Moscow September 29, 2003 (eXoNews) - On May 24, 2003, Sir Paul McCartney took his Back In The World tour to Russia. It was the first time the Beatle ever played there and A&E Network ran a two-hour documentary on the concert last week.

Paul McCartney in Red Square gives us Paul singing and playing various instruments with his amazing tour band.

The fab five include Rusty Anderson on lead guitar, the incredible Abe Laboriel, Jr. on percussion, Brian Ray on bass and guitar, and Paul "Wix" Wickens on keyboards. Everybody sings backup.

If you missed it you're out of luck for a while, but I'm sure it's likely to surface again on A&E or as a DVD because it is a truly magical film.

It's also more a Beatles than McCartney documentary in an odd way.

As an American, it is impossible to fully comprehend the effect Beatles had on the former Soviet Union. Paul McCartney in Red Square gives us a hint, recalling the locked down state of the Iron Curtain countries in the 1960s when Beatles first emerged to conquer the world and eliciting the testimony of a wide range of Russian Beatle fans trapped back in the USSR before the Curtain lifted.

The current Russian defense minister tells Paul how he copped his first illegal Beatles record. A Russian sociologist credits Beatles with laying the groundwork for the fall of communism and explains how Russian youth made Beatles an icon for freedom.

Paul meets with Mikael Gorbachev and President Vladimir Putin (who also seems to be a Beatles fan because he shows up for the concert.) A bearded collector explains how Beatles music changed his world. A Russian rock musician holds up a battered black and white photo and says it was the single glimpse he had of the Beatles for years.

They had the records, but nobody was sure which guy was Paul and which was John.

Soviet Beatle fans never heard the band on the radio, never watched them on TV and didn't get to see Hard Days Night or Help! Beatles were literally underground in Soviet Russia. The State never formally declared Beatles subversive, but the KGB wasn't very happy with the Liverpool Lads after Beatle records flooded the black market. They didn't like the way Beatles affected the kids. They feared that Beatles might cause an underground cultural revolution.

And the KGB was right.

The McCartney in Red Square filmmakers weave this testimony to Beatles Cold War influence into the footage of Paul's concert during the first hour, but nothing drives the point home better than the audience shots when Paul and his band hit Beatles tunes. This Russian audience is in tears at finally seeing Paul! Everyone knows the words - and I mean everyone: from older folks who back in the day cherished bootleg Beatle "flexis" scratched onto old x-ray negatives, to teenyboppers and little kids who were generations in the future when Paul, John, George and Ringo were singing All You Need Is Love.

There is also some of the celebrity on holiday stuff. Paul gives us his take on the visit throughout the film and we join him with wife Heather on a brief cycle around Red Square (turns out to be illegal, even in modern Russia) and to meet Putin, where Heather lobbies the Russian president on her anti-land mine efforts.

We go on a visit to a Russian orphanage where the kids sing a piece from McCartney's Liverpool Oratorio (1991). Other students perform a Beatles tune at a Moscow conservatory where Paul gets an honorary doctorate.

The Red Square concert music is excellent, of course, because we know these songs too. Shivery moments with Fool On The Hill and kickass with Birthday and we share the audience reaction to Maybe I'm Amazed and Band on the Run.

As sad as it is to have lost two of the Beatles, we are very lucky that Paul is still with us and out there working.

Although he says at one point that he's not a god or anything, just a fella like anybody else, there is something supernatural about this guy.

The Russians aren't the only ones who are really glad to see him!

Paul McCartney Official site - http://www.paulmccartney.com

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