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   CLUB SANDWICH 66

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SADDLING UP AND WINDING DOWN

Club Sandwich 66

Touring is a strenuous business, so when Paul and Linda were offered the opportunity by the Australian Appaloosa Society to go riding, they were delighted to accept. Mounting "Brother Dier" and "Eastview Mountain Bear" (odd name for a horse) respectively, they spent the morning of 18 March, a day off from the tour, trotting around the National Park in Cobbity.


AND IN THE GREEN CORNER

Produced just too late for Australasian audiences, American fans have been the first to see the new pre-concert film for Paul's New World Tour.
We're pleased to say that it's causing something of a stir...

            Last time around the film which warmed up audiences for Paul And Band's arrival on the concert stages of the world was a celebratory affair: three simultaneously active screens of McCartney footage from past to 1989.
            This time, although there's still a bit of that, the accent is radically different. Yes, there's still some entertainment, but for the most part it's death, horror and cruelty, and not at all funny. But it's nothing more than everyday reality, the shocking reality of unacceptable animal abuse in the closing days of the 20th century.
            It's Paul's way of saying, just before we have some fun and rock out for a couple of hours, please let's not forget this...
            Much of the ten-minute film - the triple-screen images too numerous to count, but they must run to nearly a thousand - spotlights animal cruelty. But, argues Iain Brown, its' producer, the intention was always to prick consciences, not to cause upset. "Paul told us that he didn't want it to pull any punches, and that he wanted to make people face up to the problem, but of course, it's always a very fine line between educating and upsetting. I can say, though, that no footage was put in just for the sake of shock value. It just so happens to be an unfortunate fact that these terrible things are going on in our world, our country, our towns, our villages. Believe it or not there was even more gruesome footage which we just couldn't put in..."
            Think about that when you see the film.
            "Paul gave Kevin Godley and I the job of directing and producing it while we were making the 'C'mon People' video, and we instantly set about looking through a massive, massive amount of footage. It really shocked me. I mean, my father was a butcher and I was brought up around the meat-market in Glasgow, but there are still some things in this film which make me wince. We felt really terrible when we found ourselves saying 'This is a great bit of film to include' because 'great' is just not the right word. There is no word to adequately describe film showing such horrible maltreatment of animals.
            "We inevitably found ourselves in a real moral dilemma. We didn't want to offend people's sensibilities but we did want to make them aware and that's no easy thing. We were also determined not to put a veneer over the problem or just allude to it because that would have been pointless. That's what established society always does - allude to a problem and not lay the cards down on the table. It would have been like saying to audiences, 'By the way, there's a lot of naughty stuff going on in the -world but we won't offend you while you're standing there eating your burger.' Apparently, when it -was first shown in America, at the technical rehearsal before the first concert, people were appalled. That's the kind of effect we want."
            For many viewers, the most dreadful piece of footage in the film - so you can imagine just how shocking it must be - shows the extermination of an elephant by electricity. First it's standing up, alive, the next nanosecond it's dead, shocked rigid, and falls to the ground, while a gathering crowd applauds. Iain Brown: "This is an early piece of film based upon Edison's experiments to show off the power of electricity. We found out that Edison used to go around country fairs and showgrounds exterminating animals with electricity in order to show off the power of his invention. It was showmanship in the crudest possible form you could name. Now every time I turn on a light in my house I think of that bloody elephant..."
            You'll have gathered by now that the intention of the film is to awaken the couple of million people attending Paul's 1993 concerts to the fact that animal abuse goes on, on and sickeningly on. The hope is that they'll then exercise their rights and voices to stop it. For Iain Brown, along with Kevin Godley and his entire team, this very effect was unavoidable. "Like most people, I was always aware of animal rights but I'd never been active," Brown comments. "But I am now - I couldn't help but be thumped in the gut while looking through all the footage, and my whole attitude has been heightened immensely. I saw forms of experimentation that I just didn't know existed. Like everyone else involved in the film I've been given a completely new perspective on the subject."
            For the sake of the human race, dear reader, we pray that you'll have the same reaction.