Beatles Abbey Road BBC2 TV special 1969

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by ajsmith, Mar 5, 2017.

  1. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    When I recently checked the RT listings for Colour Me Pop I was somewhat disappointed to discover that they never once allotted it a feature article in the 14 months it was on TV, and only for the last few editions did they even give it a descriptive sentence in it's listing. I guess this is reflective of the Light Night Line Up spot being somewhat fluid and subject to last minute adjustments in content (it was after all changeable in length as it was the last show on before closedown) so any show in that slot wasn't made a feature in that way. The generic description on every RT listing for Colour Me Pop is 'a late night diversion' which suggests a kind of end of the day after thought if you happened to be up late rather than a showcase event.
     
    caravan70, muffmasterh and dormouse like this.
  2. OneStepBeyond

    OneStepBeyond Senior Member

    Location:
    North Wales, UK
    Better looking IMHO. :D
    [​IMG]
    It's possible that the actual Radio Times advert was in b/w though - which would be ironic! I remember that it has a handful of glossy colour sheets, in among the dreary monochrome ones on what seemed like dead cheap paper stock... where the ink would come off all over your fingertips. That didn't change until cira mid-80s IIRC...
     
    caravan70, ajsmith and dormouse like this.
  3. dormouse

    dormouse Forum Resident

    The Radio Times advert was indeed in black and white on pretty poor paper stock and the image different but the text was pretty much the same. Ironic as you say!
     
    caravan70 and OneStepBeyond like this.
  4. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    hehe as the muffmaster would say : " right again " sadly nobody likes a smart **** lol

    from at least the begining of 68 there were promotions for colour TV, " see wimbledon in colour " " see the Olympics in colour " and the RT had a lot of offers along the lines of a free years rental if you could write on no more than 30 words why colour tv will change your live hehe

    of course colour was only on one channel until Nov 69 when the other two finally went colour.
     
    caravan70, OneStepBeyond and dormouse like this.
  5. muffmasterh

    muffmasterh Forum Resident

    Location:
    East London U.K
    you do indeed remember correctly although the rival TV times was from around the late 60's on glossy paper IIRC !!
     
    caravan70 and OneStepBeyond like this.
  6. OneStepBeyond

    OneStepBeyond Senior Member

    Location:
    North Wales, UK
    That's a bit before my time but I remember the TV Times (from the late 70s - that's as far back as I remember starting to look at tv listings) being a much more modern 'feel' about it. In almost every way, actually. :agree:
     
    muffmasterh likes this.
  7. Saul Pimon

    Saul Pimon Co-hosts Nothing Is Real Beatles Podcast (Jason!)

    Location:
    Dublin
    Where does this stuff come from indeed? I had to remember exactly where I’d read this. It’s in Steve Turner’s Beatles ‘66 book. There’s two paragraphs about it in the first chapter.

    Brian held a Christmas party in his Belgravia home in December 65. Afterwards he holds the Beatles back to present them with a present from Capitol Records. It’s a picture of a video recorder, which they’d never heard of. Early in 1966 the Beatles each get a VTR machine delivered to their homes. McCartney is quoted in the book from a 1966 interview saying “we’d be the first people in England to have them”.

    Maybe they were the first, they were definitely one of the first. According to the book, and Macca’s interview, all four had video recorders in Jan 1966.
     
    caravan70, dormouse and ajsmith like this.
  8. Big Pasi

    Big Pasi Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vaasa, Finland
    Pink Floyd's footage of See Emily Play was apparently rescued from a "badly damaged home video recording".
    And this was in july '67.

    :confused:
     
  9. JBassNut

    JBassNut Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tennessee
    I need to look at my old hard drives but I think I saved the pics from those Ebay auctions.
     
    ajsmith, OneStepBeyond and dormouse like this.
  10. dormouse

    dormouse Forum Resident

    That would be great. It looks like the one we have is cropped so a full frame would certainly add to what may well be the only record of this animation.
     
  11. Arnold Grove

    Arnold Grove Senior Member

    Location:
    NYC
    Yeah. It was Macca who taped it using the first home video recorder in England.

