YouTube has become the internet sensation of the moment…..
Because they don’t worry too much about copyright, they have many pieces of video that would otherwise be difficult to come by. Here are some particular ones. Watch the clips then read the explanation – or the other way round……
(Unfortunately in Feb 2007 this link doesn’t work, presumably because YouTube has copyright problems with the BBC. Wait a while….)
An explanation….
In 1969 there was a live 13 show series on BBC1 at 6.00pm on a Saturday called, in very ’60s style, “Happening for Lulu”. Though Lulu was known mostly for ballads this was a rock show, and one of the few places pop singers could be on tv in those days. There were also Pan’s People –
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All except the first were Crew 7 shows, with senior cameraman Ron Green on the front of the Nike crane. The shows weren’t very rehearsed – the producer Stan Dorfman relied on the expertise of his crew, and because everyone often worked together, there was a huge rapport all round, and somehow it all just seemed to happen.
The first show that Crew 7 did was show 2. I was the junior member of the camera part of the crew, and though I drove the Nike crane for the rest of the series, on this one I was a cable basher. I think this was the only time, in a camera career that included all together too much cable-bashing, that I was pleased – in the end, anyway.
When we arrived in the morning, a van was off-loading a huge pile of loudspeakers – more than we were used to by some way. “Jimi Hendrix is on” we were told. We spent the day not quite rehearsing, as usual with Stan, then went live at six. Hendrix came on and did Voodoo Chile. If you’re standing 20 feet away with not much to do, it’s a very good way to see a bit of history like that. Then Lulu did a link into Hey Joe, and off they went again. About half way through Hendrix stopped, announced that he was going to do a tribute to Cream, who had just broken up, and started to play Sunshine of Your Life. This caused a certain amount of panic, as you don’t normally change course live and unrehearsed (more than usual) on BBC1. The floor manager – John Hughes – waved his arms and generally conveyed the idea that they should stop. The audience were really loving it, but Hendrix sort ground the band to a halt, the sound department played a burst of recorded applause, and Lulu sang the closing ballad.
The show was recorded on 2″ 405 low band on a VR1000, but the whole series was soon wiped, including this sequence.
Except – a VT engineer called Bob Pratt, who really ought to get a medal, was in the habit of saving stuff he liked. Even then, the BBC policy of wiping practically everything was notorious amongst those who’d made it. Bob had the job of changing the heads on 2″ VT machines. He’d be in at 0600 before everyone else and have two hours to sort the equipment before anyone else came in. Rock music was his passion, and knowing everything would soon disappear, would spend some of that time dubbing off the thing he liked onto junk tapes, which would disappear under the VT department floor. This Hendrix sequence was the only bit of the Lulu series he saved, but if you’ve seen anything of Sounds of the Sixties, you have him to thank for much of it.
Part of the reason that things got wiped, apart from mad BBC politics, was that Equity, the actors union, wouldn’t allow more than two showings of anything, and that had to be within two years. These days we’d tell them where to go, but those were different times. Eventually, Tom Corcoran, producer of the rock show Old Grey Whistle Test –
(OGWT …
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– heard of the store of rock music stashed away in the basement, of which this was the jewel in the crown. He tried for seven years to be allowed to show it, and was turned down. Then, as the Thatcher laws changed everything, the BBC was suddenly allowed to show whatever it wished. It’s first response was to rush into production a clip show made on the stage at the Greenwood Theatre, in which stars did a Desert Island Discs of shows clips. I was the studio director. One of the guests was Lenny Henry, and this was one of his clips. So I have a rather better quality recording of the Hendrix piece than the one on YouTube.
