One Hand Clapping

After the success of the album “Band on the Run,” recorded by Paul and Linda McCartney and Denny Laine, Paul recruited guitarist Jimmy McCulloch and drummer Geoff Britton to form a new Wings line-up. To put the group together, they went to Nashville where they spent a few weeks recording new tracks.

Back in London, they started filming a documentary at Abbey Road Studios in late August. The documentary, “One Hand Clapping,” directed by David Litchfield, showcased the band working together and Paul’s musical talent. It featured performances of several tracks from “Band on the Run,” along with other familiar and unreleased songs, including some Beatles tracks.

“One Hand Clapping” — music and video — was recorded at Abbey Road Studios over five consecutive days, from August 26 to August 30, 1974. Some tracks were re-recorded on October 8 and 9, 1974. The film crew consisted of cameramen Howard Sharp and John Druce, video engineer Clive Matley, video sound engineer John Page, graphic designer Keith Pasley and film editor Brian Huberman.

Despite its promise, “One Hand Clapping” was never officially released. There have been speculations about this, including Paul’s dissatisfaction with the final product and the changing dynamics within the band. Geoff Britton left Wings in March 1975, which may have contributed to the decision to shelve the documentary.

Although “One Hand Clapping” was unreleased, bootleg copies of the soundtrack and the documentary have been circulated among fans, and various parts of the soundtrack have been included in special editions of Paul’s albums. The 2010 reissue of “Band on the Run” includes the full documentary on the accompanying DVD.

Finally, in 2024, a more complete soundtrack album was released to the public. To promote the soundtrack, the sequence for “Soily” was remastered and released in 4K on streaming platforms.

‘One Hand Clapping’. It’s nice to see that one re-surfacing. It was made by a friend of mine, David Litchfield; he produced a little magazine that was funky [Ritz, co-edited with David Bailey]. 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 pretence. It is what it is. We just called it ‘One Hand Clapping’, for absolutely no reason.

Paul McCartney – From paulmccartney.com, November 4, 2014

I had already designed, edited and published one magazine, called The Image. A ‘breathtakingly beautiful graphic arts magazine’, or that’s how the film producer Hercules Bellville described it.

It was through The Image, in 1972, that I first met Bailey, who introduced me to other creative ‘stars’, as a result of which I published both Jean Shrimpton’s and Linda McCartney’s photographs. Following the demise of The Image, Paul commissioned me to make a number of documentary films, during which time we spent a considerable amount of time at Abbey Road filming Wings, and at my studio in Kilburn, discussing the meaning of life.

David Litchfield – From “Bailey and I: Volume 1 – Bailey and Litchfield’s Ritz Newspaper“, 2023

The Image had only lasted for two years. When it crashed, Paul McCartney fulfilled me creatively and saved me financially by generously commissioning me to make three documentaries: One Hand Clapping, concerning McCartney and Wings; Empty Hands about a Japanese v British Karate contest, after which I went on to film a stage version of Steven Berkoff’s Fall of The House of Usher and Harry Nilsson’s The Point. I even got the funding to make a documentary about Bob Marley, before Jerry Weintraub, Bob’s tour manager, arrived in London and threatened to kill me if I continued with the project.

David Litchfield – From “Bailey and I: Volume 1 – Bailey and Litchfield’s Ritz Newspaper“, 2023

The first thing we want to know is: “What is the sound of One Hand Clapping?” Where does the title come from?

Originally it is a Zen question. But then of course, I realised you could kind of do it with a certain hand motion, and it turned out to be a very good hand exercise! It’s really good if my hands feel a bit stiff – then I will do that.

We’ve seen you do that in meetings before! And how did come to use that title for this project?

I think it came from David Litchfield, who was the director of the One Hand Clapping film. There’s no particular lightbulb moment that I can think of, we just thought it’s a nice phrase, and makes people think.

Paul McCartney – From Paul McCartney | News | You Gave Me The Answer – ‘One Hand Clapping’ Special!, June 19, 2024

The “One Hand Clapping” introduction, “Jet“, “C Moon“, “Maybe I’m Amazed“, “My Love” were filmed on the first day of the sessions, August 26, 1974.

“Bluebird“, “Band On The Run“, “Live And Let Die” (minus the orchestra scenes) and “Soily” were filmed on the second day of the sessions, August 27.

“Paul’s cabaret” sequence, featuring Paul McCartney on piano and vocals singing various songs in cabaret style, was filmed on August 28, the third day of the “One Hand Clapping” sessions.

Orchestra overdubs were added on August 29, the fourth day of the sessions.

“Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five” was the last song to be filmed, on August 30. Most of the day was spent filming Paul McCartney in the backyard of EMI studios and playing an acoustic guitar, but this sequence was not included in the final documentary.

From Club Sandwich N°78, Summer 1996:

Unless you count B-sides it wasn’t even issued as a single, and it has never been performed on stage by Paul. All the same, there is a video for the song ‘Nineteen Hundred And Eighty-Five’ (henceforth, for reasons of sanity as well as abbreviation, to be called ‘1985’ here).

It may even be that this ‘1985’ promo has never been publicly seen, which makes for a certain symmetry, really, because it was filmed when Paul and Wings were shooting a TV project that, also, has failed to see the light of day (this was called One Hand Clapping) and when Paul shot a charming vignette of a movie titled The Backyard which is also still under wraps (although it was the focus of this column in Spring 1992). The weirdest thing is, all these unreleased films are good – any notion that they’ve been kept in the dark these past twenty-odd years because they fail to measure up is nonsense. Rather, as Paul says, “Not everything you do is meant for release.” And, as he also points out, like fine wines, such films have a tendency to mature with age.

The ‘1985’ promotional video -or, more accurately, 16mm film – was shot sometime in the last few days of August 1974, in what looks for all the -world like a “wrap” from Wings’ One Hand Clapping duties, almost as if Paul persuaded a cameraman, lighting person and sound recordist to stay on after hours, found a grand piano situated in a far from glamorous quarter of Studio Two at Abbey Road, sat down and played. There’s nobody else on camera, although later on, when the action switches to a different part of the studio and Paul spends much of the time grinning up at the high Studio Two control room window, one gets the impression that Linda, if not the other Wings too, were looking down, watching the action.

But this is to jump ahead. The promo begins with Paul sat at the piano, belting out a great live vocal with the same blend of rawness and verve that marked out the song as very special on the album Band On The Run, issued at the back end of 1973. The piano track was also a real live performance, and quite a virtuoso one at that, the words “whirling” and “dervish” springing to mind when searching for a description of the speed with which Paul’s hands were running over the keyboard, fully meriting the camera close-ups that were spliced into the more panoramic footage. Being that he was really playing and really singing, there are no other instruments audible, at least not until the song’s middle-eight section when the original record’s harmonies were dropped into the soundtrack.

From the middle-eight onwards, through to the end of the number, the setting changed. Paul moved towards the rear of Studio Two, just in front of the huge wall clock, and stood up, singing the song in the style of a solo vocalist, with a microphone and yards of lead in his right hand and, get this, a cigarette in his left. The man was smoking a cigarette while shooting a video – how casual can you be!

Still performing live – although the orchestra, synth, drums, guitars and other instruments were dubbed in from the BOTR version – it looks as if Paul was thoroughly enjoying himself, singing and yelping into the camera, smiling broadly, glistening with perspiration, and puffing away on that nicotine. Incidentally, said smoking caused the creation of two different edits of the ‘1985’ promotional film: a “smoking” version and a “no smoking” version. Actually, if one looks closely enough, Paul has the cigarette in both but, in the specified “smoking” version, he is clearly seen dragging on the weed and exhaling the smoke.

The video ended with Paul, frozen in action, looking up at the control room window, the audio suddenly cutting off before the album version went into the reprise of the ‘Band On The Run’ title cut. And that was it.

Asked around this time by Paul Gambaccini for Rolling Stone if the title ‘1985’ was inspired by George Orwell’s brilliant novel 1984 Paul replied no, that the title was suggested, rather, by the first line of the song, which was the first bit he wrote. “With this it was ‘No one ever left alive in nineteen hundred and eighty-five’,” he said, adding, ‘”No one ever left alive in nineteen hundred and eighty-six’ wouldn’t have worked!”

Now there speaks a true wordsmith!

* Footnote. One is tempted to speculate that this ‘1985’ video has never been screened on TV. Indeed, this is exactly what we have done at the start of this article. Perhaps, however, a spot of caution should be exercised, if a letter from CS reader Robert Wright is anything to go by. He was interested to read in the Autumn 1994 issue about a video for another Band On The Run album track, ‘Mamunia’, which we said was never shown but he clearly remembers seeing on an ITV Wales pop series called (confusingly) The Dave Cash Radio Show, circa 1975. Somehow, somewhere, in the oddest of places, these things can reach the screen. Thanks for letting us know, Robert.

Mark Lewisohn

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