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One of the most bootlegged live albums of all time will officially be released this summer as Paul McCartney & Wings’ One Hand Clapping — a collection of Band on the Run-era live recordings from what is now Abbey Road Studios — will arrive on June 14, two months shy of the 50th anniversary of the bootleg’s August 1974 sessions.
While half of One Hand Clapping reached audiences as part of McCartney’s archival Band on the Run reissue in 2010, the new double live album features an entire disc of still-unreleased performances, including this rollicking rendition of Wings’ 1972 single “Hi, Hi, Hi”:
One Hand Clapping — featuring songs from throughout McCartney’s catalog at the time, including Beatles tracks like “Lady Madonna,” “The Long and Winding Road,” and “Let It Be” — was recorded live in then-EMI Studios for a never-aired documentary about McCartney & Wings.
“It was made by a friend of mine, David Litchfield; he produced a little magazine that was funky [Ritz],”McCartney said of the special in 2014. “We decided that he would shoot a very simple piece, on video.We would just go into Abbey Road and play basically what we had rehearsed. So we went in there and it was very simply filmed, absolute basic stuff, and I think its charm now is that there’s no pretense. It is what it is. We just called it ‘One Hand Clapping,’ for absolutely no reason.”
While the special was never broadcast, bootleg copies were widely dispersed over the ensuing decades. A portion of the recordings featured on that Band on the Run reissue, and now One Hand Clapping collects the entirety of the sessions, including Wings’ Denny Laine performing “Go Now” by his previous band, the Moody Blues.
Available to preorder in a variety of formats including digital, CD, and a vinyl set that includes a bonus 7″ of solo McCartney performances recorded in Abbey Road Studios’ backyard, the live-in-studio album has also been newly mixed for its official release. One Hand Clapping also boasts the original artwork planned for the documentary, as well as some songs that were recorded off-camera.
