Paperback Writer (Version 3 - Black & White)

About

The Beatles were unwilling to appear on television to promote their upcoming new single, “Paperback Writer / Rain.” Instead, they took part in a two-day shoot which produced a total of seven promotional films for the two songs. All those films were directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and produced by Tony Bramwell, with a technical team supplied by InterTel.

The idea was that we’d use them in America as well as the UK, because we thought, ‘We can’t go everywhere. We’re stopping touring and we’ll send these films out to promote the record.’ It was too much trouble to go and fight our way through all the screaming hordes of people to mime the latest single on Ready, Steady, Go!. Also, in America, they never saw the footage anyway.

Once we actually went on an Ed Sullivan show with just a clip. I think Ed Sullivan came on and said, ‘The Beatles were here, as you know, and they were wonderful boys, but they can’t be here now so they’ve sent us this clip.’ It was great, because really we conned the Sullivan show into promoting our new single by sending in the film clip. These days obviously everybody does that – it’s part of the promotion for a single – so I suppose in a way we invented MTV.

Geore Harrison – From “The Beatles Anthology” book, 2000

On the first day, May 19, 1966, The Beatles and the film crew gathered at EMI Studios, Studio One, in Abbey Road. The first task was to film colour versions of “Rain” and “Paperback Writer” for the Ed Sullivan Show in the US. This was done from 10 am to 10:40 am for “Rain” and from 1:10 pm to 2 pm for “Paperback Writer.” They also recorded a personal introduction to Ed Sullivan with their faces hidden behind coloured transparent plastic sheets, and Ringo declaring:

Well, I’m sorry we can’t be there in person, you know, to do the show, but everybody’s busy these days with the washing and the cooking… and er, we hope you like it… and, er, one’s called “Rain” and one’s called “Paperback Writer”.

Ringo Starr

In the afternoon, between 3:30 and 6:30 pm, they filmed black-and-white promotional clips for the UK television, two for “Paperback Writer” and one for “Rain.”

In all of these films, Paul McCartney can be seen with a chipped front-top tooth, the result of a moped accident he had in December 1965.

At 7 pm, Paul McCartney moved to Studio Three to join the overdub session for his song “For No One,” where horn player Alan Civil added a French horn part.

The following day, May 20, 1966, The Beatles and the film crew relocated to Chiswick House to film additional versions of “Rain” and “Paperback Writer.”

Last updated on October 7, 2023