Press conference for The Beatles' "Our World" performance • Saturday, June 24, 1967
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- Album This interview has been made to promote the All You Need Is Love / Baby You're A Rich Man (UK) 7" Single.
Interview
On May 18, 1967, Brian Epstein signed a contract for The Beatles to appear as Britain’s representatives on “Our World”, a live television production that would be broadcast internationally via satellite on June 25. For this momentous occasion, The Beatles chose to record “All You Need Is Love”, a track written by John Lennon, and perform parts of it live.
On this day, June 24, the day before the broadcast, a press conference was held at Abbey Road in the late morning, with numerous reporters and photographers invited in through the normally closed doors.
However, just a few days prior, on June 16, Life Magazine had published an interview with Paul McCartney in which he admitted to using LSD. The ensuing controversy prompted journalists to focus their questions on this topic rather than on the upcoming broadcast.
To the group’s chagrin, the photographers kept shouting out questions that had nothing to do with the upcoming broadcast. That was because Paul had done a controversial BBC interview a few days previously in which he confessed that he’d taken LSD. The other Beatles stood by him, but I could tell from the looks on their faces that day that they weren’t pleased about the unwanted intrusion into what they saw as their personal lives.
Geoff Emerick – From “Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles“, 2006
BEATLES USE THREE SATELLITES TO PLUG NEXT SINGLE!
Pop history was made when a new record was plugged to the whole world at the same time! The honour rightly went to the Beatles, who sang their “Love Is All You Need,” an upbeat, joyous-sounding, simple-lyriced song which is their next single.
The sound and pictures went out from the EMI studios, where the Beatles make all their discs, via BBC-TV, across the world, on Early Bird space booster over the Atlantic, and spanned the wide Pacific via Lana Bird and ATS/B satellites. The audience was estimated at 600,000,000!
The Beatles were seen in action, John and Paul together on high chairs, with earphones on and mikes in front of them, George farther back and Ringo at the back. They were seen playing, and then the camera went to George Martin, in the control booth. He suggested the extra musicians come in and thirteen of them took their place opposite the Beatles and facing them. While they filed in, Beatles’ road manager, Mal Evans, took sandwiches around for the boys and some sang, “She Loves Me, Yeah Yeah Yeah” off-key.
Then, with the violins at the start and brass at the end, the Beatles went through their new number, which has a chorus reminiscent of their songs of four years ago. John spoke the message over a background of “Love, love, love” sung by Paul and George.
Press was invited to the actual transmission (only a few Beatles’ friends, like Mick Jagger, Gary Leeds, Keith Richard, Marianne Faithfull, Jane Asher, Patti Boyd, Graham Nash and Keith Moon were present) but, the day before, the doors were thrown open for a free-for-all picture session, at which I managed to have a quick word with —
PAUL: Someone’s just asked if I’m leaving the group. And there seems to be another rumour I’m moving. Both are very wrong. I’ve just finished my house and like it a lot. No, I haven’t bought a kilt yet.
GEORGE: We will do a TV show before we do a film. Nothing new to tell you about the film project. No script yet.
RINGO: My garden is looking great now. Got some of my building men to help the gardening contractor and everything’s okay.
JOHN: This song will be our next single. This TV show will give it a nice send-off.
Indeed, with some 6,500 TV workers and 1,000,000 miles of telephone wire working for the disc, it couldn’t be bad!
Last updated on February 10, 2024