Open letter to Sir Paul McCartney
Dear Paul!
We would like to address you on behalf of millions of your fans in the former Soviet Union.
We have a special request and would like to ask you to do one song that you’re not playing this time in your “On the Run” tour.
In order to find out what song is especially popular with your fans, we, supported by your Moscow promoter SAV Entertainment, took a vote among the fans on the website www.beatles.ru, which currently has over 25000 members, and in the three social networks: Facebook, Twitter and Vkontakte.
We made a list of 40 songs that are not included in the “On the Run” tour setlist and asked your fans to pick that they love the most. Following the voting results, we ended up with the five songs listed below (in order of the allocation of votes):
- Monkberry Moon Delight (this song won by a wide margin)
- Hope of Deliverance
- Once Upon a Long Ago
- Lovely Rita
- Your Mother Should Know
It’s very likely that after reading this you’ll think that your Russian fans’ choice is quite unusual. That is why we would like to explain why people have picked those songs.
It was very difficult to find a way to listen to music from abroad in Soviet times. The only songs we could hear on the radio, TV and stage were those approved by the Ministry of Culture. The only way to listen to the bands from other parts of the world was to get a hold of the magnetic tape recordings or so called gramophone records “on bones”.
Back in the 70s “Monkberry Moon Delight” was released as a bootleg, people would listen to this record over and over again, and it's fair to say that this song became your first major solo hit in the USSR and it never lost its status. Even though music fans and amateur rock bands didn’t speak English well enough, they were immediately hooked by a remarkably catchy tune and would sing it with abandon at the parties.
Then there was perestroika and rock music became available. We got our first FM radio stations and music TV channels. Songs like “Once Upon a Long Ago” and later “Hope of Deliverance” became insanely popular and won our hearts. We would watch those videos in the middle of the night and tape them with the first video recorders to show it to our friends and relatives.
Later on, different Beatles records became available and everyone could buy any CD they wanted. Even though we were 30 years late we could finally feel the atmosphere of the Summer of Love of 1967 listening to “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Magical Mystery Tour”. The songs closing our winners list are from those two albums respectively.
Dear Paul, we’ve grown up listening to your songs, more than one generation learnt to love and think while exploring your back catalogue. And we would be more than grateful if you did at least one of the special songs that we voted for. It would make your fans that live in the former Soviet Union very happy. We guarantee thunderous ovation in return!
We sincerely hope you’ll understand how much it means to us and thank you in advance.
