other end of the 1980s, when auction houses renowned for their Picasso sales suddenly generated big bucks for Beatles stuff. It caused a certain degree of puzzlement among the former Fabs, to say the least, when they saw things they'd once given away free changing hands for thousands of pounds. So the 'My Brave Face' video presented a fictional (but believable) case of collecting-mania gone too far - a Japanese man prepared to employ teams of twilight-hour burglars to jemmy their way into security archives and steal their precious booty. "I'm one of the biggest collectors of Paul McCartney memorabilia in Japan, if not the 'world," the man boasts, "...it is my passion, an all consuming indulgence. And this is my latest acquisition." As he inserts a video tape the acquisition giving him such pride is revealed - it's the 'My Brave Face' promo.
            Later on, our deadly serious Japanese pal can contain himself no longer, revealing his darkest secrets but proudest joys - "I've got films they don't even know about," he confides, boasting "Paul McCartney would love to know where this got to." And he unzips a suit bag to reveal Paul's original Sgt Pepper costume.
            In truth, Paul knows exactly where the suit got to, because he still has it, locked away in a place so secure that breaking-and-entering would be beyond even our imaginary friend, or the real-life people like him. It might even be the same place that he keeps his unique home-movies of the Beatles, seen in tantahsingly short glimpses in this video - the group prancing around a beach in Victorian bathing costumes, looning in a Liverpool park, playing music on stage in America and cards for dollar bills backstage somewhere in that great continent.
            Directed by Roger Lunn, and shot over two days (10-11 April 1989), the 'My Brave Face' video was a real talking point among fans when it hit the small screen. If anything, one could argue, it was almost too good: viewers were so taken with the visuals that the song itself took a mental backseat. We've all heard the expression "nice video, shame about the song"; in the case of 'My Brave Face' it was more a case of "nice video, shame about not noticing the song".
            Which may well be why a second video was made for 'My Brace Face'. Called 'The Making Of My Brave Face', but also known as 'The Making Of The Promo Promo', this one dropped the storyboard element about the memorabilia collector and concentrated on performance - in particular, on the filming of the band performance for the first video. (Got that?)
            Directed by Sebastien Dewsbery and edited by Tim Hunt, 'The Making Of...' featured wall to wall "fly on the wall" bits and pieces from the shooting of the first promo: posing, mugging, clowning, camera loading, meter reading, guitar picking, tuning, strumming and almost everything else ending in -ing except for fussing and fighting (my friends) and one or two other activities we'd best not dwell on here.
            Without so much to occupy the eyes one could appreciate the music all the more and realise that 'My Brave Face' was not only Paul's best single since 'No More Lonely Nights' five years earlier but also a great launching pad for Flowers In The Dirt and the record-shattering World Tour that followed.

Club Sandwich 69