Harry And His Court Jesters: The Music Video

[Spaniard in da Works]

It's a rule of the Internet: if there's something that you have seen more than twice, there's a TV Tropes page about it:

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/ ... ilmOutside

Apparently there are even instances of shows were only the outdoors segments survive precisely because they're on film and were not wiped.

[Antonio218]

Many thanks Lord Reith, magnificent post!!!

[ashwom1]

This is wonderful. Thank you Lord Reith.

If only 'It's The Beatles' had been filmed with the same competence the following month.

[MarkRJones1970]

Wondering if John toned down his introduction to Twist and Shout. from what he was going to originally say.

I do remember reading somewhere that John had originally suggested saying "Just rattle your f**king jewellery"

[Lord Reith]

Thanks for your comments guys. As you know, the RVP can be seen in Anthology but it's missing a song (SLY) which was just plain stupid especially since as I recall the anthology vhs volumes each ran for about 70 min. They literally could have included THREE times as much material on each tape. It's particularly maddening when you consider taking OUT a song required extra work to actually leaving it IN. Madness.

One thing I like about this show is that we get a good birds eye view of Ringo and can see everything he's doing. He's the foundation on which their entire sound is built. Before Ringo, they were like a busking band and their tempos were too rushed and all over the place. Ringo provided the steel frame upon which the musical concrete could be poured, to use a building analogy!

One thing that puxxles me greatly: at the climax of the "Ohhh, ohhh, ohh, ohh" buildup in Twist And Shout there's a crescendo on a crash cymbal... but Ringo is nowhere near the crash cymbal! He's playing the ride cymbal! So where the hell does that crescendo come from? Is it the guy in the pit orchestra who just thought he'd join in?!

For those who don't know who Harry Secombe is, he was one third of The Goons and The Beatles would have been completely starstruck to meet him. He was also the owner of one of the finest tenor voices of his time, and his performance at the end of the show is staggering... what a voice that man had. A force of nature.

Same with lots of other 70s boot vinyl which lifted the audio of TV broadcasts (Ready Steady Go, Shea stadium, Japan Budokan) and movie soundtracks (Let It Be, MMT, Help) There was simply no way you'd ever see the visual content, so the audio was enough to experience. (Lord R, I love your recollection of recording the Dr No movie onto audio tape from the TV... the whole thing?.. and still being able to 'visually revisit' the film!)

Yes, I taped so many of them. I taped That'll Be The day, Stardust, Let It Be, Heroes Of Rock And Roll and more and still have them. For some unfathomable reason I did not tape Help! even though it was shown twice on tv when I was a kid. And i still have my cassettes of the Beatles Cartoon, in apallingly lofi quality but, man, did I play those to death. It was quite a while before I got my first Beatles album (Rock And Roll Music). The thing that is unique and great about The Beatles' music is that the magic comes across no matter how degraded, multilated and poor sounding it might be. Can't think of many bands where that would apply.

It's a telerecording(kinescope) of a 405 line tv isn't it? It all looks like that. Live broadcasts couldn't be recorded "to video", I think? They're all telerecordings.

It wasn't shown live, it was about a week later. It was videotaped by ATV on 2 inch tape. They also transferred Morecambe And Wise to film but that came out much better. They were supposed to suppress one of the fields to stop interlacing artefacts appearing on the film but they seem to have forgotten to do that for the RVP.

Speaking of TV, video and film - I wonder what was about video recording equipment that was unsuitable for outdoors work, you can see in all those old BBC or Thames TV series that whenever there's some on location shooting the image gets grainier and the colors get warmer because it's done on film. There's even a Monty Python sketch parodying that.
I also wonder if that had become an expected aesthetic because I remember it being very characteristic of British TV, even in series from later years when I'm pretty sure the Betacam already existed.

There were no "Outside Broadcast" video cameras in 1963 I don't think. The cameras were gigantic and cumbersome and mounted on a huge heavy plinth. They COULD drag these monstrosities outdoors for exceptional occasions like the crowning of Elizabeth which was shown live, but it was far easier and cheaper just to send out a film crew with a few 16mm cameras. Back in the studio, videotape was much cheaper because it could be re-used.

Thank you, Lord Reith and all

Interesting performance of Beatles in Royal Variety Performance.
Wondering if John toned down his introduction to Twist and Shout. from what he was going to originally say.

