Paul McCartney in Red Square DVD

Although Sir Paul McCartney had never actually set foot on Russian soil before, his history-making open air show in Moscow's Red Square in May 2003 in front of 100,000 people seemed like a triumphal homecoming. And in a manner of speaking it was. Dismissed as "cacophonous rubbish" in the 1960s by then Soviet leader and aspiring rock critic Nikita Krushchev and generally viewed as subversive alien propaganda by other mean-spirited senior Communist killjoys, The Beatles were an underground religion in the old USSR with dissidents aplenty - many of them reminiscing in... fascinating detail on this DVD - tuning in to Beatlemania courtesy of Russian blackmarketeers who covertly duplicated copies of the bands' albums on discarded hospital X-Ray plates. Here then, finally, was a Beatles legend and songwriter in skin and bone, playing Beatles classics aplenty - a rapturously received "Back In The USSR", "Hey Jude" an enchanting mass singalong, "Two Of Us" and "She's Leaving Home" given a long overdue airing - in the shadow of St Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's mausoleum and The Kremlin. Kruschev - presumably more of a Stones man - would have been appalled. Not so Putin and Gorbachev who pop-up to press McCartney's flesh, teach Macca some lingo and express their admiration. In addition to the Red Square gig, there's generous footage of Paul's attendant private visit to St Petersburg plus more live action from the following year when Macca did his stuff during another stop-over in Peter The Great's "Window On The West". McCartney murdered Marxism? There's enough evidence here to give Mr Thumbs Aloft a pretty good shout. --Kevin Maidment [show more]

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