Wings
The Bruce McMouse Show

THE REVIEW

In 1972 Paul McCartney had another of his original, somewhat quirky and daring ideas. With the Wings taxiing on the runway towards the stratospheric success they would achieve in the rest of the decade, Paul wanted to promote the group with something other than the usual live album that all the bands were producing in those years. He wanted to amaze, entertain, and be original. Thus, the European tour in the summer of '72 was filmed on various dates and carefully recorded to produce a concert film, not a trivial film but a mixed-media film with the Wings engaged in interacting with animated characters. Macca's idea is, we must say, genius. A product of this type had only been made by Disney, and a mixed-media concert film had never been seen before. The plot is very simple: the band, engaged in a concert, comes into contact with a family of mice, whose father is Bruce McMouse, who lives under the stage of the theater where they are performing. Initially very disturbed, the quiet Bruce will eventually join the band for the grand finale. For years it was believed that the entire project had never really been completed, with some sketches emerging from Paul's archives showing the protagonist's drafts, and only a few images (but not the animated part) had been added to the Wingspan documentary in 2001. In 2018, MPL announced that the film would be released added to the Red Rose Speedway Archive, which immediately piqued Paul's fans' curiosity. Today, we can see that the "The Bruce McMouse Show" in 1973 was a film complete with all its parts, the quality with which it has been published is indicative of a finished and ready product, certainly not a series of tentative and undeveloped ideas. But why didn't this film see the light at the time? Most likely because Paul was not satisfied with the animated part, simple yet well done, which would have paled in comparison to Disney projects of that time. The departure of Seiwell and McCullough then did the rest, leading Paul to opt for the documentary/concert, which also remained unreleased for years, "One Hand Clapping" of 1974.

This film is an extraordinary historical document on a very intense and virtuous period of McCartney and company; the concerts of '72 were very intense and gritty thanks to the overall rough sound and McCullough's sharp blues guitar, and watching the performances of "Eat at Home", "The Mess", a rough "Maybe I’m Amazed" and an unripe "My Love" is a real pleasure. The interaction with the animated characters works, it's an original idea and at the time it would surely have been successful without invoking a comparison with Disney that Paul so feared.