I wonder if what's been uploaded is part way through "Come Together" with the camera zooming in on John to show that it's John's song? Perhaps only some titles had an image of a turntable to segue into another track. I'd imagine a "Turntable Link" between every track would become quite repetitive after a while. There's a very strong change of this being the Abbey Road Special. According to the trailer for the documentary, Jack Henry Moore got his video camera equipment from John in 1969. John may have even asked him to "record" the special as it seems Jack had access to John and Yoko's inner circle. Would be good to hear back from Dig Media on how much of the special was captured and was audio captured as well? And what's also just as exciting as this recent discovery is what else in Jack's archive!
This thread has just leapt into the mainstream - someone shared the clip on Twitter and now it’s linked in a Bob Dylan fan site ( the lost footage element being a common subject) so maybe it might rattle a few memories and uncover a few leads, and more might turn up.
I think that the answer is we don't know where this segment is from in the programme. I don't think that the Day In The Life footage is documented as being used and I believe that the only documented us of the dancer/slides was for Something.
I just spoke to my pal who actually remembers seeing this programme at the time and told him that a copy of it apparently survives and that we may see it one day. He warned me that we may be disappointed if we expect too much of it. What he first remembered as moving footage from the album cover shoot, he now thinks was just a quick cutting of still shots, presumably the photos that we know well. He doesn’t think there was anything more interesting in the show, though it was thrilling at the time to hear the album for the first time. Hopefully his memory is deceiving him and if we ever do see it, there’ll be a “wow” element to it in the end.
I would like to see someone set the new mix of "Because" to various NASA footage now. Could be a really nice audio-visual experience.
I fully understand where your friend is coming from in his warnings of disappointment. But... What I think we need to do here is put this Abbey Road Special in its context in terms of what music programming was in the UK at this period of time in order to temper expectations and also cast our net a little further to assess what the counterculture art exponents were exploring at this point in time. We are not going to get an Anthology style Beatles-led documentary about the making of Abbey Road In fact we are not going to get any contemporary Beatles input at all other than providing the music and a few stills/album covers etc. The band were interested in someone giving an external contemporary visual interpretation of the music as a sort of multi-media event or performance art project It is not Let It Be or Magical Mystery Tour or even a series of promo films So what is it? At the time, music (particularly chart music) was typically either presented as guest appearances on other people's shows (eg. Hendrix on the Lulu Show) or via a Top Of The Pops appearance (either a band essentially miming or providing a live vocal to a pre-recorded backing track, or being interpreted by dancers such as Pan's People). The Beatles had not really been appearing in person on these type of shows for a number of years and The Old Grey Whistle Test, which provided a platform for more album orientated or progressive music, was still a couple of years away on the BBC. So what would this programme have been? The presentation of some of the future non-personal appearances on the OGWT perhaps gives a clue. They would often use archive footage (cartoons or such like) to accompany music where the band would not appear, perhaps due to geographic reasons or perhaps that they could not present live versions of more complex material. So from the paper documents that have surfaced and the brief teaser for hopefully a fully realised complete screening of the programme we can surmise perhaps that what it was (or indeed still is) perhaps a combination of what would have accompanied non-live appearances of musicians when their music was screened at that point in time: We know there is some 'archive' Beatles footage (the orchestral recording of A Day In The Life - this would already be hugely dated as the band's appearance changed at such a rapid pace during the later part of the sixties. We know that there is some dancing from Jane London with projection style overlays (this is somewhat similar to the TOTP dancers albeit perhaps a little less 'cheesy'). We know that there was a special Beatles cartoon to accompany Mean Mr. Mustard and have seen a still of a cell from this - it is good to know that we may get to see this fully realised now. I suspect it will be quite rudimentary from previous discussions, but still an interesting artifact. We seem to have some space-type footage which would have been of the time with the moon landings causing a huge stir. There would appear to be some silent movie footage (again typical of OGWT visualisations). There are films such as Hy Hirsh's Gyromorphosis and Autumn Spectrum utilised (which are arty, geometric animations or unconventional abstract films of nature). It is not difficult to see why these would have been on John and Yoko's radar OffOn is another film apparently used which was again avant-garde and married video and film in an innovative fashion. We also have stills and album cover imagery - I suspect those who recall some of this as being motion footage are mis-remembering zooms and pans of still imagery. It is not difficult to visualise a camera panning across the front cover of Abbey Road to give the impression of movement. I think it is fairly easy to see in your mind's eye how this footage could have been used to create an avant-garde backdrop to the music. It would have been most intriguing although I suspect it would not have been, shall we say, mainstream viewing. Yes I am sure that it would have disappointed fans who may have been expecting band performances of the kind presented for Hey Jude and Revolution but looking back now the programme would perhaps be a fascinating time-capsule of what the counterculture was in 1969 in terms of exploring boundaries in music and the visual arts. If the clip that we have seen is not deliberately degraded then it would appear to be something akin to a video recording from a TV screen. The somewhat fascinating possibility is that perhsps a lot of the source material is still in films libraries and, if the will is there, a pretty accurate re-creation could be attempted for the majority of the programme using the surviving material as a guide. There are some fascinating possibilities ahead. It is a slight pity that this could not have emerged a little earlier. Imagine what could have been added to the DVD in the SDE of Abbey Road. As a more documentary antidote there were some radio appearances promoting the album which could have added an extra dimension to the reissue. Isn't it great that these things still appear. Let's hope that Jack Henry Moore's archive has many more surprises!
