"San Francisco - a U.S. city favourite of mine, if not one of the greatest cities in the world - also offered me a seminal moment in my early career. After guest starring in the television series, The Streets Of San Francisco (1972) (Karl Malden and Michael Douglas), Clint Eastwood, who saw the episode, offered me the role of 'Davis' in the second of the Dirty Harry films, Magnum Force (1973). Not only would that film mark a first 'big' break, Magnum Force would eventually lead to an offer from Aaron Spelling to do the role of Hutch in Starsky And Hutch.

"San Francisco and her musicians also provided me a serious beginning to my recording career as well as the musicians who would make up 'The Band of Friends' for the next twenty years... Andy Kulberg, Chris Michie, Norton Buffalo, Richard Green, Jac Murphy and Jimmy Hodder. Although I had started out as folk singer in Minneapolis back in the early sixties, and then, in New York during the mid-sixties, my first album, David Soul, was recorded in San Francisco at His Master's Wheels in 1976 (Elliot Mazer producing). Such fond memories. I remember playing free concerts in a park on Sunday afternoons with the likes of the Jefferson Airplane, Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead... and gigs at Bill Graham's 'Winterland' and Filmore West, the number one rock venue in San Francisco. What great days they were! I lived in an apartment in 'Cow Hollow'. Today, my brother Dan is a pastor (formerly in Pittsburgh - See The Fighting Ministers) in San Francisco and works in the Filmore District with the street people.

"But getting back to Magnum Force - a film classic. The film concerns itself with the issue of street or 'curb-stone' justice. When notorious criminals and murderers can escape the legal process based on technicalities within the law, a group of vigilante cops, young members of the San Francisco Police Department, decide to mete out their own form of justice - by eliminating the perpetrators of violent crime with violence. Justified? You decide. These young gung-ho vigilantes basically circumnavigate the legal system and take the law and its judgment and execution into their own hands. While Dirty Harry Calahan (Clint Eastwood) is no friend of 'civil liberties', he is dead-set against wholesale murder as a solution to the bad guys getting out on legal loopholes. The result is a fascinating thriller that, even today, lies at the center of debate over the question of the way the justice system works. Get the film and make up your own mind.

"Meanwhile, here's a brilliant edit of a few scenes from the movies, edited by my dear friend and colleague David Delfouneso set against the song by the English group, Mo Solid Gold called David's Soul. Check out the subtitles... beautifully set against the action. The lyrics tell a story of their own. Enjoy and think about it."

David Soul

Trailer soundtrack David's Soul performed by Mo Solid Gold from their debut album Brand New Testament. Produced by Stephen Lironi. Mixed at Quad Studios (New York City). Mixed by Michael Brauer for MHB Productions Inc. Assisted by Ben Holt. The copyright in this sound recording is owned by EMI Records Limited ©2000 EMI Records Limited. Edited by David Delfouneso. Warning: Contains some scenes of a violent nature.