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Never-before-heard music by Jeff Beck and Paul McCartney discovered in Paul’s archive

1994 track unearthed featuring spoken environmental message from Jeff Beck – and 30 years later the powerful message remains as relevant as ever

Left: Photograph of Jeff Beck by Linda McCartney. © 1994 Paul McCartney
Posted : 30 January 2023

With the news of the death of music icon Jeff Beck, memories came back to Paul McCartney of the time the two of them got together in his studio almost 30 years ago. “With the sad passing of Jeff Beck – a good friend of mine, and a great great guitar player – it reminded me of the time we worked together many years ago on a campaign for vegetarianism,” said Paul McCartney. “It’s great guitar playing, cause it’s Jeff!”

Jeff Beck’s environmental message opened with him asking, “Why are they cutting down the rainforest?”. This message was included in a US 13-part radio series presented and created by Paul McCartney called Oobu JoobuThe show gave a unique insight into Paul’s world featuring rehearsals, demos, unreleased recordings, conversations and cameos from many of Paul’s friends, and highlighted campaigns close to Paul’s heart such as vegetarianism.

Upon going back to these recordings, Paul’s team unearthed a previously unreleased and never-before-heard piece of music by Jeff and Paul. This recoding features Jeff’s spoken message about the dangers of deforestation. Almost 30 years later Jeff’s message remains as relevant as ever and is a view passionately shared by Paul.

Jeff’s message from 1994 highlights the damage caused by deforestation to create more land for cattle grazing, as well as some of the harmful knock-on effects from this. On top of the benefits to animals and personal health, there are also many environmental advantages to eating more plant-based meals.

‘State of Climate Action 2022’, a report from the World Resources Institute, recently underlined the need for richer countries to shift to a more plant-based diet, while a report by the UN Environment Programme, ‘The Closing Window’, stressed that there is no time for tinkering around the edges if we want to avoid a disastrous rise in global temperature – only significant and rapid societal change will do, including a change in what we eat.

Watch the visualiser for the music here:

The video will be the first of a new series featuring friends of Meat Free Monday.

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