Fantastic post, but I just want to correct you on the point that it was a cartoon for Maxwell’s Silver Hammer, not Mean Mr Mustard. While I know you knew this and it was a mistake, I just wanted to head off any speculation about a MMM cartoon off at the pass for anyone skimming this thread! (Although I guess it’s possible it was also represented by a cartoon!).
You are of course absolutely correct. I muddled Maxwell and Mustard. Documentation does not indicate any specific footage or information for Mean Mr Mustard other than that it appears to have been segued with Polythene Pam and the 'Turntable Link' has a handwritten note stating "Group caption" next to it. There is also a note on the document reading "Count down from 10" Quick out". Interestingly the track that would have followed this was Something. I say interesting as DIG have stated that the 53 second clip shows Come Together and Something. This would mean that the clip is edited rather than being continuous. Intriguing. I believe there is a version with sound but I have not seen this. That may explain the edit.
Very nice find! That looks interesting! Though it's a bit weird that psychedelic stuff is shown there. Especially the snippets that originally came from the 'A Day In The Life' promo film. Generally, Abbey Road isn't much psychedelic actually.
I haven't been able to get the Twitter version of the Abbey Road clip to play which apparently has sound. However there are indications from replies to the Twitter feed that Apple supplied the footage for Come Together and that it was colour. Documents also show that Apple supplied 156" of 16mm footage. This represents around 4:20 mins. It would appear that this footage was from the recording of A Day In The Life although we only have small section of this footage within the clip so it is possible that other items were included in the supplied film.
Have now managed to hear the accompanying audio with the clip. It is obviously an edit of segments of the Come Together and Something sequences rather than one continuous section. There are of course some intriguing possibilities regarding this programme. From what we know so far, it appears that Dig Media have a complete copy of the programme. However it does appear that their copy is a black and white video camera copy taken from a TV or monitor screen and as such is probably not of broadcast quality. The interesting potential here though is that the individual elements that make up the programme in the main probably still exist in various film libraries. With the low grade recording it may be possible therefore to pretty accurately reconstruct the programme using the original library footage. The only elements that may cause problems are what was essentially either broadcast live or was recorded by the BBC themselves. This may well be limited to the Jane London dancing sequences, the Maxwell's Silver Hammer animation and the turntable link sequences (which we haven't yet seen an example of). I suspect that the turntable links could be reconstructed pretty accurately if they simply show the record spinning on a record player. The dancer sequence could probably be given a treatment and colourised to provide a suitably psychedelic appearance close to what was originally screened. The cartoon sequence is perhaps going to be the most challenging aspect, but with a low res copy courtesy of the off-screen video may still be salvageable in some form. We know that there is an example of the style of the animation of the fab four that survives as a signed still. This is a project for someone. Apple, Dig Media and the BBC could do a deal here! The BBC licensed the original footage once, they could do it again to present a pretty good version of the original programme. They could probably get a fan with the appropriate video-editing skills to do this for nothing if they tried hard enough!
