The Oriental Nightfish
“Oriental Nightfish” was a song composed by Linda McCartney during the “Band On The Run” sessions, and was recorded on October 4th, 1973 by the Wings trio, Paul, Linda and Denny Laine. It made it’s official debut as the soundtrack to an animated movie of the same name, directed by Linda McCartney and Ian Eames. The film ran at the Cannes Film Festival in May of 1978, and was finally available officially when it was one of the bonus videos on the 1984 children’s video cassette, “Rupert and the Frog Song”. Many kids got scared by the haunting, dramatic song and the stark imagery of the video, which may or may not be the reason why it was missing on the official McCartney Music and Animation Collection DVD
If I was in charge of the Paul McCartney Archive Collection project, and if I needed to do some headhunting to get a fan’s point of view and expertise on the subject at the same time, I’d hire Chris Brewer as a consultant on the project. Here’s Chris’ recently uploaded YouTube slideshow film of the recording session for “Oriental Nightfish”:
A non-embeddable quality version of the animated film can be found on YouTube.
Great, great post !
I'm a fan of the Linda songs Collection released after she passed away. This one is just one of her best. Thanks for all the details.
The animated film — along with "Seaside Woman" — may be missing from that DVD because they're Linda and not Paul, which Heather wouldn't have liked him pushing. Interestingly, Heather would leave Paul about a year later….
There should be a McCartney Archives edition of Wide Prairie too: the original CD, plus a DVD containing not only the two shorts and behind the scenes stuff, but the documentary MPL produced about Linda's photography, and maybe some recipe bits too.