The McCartney Years

The McCartney Years
Video by Paul McCartney
Released	12 November 2007
Genre	Rock, pop
Label	Warner Music
Paul McCartney video chronology
The Space Within US (2006) The McCartney Years (2007) Good Evening New York City (2009)

The McCartney Years is a three-DVD set featuring music videos, live performances and other rare footage from Paul McCartney's solo career and Wings. The set spans the years 1970 to 2005. It was released by Warner Music in the UK on 12 November 2007, and by Rhino Entertainment in the United States the following day.^[1]

The first two discs comprise promotional films, from "Maybe I'm Amazed" (1970) to "Fine Line" (2005). Additional features include a documentary about his recent album Chaos and Creation in the Backyard (Creating Chaos at Abbey Road), a film about the Band on the Run album and a feature-length audio commentary from McCartney himself.

The third disc includes seven songs from the 1976 Wings concert Rockshow, a new edit of McCartney's 1991 appearance on MTV Unplugged, and eleven performances from his 2004 set at Glastonbury Festival. The live footage is also complemented by an optional commentary by McCartney.

Other features includes his appearance at Live Aid in 1985, the Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Show and interviews with Melvyn Bragg and Michael Parkinson.

All videos have been digitally remastered, and the videos that were originally shot with an aspect ratio of 1.33 : 1 have been blown up to 1.78 : 1. This creates an odd effect for the videos, which now seem cinematic. Oddly enough, the videos that are available as extras are presented in their original form. Also, some videos shot on interlaced PAL sources have been badly deinterlaced, such as the videos for "With a Little Luck", "Coming Up", "Waterfalls" and the Glastonbury 2004 set, resulting in jagged edges on the image. This does not affect the similarly-shot "Goodnight Tonight" or "Baby's Request"

Track listing

Disc 1

1. "Tug of War"
2. "Say Say Say"
3. "Silly Love Songs"
4. "Band on the Run"
5. "Maybe I'm Amazed"
6. "Heart of the Country"
7. "Mamunia"
8. "With a Little Luck"
9. "Goodnight Tonight"
10. "Waterfalls"
11. "My Love"
12. "C Moon"
13. "Baby's Request"
14. "Hi, Hi, Hi"
15. "Ebony and Ivory"
16. "Take It Away"
17. "Mull of Kintyre"
18. "Helen Wheels"
19. "I've Had Enough"
20. "Coming Up"
21. "Wonderful Christmastime"

Extras

• "Eleanor's Dream" ("Eleanor Rigby")
• "Junior's Farm"
• "Band on the Run" (Version two)

Includes cover's photo shoot, as well as samples of "Mrs. Vandebilt" and "Bluebird".

• "London Town"
• "Mull of Kintyre" (Elstree studios)

Also listed on Youtube as "The Misty Version", this is one of the song's many videos.

Disc 2

1. "Pipes of Peace"
2. "My Brave Face"
3. "Beautiful Night"
4. "Fine Line"
5. "No More Lonely Nights"
6. "This One"
7. "Little Willow"
8. "Pretty Little Head"
9. "Birthday" (live)
10. "Hope of Deliverance"
11. "Once Upon a Long Ago"
12. "All My Trials"
13. "Brown Eyed Handsome Man"
14. "Press"
15. "No Other Baby"
16. "Off the Ground"
17. "Biker Like an Icon"
18. "Spies Like Us"
19. "Put It There"
20. "Figure of Eight"
21. "C'Mon People"

Extras

• Excerpts from Parkinson
• "So Bad"
• "Chaos and Creation at Abbey Road"

Disc 3

Rockshow

1. "Venus and Mars"
2. "Rock Show"
3. "Jet"
4. "Maybe I'm Amazed"
5. "Lady Madonna"
6. "Listen to What the Man Said"
7. "Bluebird"

MTV Unplugged

1. "I Lost My Little Girl"
2. "Every Night"
3. "And I Love Her"
4. "That Would Be Something"

Glastonbury

1. "Jet"
2. "Flaming Pie"
3. "Let Me Roll It"
4. "Blackbird"
5. "Band on the Run"
6. "Back in the U.S.S.R."
7. "Live and Let Die"
8. "Hey Jude"
9. "Yesterday"
10. "Helter Skelter"
11. "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band"

Extras

• Live Aid performance

1. "Let It Be"

• Super Bowl XXXIX Halftime Performance

1. "Drive My Car"
2. "Get Back"
3. "Hey Jude"
4. "Live And Let Die"

Hidden Extras

Some videos on the three disc set have different angles, because one angle is an edited version of the original; the other the original. On disc one, "Goodnight Tonight" and "Baby's Request" have different angles. The edited angle on "Goodnight Tonight" has an old film effect, but include different shots from the original, unedited video. The edited angle on "Baby's Request" is full screen, but it is in sepia and resembles a video from a film projector. The second disc's different angle is McCartney's 2005 "Fine Line", where most of the video is just white with slight outlines of McCartney playing the instrument with bits of colour and a few seconds of live-action from the original music video appearing later on.

Criticism

Despite being comprehensive, the collection is far from definitive. Some highlights of McCartney's solo-career are notably absent from this package: only six tracks from the original Rockshow film shot during Wings' epic world tour of 1975-76 made it to The McCartney Years, along with a Wings version of a Beatles song, "Lady Madonna" originally left out of the film. Also missing are the 1973 James Paul McCartney television-special introducing Wings, live footage from the early Wings-tours, the "One Hand Clapping" rehearsal film (which would eventually be included on the deluxe and special edition DVD portions of Wings' 1973 album Band on the Run, released in November 2010) and footage from the promotional film for Wings' final album, Back to the Egg (1979). Although this compilation would have provided the perfect opportunity to focus entirely on McCartney's extensive solo-career, instead a large segment of the available disc space was dedicated to solo-versions of Beatles-songs, sometimes already available in other packages. Of McCartney's promo videos, the following are missing from this compilation: "Getting Closer", "Spin It On", "Again and Again and Again", "Old Siam, Sir", "Arrow Through Me", "Winter Rose/Love Awake" (all of which were part of the "Back To the Egg" TV Special); plus "Mary Had A Little Lamb", "Here Today", "No More Lonely Nights (Playout Version)", "Stranglehold", "Only Love Remains","Où est le Soleil ?", "The World Tonight", "Young Boy", "From a Lover to a Friend", "Your Loving Flame", "Lonely Road", "Jenny Wren", "Ever Present Past", and "Dance Tonight".

Notes

1. ^ "McCartney Unearths Live Clips, Videos For DVD". Billboard. 24 August 2007. http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003630961. Retrieved 8 October 2007.