‘Beautiful Night’ was the third and final single from 1997’s Flaming Pie and features Ringo Starr on drums. All four tracks on the Beautiful Night EP are available on the forthcoming deluxe edition of Flaming Pie, and two of them – ‘Beautiful Night’ and Oobu Joobu Pt. 5 –were available on the original UK CD single (CD 1, to be precise). This is the track listing:
- Beautiful Night (on CD 1 of the deluxe Flaming Pie)
- Beautiful Night – 1995 demo (CD 2 of the deluxe Flaming Pie)
- Beautiful Night – Run Through (on CD 3 of the deluxe Flaming Pie)
- Oobu Joobu Pt. 5 (on CD 4 of the deluxe Flaming Pie)
Oobu Joobu Pt. 5 was a specially edited sequence of chatter, song snippets and songs inspired by Paul’s radio show broadcast on American radio network Westwood One in 1995. On the original CD single this was a 10 minute sequence. On the digital EP (and on CD 4 of the Flaming Pie deluxe edition) it’s over a minute shorter.
Anyway, towards the end of Oobu Joobu Pt. 5 we get around four minutes of the original 1986 version of ‘Beautiful Night’ that Paul recorded with Phil Ramone in New York. ‘Loveliest Thing’ (which featured on one of the ‘Figure of Eight’ UK CD singles and was DOWNLOAD ONLY on the Flowers in the Dirt deluxe edition) was recorded during these sessions. I think fans would agree that it was always a bit annoying that this was ‘hidden’ in the mix of ‘Oobu Joobu’.
However, what McCartney is offering today as a free download from his website is the full six minute version of this 1986 original. This reason this is important – and maybe you can see where this is going – is that this version is NOT included on the forthcoming £200+ deluxe edition (sigh). Yes, you do get the truncated four-minute version within ‘Oobu Joobu Pt. 5’, but that’s it!
In short, Paul is up to his old tricks. Demos, alternates, extended versions from albums such as Wild Life, Red Rose Speedway, Flowers in the Dirt, Tug of War, Pipes of Peace, and Venus and Mars have all ended up on Paul’s website but NOT on the physical product. This is infuriating, but inexcusable when the retail price of the new deluxe edition is so high.
Flaming Pie is reissued on 31st July 2020.
The Fat Angel Sings 