FEATURE:
“I Saw a Film Today, Oh Boy…”
IN THIS PHOTO: The Beatles in 1967/PHOTO CREDIT: BIPS/Getty Images
The Beatles and the Birth of the Pop Video
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EVEN though I have been looking back a lot this month…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mark and Colleen Hayward/Getty
I have been thinking about The Beatles and their incredible visual side. We can all debate which songs are their best and what takes the top spot. This year has seen a lot of Beatles activity and, to be honest, we never stop talking about the band! They are this immortal and evergreen sensation that are always going to be relevant. Not only do I think they reinvented Pop and caused an explosion like no other; The Beatles are the greatest thing to ever happen to music. One cannot dislike them – unless you’re an idiot -, because they produce so many masterpieces, varying in ambition and sound. It is hard to believe the same band wrote Love Me Do (1962) and Strawberry Fields Forever (1967). There is a lot of debate as to when the first music video was made. Some claim it is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody of 1975. Others claim that it is the MTV-launching Video Killed the Radio Star from The Bugles. I do think there is that split between the link of the music video and MTV and when the first music video was actually made. Although Queen’s video was released in the 1970s, I think it is quite primitive and cannot really be called the ‘first’ video. I am not sure what people’s criteria is but, back in the 1960s, The Beatles were releasing music videos. One can quibble over terminology and whether they were ‘promo clips’ or full-fledged videos.
If one accepts Bohemian Rhapsody and Video Killed the Radio Star were videos, then one needs to put The Beatles right alongside them. I will come to my favourite videos from The Beatles, but there is an interesting article that asks whether The Beatles invented the Pop music video as we know it. I think they definitely did invent the Pop video and released videos that look far crisper and more memorable than most of what is around today! This article from 2015 was written around the time the Beatles 1+ DVD was released:
“There is a tendency to think of music videos as originating in the Eighties, the era of MTV and Michael Jackson’s Thriller, when every major single would be accompanied by a short film, marrying music with visuals in ways intended to enhance the song and market the artist’s image. But, in common with so many pop innovations, The Beatles got there first.
The newly released Beatles 1+ DVD features 50 promos of the Fab Four, sweeping viewers from a charmingly static black and white mop top performance of Love Me Do in 1963 to a full colour, windswept, wild and funky romp through Don’t Let Me Down on the roof of the Apple building in 1969. No other recording artists of the era accrued anything like this kind of visual record.
“It was very unusual at the time,” notes Sir Michael Lindsay-Hogg, who directed Beatle promos for Paperback Writer, Rain, Hey Jude and Revolution. “They weren’t thinking about the future, no one envisioned MTV.” Yet Lindsay-Hogg, who was 26 when he started working with the Beatles, was never in doubt of the significance of these innocent, early promos. “Society was changing and music was in the vanguard. The appearance of the musicians, their clothes, hair, their way of talking was stirring the pot of social revolution. I always thought what we were doing would be part of the history of that time.”
Early promos were filmed quickly and cheaply and sent out to TV shows (such as The Ed Sullivan Show in the US) to spare the Beatles appearing in person. The band treated the process with typical irreverence. On I Feel Fine, filmed at Twickenham in 1965, Ringo rides an exercise cycle whilst George sings into a boxer’s punch bag. Production values improved marginally when Lindsay-Hogg was drafted in for Paperback Writer in 1966. “My original idea was that they would all be journalists in a newspaper office with little typewriters, and Paul would be secretly writing a novel.” However, manager Brian Epstein objected. “I got a call a saying Brian didn’t want anything 'unusual’. He just wanted to see the boys performing. Perhaps he thought that would be more useful to ship around the world.”
As the decade progressed, the visual language became increasingly adventurous, with the legendary 1967 promos for Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane anticipating the kind of special effects laden, narratively abstract, stylistically bold videos with which modern stars routinely mould their image. Other successful bands began to follow the Beatles lead, with Lindsay-Hogg making promos with The Rolling Stones and The Who. “I would say Mick Jagger was the one who went into the most preparation, thinking this is the way things could go. He’s very smart and sees what the possibilities and challenges are. In the Beatles, the equivalent person was McCartney, who was hands on in so far as he could be. But Paul was pulling a different weight, because it was harder to get the other three Beatles to go the same way. Between Jagger and McCartney, they’d be great to be on a desert island with, because they are incredibly funny, incredibly bright and extremely resourceful.”