Thanks for these updates, Dormouse. This still fascinates me - I think this is closest to the most likely scenario, going by the BBC's unwillingness to clean up and reissue series such as Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe And Son (which there may be a possibility of 'colour recovery' on at least some b/w clips as there is a trailer for an episode on You Tube which looks fairly convincing to me and half an episode was recovered via a telecine/kinescope film coy but I don't know if any other film copies or segments have been found, as the process seems only to works with film ... ) And as always, the audience is not getting any younger. A pity. These shows are two of my very faves and were about the biggest thing at the time so more than just fondly remembered by a few! Although I wasn't around until the vast majority of S&S was made at nearly 50 I want future generations to enjoy them as much as I do. To put people who don't know in the picture (so to speak) HHH was made quite a while before S&S so original viewers of HHH would be at least in their mid 70s now!I have seen examples of fans doing great work on these two I mention, a few years ago - they just put the still-available DVDs to shame. I can give other examples but would bet I'm not the only one reading this thread who feels like this. And with the Beeb still cutting costs, having something like this done 'out of house' is what would have to happen I am almost certain. Look at what is possible at home, compared to even 5-1o years ago. For example, I've heard some DES (digitally extracted stereo) 'remixes' of songs that have had only mono mixes done back in the day, which would have almost totally convinced me that they were done at the time. Some not so great but especially recent ones - wow! Technology is advancing at such a rate as we know, it's often just a matter of the copyright holders giving their permission. As you say, if (as is reported) this Abbey Road Special is all filmed from a tv screen or monitor, it wouldn't be classed as anything like broadcast quality and 'colour recovery' would be out of the question anyway (same as for b/w video recordings - as in the case of Steptoe, about 12 episodes can't be 'colour recovered' because they were recorded to a then-current b/w home video format. I've likely repeated some of what I said a lot earlier in the thread, so my apologies if this is the case but it's almost two and half years ago now since this topic was begun.
Well I was sort of floating that suggestion on the basis that I would like to see an attempt made but it obviously would not, in any way, fit in with the diverse array of programming that we currently enjoy. Someone once tried to explain the colour recovery process to me but I can't recall exactly how it works. I think, though, that it involves a black and white film of a broadcast from a colour monitor (telerecording). I don't think that a video camera recording of this type would work. I'd be happy to be shouted down with this of course but I doubt the quality of the recording we have seen so far would be good enough even if the process would work with a video recording from a screen. And I agree that the BBC should be trying to preserve and improve, in whatever way possible, episodes of Hancock's Half Hour and Steptoe. If they spent a fraction of the Strictly Come Dancing budget (or cookery programme budgets, or any of the other tedious reality TV budgets or...) on these sorts of project there may be some hope for future generations to enjoy these classics. And they are classics, whether the current audience or those in charge, believe it or not. Also don't worry about repeating yourself. I have come to to the conclusion that you do need to keep these things in the public eye and if repetition is the only way to do so then I'll keep reading your comments!
Thank you for your kind words! Sadly, there is nothing for me to enjoy tv-wise these days (apart from if they are on DVD) as I get my news online and decided around 2007 that I was going to not buy a tv licence again, after realising all I was using the thing for was to watch Deal Or No Deal daily (quiz show) and read the Ceefax ("what's that?" people are murmuring.) I couldn't agree more with you but that's only because I catch bits and pieces of telly at work... I'm afraid I just don't 'get' SCD and disliked talent shows from a very young age. I appreciate others like these things and I'd not want them to be taken away from them but just don't understand why they are the biggest thing now and it now feels like we were spoiled for choice with a lot more variety on offer. I'd not like to try to explain how 'colour recovery' works because I can and do use half a page of text where a few lines would suffice lol. But suffice to say, it's in the same ballpark as you mention - it is the dots that are only present on CRT (cathode ray tube) screens which were filmed and so they don't exist on tape itself, apparently. The work done on the Dad's Army episode that I only knew from a fuzzy b/w version for years, blew me away. I'm hoping this this technology gets used more and more and then becomes... almost commonplace and costs come right down, so that we see more things like that being used for restoration and importantly preservation too. Back to the AR Special... I am picturing some sort of 'reconstruction' of this programme we are talking about here but would the BBC themselves do it? Would they see any point in it? Or even bring some person(s) unknown in on it? These are rhetorical questions, no doubt. And that is unfortunate. But whatever the future holds, I am sure there will be more Beatle discoveries - however small - and we may even get something very nice indeed out of this, actually, given time.
This has launched today world wide on fine arts America the Maxwell's Silver Hammer from LateNight Line Up The Beatles Art Authentic Abbey Road by The Beatles Vincent Ruello
