Give My Regards to Broad Street is the name of a film and soundtrack album, masterminded by Paul McCartney. They were both were released in 1984, following the success of McCartney's previous albums Tug of War and Pipes of Peace. The film of Broad Street proved to be a financial disaster, but the soundtrack album sold well. The title is a pun on George M. Cohan's classic show tune "Give My Regards to Broadway", making reference to London's Broad Street railway station, which closed in 1986.
Filming and recording of Broad Street began in November 1982, after Pipes of Peace's completion. Production on the album and film continued until July the following year. In the interim, Pipes of Peace and its singles were released, and the film project was thus scheduled for an Autumn 1984 release once an appropriate amount of time had passed.
A Video Game of the film was released for the commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
The majority of the album - which is sequenced in the order of the songs' appearance in the film - features re-interpretations of many of his past classics of The Beatles and Wings: "Good Day Sunshine", "Yesterday", "Here, There and Everywhere", "Silly Love Songs" (the only Wings song included), "For No One", "Eleanor Rigby" and "The Long and Winding Road" (without the heavy strings courtesy of Phil Spector that McCartney had so loathed in 1970). There were also interpretations of songs from McCartney's more recent albums; "Ballroom Dancing" and "Wanderlust" from Tug Of War and "So Bad" from Pipes Of Peace. Besides "No More Lonely Nights" (also heard in a dance version), the only previously-unheard tracks were "Not Such A Bad Boy", "No Values" and a symphonic extension of "Eleanor Rigby" entitled "Eleanor's Dream". The scope of the album was so immense that when it saw release that October, its vinyl issue had specially edited versions of its songs. The cassette and the later CD edition preserved the tracks' full lengths, while the CD went one further by including a bonus 1940's-styled piece called "Goodnight Princess".
Simultaneously with the film's premiere in November McCartney's Rupert Bear recording "We All Stand Together", started back in 1980 and credited to 'Paul McCartney and the Frog Chorus', was released and became a hit single in the UK, reaching #3.
Give My Regards to Broad Street was remastered in 1993 and reissued on CD as part of 'The Paul McCartney Collection' series with two extended dance mixes of "No More Lonely Nights (playout version)" as bonus tracks.
1993 edition also includes:
Due to the length of the recording, the 1984 LP omits "So Bad" and "Goodnight Princess", edits out about 6 minutes of "Eleanor's Dream", and also sections of "Good Day Sunshine", "Wanderlust" and "No More Lonely Nights (playout version)".
On the LP cover a remark alerts the listener:
Track lengths on album notes don't include spoken sections between songs and so don't match CD timings. On the list below these sections are included at the beginning of each track, as on the 1984 release, while on the remastered 1993 CD (listed above) they are mostly included at the end of the tracks.
| Year | Country | Chart | Position | Weeks | Certification (if any) | Sales/shipments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | United Kingdom | UK Albums Chart (Top 100) | 1 | 21 | Platinum | 300,000+ |
| 1984 | Norway | VG-lista Top 40 | 4 | 16 | ||
| 1984 | Japan | Oricon Weekly LP Albums Chart (Top 100) | 6 | 18 | 160,000+ | |
| 1984 | Sweden | 9 | 7 | |||
| 1984 | United States | The Billboard 200 | 21 | 18 | Gold | 500,000+ |