    Just kidding.... ;)
     
    Big Pasi likes this.
  12. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    Maurice Gibb definitely had an early home video recorder by 1969, which he used to record the March 6th edition of Top of the Pops on which The Bee Gees and his wife Lulu appeared. Here's an excerpt from his tape:



    I'm not sure who originally taped the two home recorded 1967 Top of the Pops which the Pink Floyd clip comes from.. the annoucement at the time just states 'The tape came from Bill Harrison who stores, catalogues and repairs (mostly) audio material for various clients in the music industry. Ex_1” videotape.'


    Top of the Pops recoveries | www.missing-episodes.com
     
    Big Pasi likes this.
  13. The Ole' Rocker

    The Ole' Rocker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    There is a synopsis and a frame-by-frame description of a 17-minute promotional video found on the Filmfinders Moving Images Database. I hypothesize this might belong to the ‘Abbey Road medley’ segment of ‘Late Night Line Up.’ I wonder if this is archived in their collection and available for viewing.

    Moving Image Communications
     
    ajsmith and dormouse like this.
  14. dormouse

    dormouse Forum Resident

    Sounds intetesting. Will check against what I have here to see how it may fit. Don't have the information to hand but I don't think there was a single source of material that ran this long but it is possible they have part of the broadcast programme archived which was sourced from various sources. I wonder if they have any more? Anyone out there recognise any of the descriptions or their original usage?
     
  15. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    I never would have thought that the 'Octopus' Garden' footage shown on RAGE in the early 2000's could have been from a lost Beatles Special! I taped that special back in the day (and still have it in storage). It rarely shows up on YouTube (and the clip posted has since been removed by the fun police :( ).

    I thought the clip may have come from GTK as the ABC plays a decent amount of GTK footage from their archives.

    GTK (TV series) - Wikipedia

    According to Wikipedia, a lot of GTK survived the infamous late-70s "economy drive" that wiped most of the ABC's archives because:

    "Telerecordings were used because of an odd quirk of ABC TV programming. Bellbird (Australian TV series) was distributed on videotape, and the news programs that followed needed videotape machines for editing their stories right up to on-air time - which meant that there simply weren't enough machines available to show GTK on videotape in all cities. (This was of course long before satellite television was widely available - in 1969, a satellite broadcast required the receiving equipment at Tidbinbilla to operate at very cold temperatures close to absolute zero in order to receive the weak satellite analogue signals that were generated in those days. This meant that satellite broadcasts were not only very expensive, but also had to be planned days ahead so that the receiving stations could prepare the equipment.) Even sharing live productions between Melbourne and Sydney required the use of a bandwidth-limited and expensive 'co-axial cable' between the capital cities. For these reasons, GTK has survived where most other programs of the time have not. Recent estimates from the ABC indicate that almost 100% of the series has been saved, which provides an invaluable record of Australian musicians of the period. "

    Whether GTK produced the clip or it came from the Late Night Line-Up program is something I'll leave to @dormouse . The BBC did routinely send black and white 16mm telecines of clips and entire programs to the ABC. These telecines are how we still have many episodes of shows like Dr. Who and The Goodies.
     
    Last edited: Jun 11, 2018
  16. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    For those interested, the ABC have uploaded several segments of the program on YouTube. Here is a semi complete episode featuring (what turned out to be) the final filmed performance of Jim Morrison.



    The show was a daily program (Monday-Thursday) around 10 minutes in length and would appear before the popular drama Bellbird.

    Anyway, if the 'Octopus' Garden' footage wasn't from Late Night Line-Up then it would have most likely come from GTK.
     
    caravan70 likes this.
  17. paulisdead

    paulisdead fast and bulbous

    BTW - I'm sure most Beatles fans know this by know. The "Come Together" footage from this footage has found it's way onto bootleg. TMOQ Gazette added it to their 1967 The Sgt. Pepper Commemorative Issue. The "lost" "Come Together promo used the "A Day In The Life" footage originally shot for the never completed Sgt. Pepper TV Special.

    The mix used is mono and the "Day In The Life" footage edited is as it normally is. It's claimed to be a unique mono mix, but it sounds like only the left hand channel of the stereo was used with a tiny bit of right hand channel bleeding. It would have been weird for Apple to make this mistake themselves - so it's either a mistake Apple made by transferring only the left hand channel back in 1969 or an ambitious outfake.
     