He looks apprehensive, as if he's not sure he's going to get away with it. Unfortunately the camera doesn't quite capture the funniest moment of all - when he does a curtsey! And they cut that entirely out of Anthology.

They could, they just weren’t kept. Videotape was crazy expensive in those days, it was intended for short term recording (like a daytime performance to be broadcasted that same evening and perhaps one rerun) and to then store them would be like arguing to store a brand new car in a museum just because the Queen sat in it. Kinescopes were the intended archival format, and secondly they were more or less the only way to distribute European (PAL) recordings to the US (NTSC) and vice versa. That’s how a lot of stuff was saved on kinescopes, if they would have used the same system ‘across the pond’ we probably wouldn’t have been so lucky.

Yes, unfortunately the tv companies did their level best to destroy most of these kinescopes too. When ABC became Thames in 1968 (?) they took much of their archive out and bagged it up in plastic garbage bags for the dirtmen to take to the tip. We're just lucky that some of The Beatles ITV stuff survives on film because I think it sold very well overseas and thus there was a good chance a print would survive. The BBC stuff fared far worse.

If only 'It's The Beatles' had been filmed with the same competence the following month.

Yeah, the visuals are not good on that one. I wonder if they tried to sell it overseas or didn't bother.

[harrylime]

There were no "Outside Broadcast" video cameras in 1963 I don't think. The cameras were gigantic and cumbersome and mounted on a huge heavy plinth. They COULD drag these monstrosities outdoors for exceptional occasions like the crowning of Elizabeth which was shown live, but it was far easier and cheaper just to send out a film crew with a few 16mm cameras.

That's a bit of a misconception I'm afraid, just because some studio camera's were monstrosities doesn't mean all tv-camera's had to be. Not even in the early period, where outside broadcasting was perfectly feasible. See the '48 London Olympic Games for instance: https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/res ... pic-games/. The coronation (not crowning, that's done when a monarchy is instantiated for the first time) was televised on the good ol' Marconi Mk2 camera's:



Hence the BBC's mobile outdoor broadcasting using those camera's was done with their so-called 'Marconi Unit', for more pictures see for example https://tvobhistory.co.uk/how. It's just for something like comedy or drama series, it would have been needlessly expensive to work with such a unit, which required of course more and higher paid staff than just a studio crew (which for staged acting probably meant just a recording engineer). To illustrate, check out this picture from the mentioned website that features 15 (!) crew members.

[TELEGRAM SAM]

Many Many Thanks!

[nickotina]

One thing that puxxles me greatly: at the climax of the "Ohhh, ohhh, ohh, ohh" buildup in Twist And Shout there's a crescendo on a crash cymbal... but Ringo is nowhere near the crash cymbal! He's playing the ride cymbal! So where the hell does that crescendo come from? Is it the guy in the pit orchestra who just thought he'd join in?!

Man, that bird's eye view is exciting! I am a drummer and treasure these shots!

He's playing on a 18" crash/ride cymbal. Much speculation still going on about what brand it is exactly, but most probably it's a Zyn or Super Zyn - an English brand, cheaper but similar to the Zildjians he used from Sullivan onward). It was light enough to give a nice washy crashy sound when hit hard and close to the border, but Ringo was a master in getting the right tone and he mainly used it as a ride.
His left hand cymbal is a 20" Paiste Stambul with a big bell, and that's actually much heavier than the other one! You can see how little it's moving when it gets hit. A nice example of its sound is heard at the very end of Please Please Me (studio recording), where he hits it three times: being left handed it was the easiest choice for him!

[Claude_de_Faux]

Thank you !

[billymartin70]

One thing that puxxles me greatly: at the climax of the "Ohhh, ohhh, ohh, ohh" buildup in Twist And Shout there's a crescendo on a crash cymbal... but Ringo is nowhere near the crash cymbal! He's playing the ride cymbal! So where the hell does that crescendo come from? Is it the guy in the pit orchestra who just thought he'd join in?!

I don't think it's someone joining in, it's just Ringo. In that part, he's hitting the ride cymbal in a 'crescendo' mode and at the climax he hits the cymbal harder as well as the snare drum, finishing with a second cymbal. He played all the Beatles material with such great style. He's the greatest.