IT WAS a lost moment in the history of the greatest pop band the planet has ever seen. The Beatles' first full television interview was given in Glasgow as the Fab Four began their rise to worldwide fame.
The interview was recorded at the Theatre Royal studios of Scottish Television in Glasgow on April 30, 1964. It was broadcast only once and only in Scotland, on May 5, on a children's teatime TV programme called Roundup.
And then it was lost. Fans
, archivists and historians knew the group had done the interview, but almost no one had seen it.
Now, more than 40 years later, it can be revealed that the interview has turned up in a rusty can in a London garage.
And Scottish Television, which still owns the copyright, is planning how and when to broadcast the lost Beatles interview.
"It is really important and it is amazing that it has turned up," said Jamie Bowman of the Beatles Story museum in Liverpool. "Interviews with them are quite rare anyway. They would perform or they would play up for the cameras rather than sit down and do a serious interview. We were aware of it. It was just one of those things that were presumed lost. It's a huge find."
Fans and historians were taken completely by surprise when extracts from the nine-minute interview were broadcast on Radio 4 last week.
Scottish Television is in talks with Richard Jeffs, a television researcher, who unearthed the footage. Both parties are tight-lipped about exactly how the interview was discovered and what happens next.
A spokeswoman said: "I can confirm that Scottish Television owns the copyright of this footage… It is unique footage, so we would love to make it available to viewers and we are just talking about the best way to do that."
Jeffs said: "This is a good story for them (Scottish Television] and they want to tell it in a television programme and they have made decisions about that." He refused to answer detailed questions. "It's a great story and if you want to know it, tune into Scottish Television when the programme is coming out," he said.
The Beatles preceded the advent of the domestic VCR. Most recordings of the group were thrown out or taped over, along with many other classic television programmes.
Janet McBain, curator of the Scottish Screen Archive, said she almost choked on her breakfast when she heard of the discovery. She said: "That footage has long been believed to be missing, lost when a lot of the early STV footage was destroyed in the 1970s. If this footage has now appeared that is fantastic and helps to recover some of the early iconic Scottish television moments… We would of course be pleased to be considered as a home for the footage, to ensure it is preserved as part of our cultural heritage and a unique contribution that Scotland made to the birth of the Beatles."
Jeffs said he found the interview inside one of 64 cans of film in a garage in London, though how he found the garage in the first place remains unknown. He said simply that the films were "going to be thrown away" and that he "got to hear about them".
The contents lived up to his expectations: a 'sit-down' interview with all four Beatles, recorded at the height of Beatlemania. Jorg Piper, author of The Beatles Film & TV Chronicle 1961-70, said it was "the earliest British long-form studio interview".
Not only were the Beatles huge in the UK by this time, they had just broken the US as well. There was little time for interviews and no one realised how precious those few rare recordings would become.
In the STV interview George Harrison says: "We're just running around like mad." But he enjoyed "ordinary things", like driving, playing American import records and watching films and television.
Asked about the thousands of screaming fans that followed them, Paul McCartney says: "We love that... the atmosphere in the theatres, really it's marvellous."
Interviewer Morag Hood asks Lennon and McCartney how they wrote their songs. They say there is "no formula" to the song-writing partnership that was on its way to producing the greatest catalogue of popular songs of the 20th century. McCartney says: "Normally we sit down and try and bash one out… He (Lennon] can come up with one completely finished, but we still say we both wrote it though."
Ringo Starr and Harrison sit on the floor while talking to teenage presenter Paul Young, who went on to become a well-known actor, presenting his own shows about angling.
