Show Notes
Welcome to this year's Christmas special in which we, the fearless investigative journalists that we are, refuse to be silenced and meet head-on the issue the mainstream media doesn't want us to: can Paul McCartney make mashed potatoes?
On 17 December 1998 Paul took part in a live webcast to promote Wide Prairie, a compilation album of Linda's songs, released six months after her death in April 1998. In it he fronted a cookery segment in which he made mashed potatoes as part of a promotion for her book: Linda McCartney on Tour: Over 200 Meat-free Dishes from Around the World. We ask: does his addition of raw onions into the dish represent a bold embrace of the avant garde, betraying the influence of Stockhausen? How significant is it that Paul chose the DIY ethic of a webcast whose content he could control when he was grieving for his wife? And how else did Paul and George Harrison interact with the early internet from the late nineties?
Merry Christmas and thanks as always for your support this year. We'll be back with season six in January.
Watch the whole webcast (this link will also take you straight to the mashed potatoes segment): https://youtu.be/plrN81ISkh4?si=XM2FPqDxsQzdmxdv&t=3768 Some info about The Fireman webcast from 2 October 1998, although no footage is available (unless you've got some?): https://lostmediawiki.com/The_Fireman_(lost_live_Youth_and_Paul_McCartney%27s_band_internet_webcast;_1998) Watch Grateful Dead: A Photofilm by Paul and Linda McCartney: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m7NkYfJCYc An example of The Big Breakfast, the 1990s UK TV show with a similar crew-participation ethic: https://youtu.be/LFqPHv7nh1A The clip from Sleepless in Seattle we mention: https://youtu.be/BHs6iLRvAQM
Meet the Beatles Films Podcast
The Beatles Films Podcast is hosted by Matt Looker and Ed Williamson. We're both film writers and Beatles fans. Between us we've written for TheShiznit.co.uk, Total Film, Den of Geek and Virgin Media.
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More from The Beatles Films Podcast
More chasing and more studied pointlessness as we head into the film's final scenes. We look at the Buster Keaton influence on the escalating police chase scenes, and ask whether Ringo is actually back where he belongs when he rejoins the group, given that there's been no narrative resolution of his earlier discontent. We look at the filming and editing techniques of the concert scene, and have a look at John's final words for Grandfather.
(Ringo's Theme.) We get on to Ringo Starr's real introduction to the world as an actor, when everyone thought "Hey, he's not bad at this, is he?" In particular he does a great job with Wilfred Brambell in the canteen, convincing us he's slowly becoming persuaded to leave the group. We spend some time parading with Ringo, looking at his interactions with the boy and in the pub.
Part 4 takes in three of the film's key solo spots: John Lennon's scene with Anna Quayle, George Harrison in the teen TV show office, and Paul McCartney fronting the Beatles' performance of And I Love Her.
From the hotel to the TV studio. We see the Beatles at a press event, which revisits one of the film's themes: that Beatlemania persists with or without the Beatles themselves. We get into more class dynamics between Ringo Starr and the sound engineer ("Aren't you being rather arbitrary?") and John Lennon's delivery of If I Fell gets us into discussing whether he could sing love songs straightforwardly without undercutting them with a joke, something which Paul McCartney didn't struggle with.
Part 2 covers roughly the next 12 minutes of Richard Lester's film. We look at the absurdist downplayed reaction to finding an intruder in your hotel room cupboard, and the generational disconnect in how comfortable the Beatles seem in the nightclub, vs how grandfather can only fit in at the casino by pretending to be someone else. Plus! The class dynamics in Ringo Starr's jump-dancing with a posh fellow clubgoer, and some more magic realism in John Lennon's bathtub scene.