  18. The Ole' Rocker

    The Ole' Rocker Forum Resident

    Location:
    Ontario, Canada
    So, there is hope...
     
    caravan70, theMess and paulisdead like this.
  19. Tim Douglas

    Tim Douglas Active Member

    Location:
    london
    There is something wrong here ! My recollection is that Colour Me Pop was on early in the evening 19.00 or so(usually on a Friday ?perhaps it later moved to Saturday ?) They did sometimes have guest musicians on Line up which was on late 23.00 or later, but they might do at the most two numbers , but usually one ,in between the other articles and interviews in the prog whereas Colour Me Pop was the one band (there were exceptions )for 30 or 40 minutes My particular area of interest was the Fleetwood Mac episode b'cast in 1968 It is a lost episode As I've said before on other forums (Fora ?) -when Peter Green left Fleetwood Mac in April 1970, Late Night line up screened one of the songs from that CMP as a tribute (my recollection is that it was Love That Burns a slow minor key blues ,a fine example of his expressive playing.) So my point is, that 2 years after transmission they must have still had the original tape in order to have used a clip !
     
    caravan70 and The Ole' Rocker like this.
  20. john hp

    john hp Forum Resident

    Location:
    Warwickshire, UK
    I'm not aware that Colour Me Pop ever had an early evening transmission - the Fleetwood Mac appearance seems to have been on Friday 19th July, 1968 22.50 when CMP was shown in the Late Night Line Up slot (before it moved to Saturday evenings)
    LATE NIGHT LINE-UP - BBC Two England - 19 July 1968 - BBC Genome
     
  21. ajsmith

    ajsmith Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow
    I wasn't around at the time so I don't feel fully qualified to dispute your recollection, however as john hp says below all listings for Colour Me Pop in the BBC Genome and in the Radio Times list it as being transmitted in the late evening on Fridays and later Saturdays. Earlier editions were listed as 'Late Night Line Up presents Colour Me Pop' so it started off as an extension of it's parent show and it would make sense for it to be transmitted in the same slot. Is it possible you're remembering an unlisted early evening repeat, or maybe CMP footage being excerpted in another show? Or could you be recalling 'How It Is' the BBC1 pop/youth show broadcast at 6pm on Fridays in the same era (1968-9)?

    HOW IT IS - BBC One London - 30 August 1968 - BBC Genome

    You probably already know this, but just in case you don't, the audio for the Fleetwood Mac Colour Me Pop survives and is avaialble on Youtube. Here's 'Love That Burns'

     
    caravan70 and xilef regnu like this.
  22. Terry Nash

    Terry Nash Forum Resident

    Location:
    sydney australia
    Just saw
     
  23. dormouse

    dormouse Forum Resident

    Sorry, I've been away from this thread for a while. Family issues and a holiday have reduced the time I have had to post.

    This is the full item as opposed to the segment that we have previously seen and is an interesting missing link to the cartoon segment of the programme. A nice signed item too.

    I do need to check this out and compare to any information regarding the programme sources. More when I have this information to hand.
     
  24. Terry Nash

    Terry Nash Forum Resident

    Location:
    sydney australia
    Hi all just clarifying I own the cartoon caricature that they gave Rowan. It's not a cell or animation but a drawn artwork with cut out heads supplied by Apple through John Lennon. I recreated the song clip from what Rowan told me. I did the clip to 1969 specifications including grainy lines but youtube refused it because of the music so I just added one of my bands Purple Cream which is an original Beatlish sound. heres the link to that I made the heads wobble like in 1969 and added some old 60s dancers. Is it possible to upload here the full clip i created with the actual song MSH only because you guys and gals seem so lovin to see it. Enjoy youtube anyway cheers Vincent
     
  25. Terry Nash

    Terry Nash Forum Resident

    Location:
    sydney australia
    Here is the full clip I recreated you can see it at the top of my facebook band page Purple Cream BUT facebook like youtube has muted the music....so simply whack on the song and click play and you'll get the feel of what it was like to see and hear Maxwell's Silver hammer back in 1969 on Late Night Line Up Purple Cream Band
     
    theMess and ajsmith like this.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine