Wingspan

I make a point of watching all my DVD’s every year or so. I actually have a list and when I watch a DVD it goes to the bottom of the list. So by watching something in the top 10 DVDs on the list I see all of them every so often. It's actually more a database on my palm pilot than it is a list. It's real cool. My kids seem to think that this makes me out to be a real geek. Actually, I haven’t run into anyone who doesn’t think that this makes me a geek. The rest of you just don't know what you're missing. But, either way, my attention this week turned to a DVD that I’ve had for a little while, Paul McCartney’s Wingspan. (I actually got this for my birthday from Bethany and Meredith almost three years ago – I know that because it says that on my database. See how handy that is? Don't you wish you had one?)

Before she died Paul’s late wife Linda encouraged their son-in-law Alistair, a young filmmaker, to gather all their Wings-era video and make a little documentary as a surprise for Paul’s birthday. That documentary was the basis for what became a fairly long film of the ten or so years following the breakup of the Beatles and the era in which Paul and Linda formed Wings and conquered America and the World. After Linda died their daughter Mary (Alistair’s wife) sat with her dad and interviewed him to get the story. It is presented in an entertaining way with lots of clips of Linda and the band and some interesting stories, including the breakup of the Beatles and Paul’s time in a Tokyo jail.

Overall, this is a nice little documentary about that era. Paul’s insistence on being interviewed in strange settings (like in the Beatles Anthology) is starting to wear a little thin but anyone who was a fan of Wings will enjoy the images and the stories. I wish there was more information about the music and less about the lifestyle and the personalities but I’ll take what I can get. The DVD is about 22 minutes longer than the TV special that came from it, it is presented in widescreen format and the sound is very good. It makes a nice companion to the excellent 2-CD set of the same name which is a great (and reasonably priced) collection of Wings hits and near hits.