Although the earliest clips from The Beatles were quite simple and a lot of them were of the band performing on stage, it wasn’t long until they were making these marvelous and vivid videos. I love Paperback Writer because it makes you smile. Ringo is not playing drums – he has this gloomy look throughout -, and the film quality is exceptional. The band are playing the song in a garden/section of a garden and I think it is the essence of a great Pop video. They are performing live, but there is a sense of mystery and fun. It is a beautiful-looking video and, compare it to a lot of the videos from the 1970s and 1980s and it was way ahead of its time.
Rain (the B-side of Paperback Writer) captures The Beatles completely in-step and at their best; Help! sees the band sat together, shot in black-and-white (this video was released before Rain and Paperback Writer); Ringo holding an umbrella at the back of the line. I am really interested in the sheer kookiness and whimsical nature of the videos. The Beatles could mix the serious and the silly together effortlessly. One moment, one of the band would throw a scowl or serious look at the camera, and the next might find the boys joking around and cracking smiles. I think the key to the earliest Beatles songs was the simplicity and effortlessness. As such, it would be strange to make videos that were full of plot and characters. A lot of Pop bands at the time were either not releasing videos, or it was of them playing the song live. The Beatles truly changed Pop in more ways than one. I think their videos paved the way for artists to try something different and change things up. With the band moving more into experimental and psychedelic territory by 1967, the videos had to match that. I love the clips for Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane.
The former sees the lads in a field, and they are working this contraption. It is hard to make it what it is, but I love the close-up shots and the reversed film; the blend of colour and darker shades. It is the perfect accompaniment to a trippy and magical video. Penny Lane’s starts with John Lennon walking the street (like a boss!) and then the band are on horses, riding through the streets – why not, eh?! The Beatles, of course, appeared in their own films, so they had experience when it came to acting; they have that love of film and bringing that together with their music. One can notice a shift in their videos through the years. Whilst a lot of bands in the 1960s were – if they did at all – releasing videos that were quite limp and forgettable, The Beatles had this knack of creating a little world for each track. Maybe it is the wonder of seeing the guys on screen together, but I think there is something deeper.
The Beatles were and are the biggest Pop act of all-time, so I think the Pop video started with them. Their videos were varied and brought something unique to the table. Everyone has their own opinions as to the best Beatles videos. This article explores their top-five. Don’t Let Me Down is truly iconic:
“It might not feature their most beloved song or their most popular one but this video does commemorate the Fab Four’s final public performance via their immortal rooftop concert at Apple Studios in London circa 1969 — with both Lennon and Harrison decked out in furs, McCartney sporting a thick beard, and Ringo upstaging them all with his red plastic jacket. Pay close attention and you’ll spot Billy Preston accompanying the guys on the keyboards, too”.
Whilst I am a bigger fan of the earlier videos (pre-1967), there seems to be more love out there for the 1967/post-1967 videos. Maybe that reflects a fondness for the albums (of The Beatles) that came out at the time or a greater degree of colour and innovation. Hey Jude is not only one of the best Beatles songs: its video is pretty amazing:
“First seen on the fairly short-lived Frost on Sunday on LWT (a.k.a. London Weekend Television) in 1968, this video encored in America on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour later that same year. Stick around past the 47-second intro and you’re brought up close to McCartney’s face singing straight into the camera, with some cut-aways to the other band members — most memorably a gum-chewing Lennon who looks to be making faces at McCartney at one point in an attempt to make him laugh. The emergence of a studio audience onstage at the end doubles as a time capsule of period fashions”.
So many Pop videos today are drab, unambitious and lack and feel. Even if Pop music is in a bit of a decline right now, the video is a crucial art-form and platform that is not yielding that many gems. The Beatles, throughout their career, were putting together videos that stays in the mind and seem progressive today. Consider what they did on A Day in the Life’s video:
“Given the song pays homage to avant-garde titans John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen among others, the video’s experimental feel — part light show, part cinema verite, part family home movies — feels perfectly appropriate. Quick glimpses of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards amid a montage of increasingly hallucinatory power adds a layer of glamor. Why are the tuxedoed orchestra members wearing strange noses and silly hats? Because they were asked to!”.
It is obvious The Beatles were way ahead of the game in terms of videos in addition to the music. There is debate when the music video was born; it clearly pre-dates The Bugles and Queen, that is for sure! One cannot deny the impact of The Beatles’ music videos on Pop acts that followed them. A band like them could have put out live performances or not really tried and it wouldn’t have mattered. Of course, there was not music T.V. around in the 1960s; a few of their videos were filmed for different Beatles films of the time; they formed part of a larger narrative. One can quibble regarding the birth of the music video in general, yet very few can deny the fact The Beatles…
CHANGED the Pop music video forever.