Man I love that second video. Very cool to see those guys recording with analog, tape and 4 tracks. I think they were a bit freaked out about the whole thing.

Pointless trivia for you... George Martin was my boss when I first set out (worked at Air at Oxford Street for a year). As a teaboy of course. I'll stop right there as most of my stories about it are egotistical twoddle that does not come across well on the internet (as per usual).

As it happens, the "South Bank Show" wasn't BBC, but London Weekend Television, one of the (private sector) independent tv companies that were generally lumped together as ITV. Different companies covered different parts of the country, but with largely interchangeable programming. A more recent version of the programme ran on Sky Arts.

The South Bank Show was mostly a very "dry as dust serious high culture" arts programme. The name comes from the region of the Thames in London where the 1951 Great Exhibition was held and then re-developed into a cultural zone including the Queen Elizabeth Hall, National Theatre and Royal Festival Hall. Not the kind of place pop music often found a ready home back in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Or that really attracted a broad spread of clientele either, tickets tending to be expensive and evening dress the costume.

So it's a significant reflection on both the Beatle's importance, and the social changes between 1968 and the 1990s. What was once regarded as the Beatles, purveyors of three minute pop songs to the world, going all weird and hippy becoming recognised as just as much "art" as Stravinsky, Cage and other modern composers.

Melvyn Bragg's a bit of a national treasure in the same way as David Attenborough. If you can access the BBC radio website and iplayer there's dozens of episodes of a Radio 4 programme he's presented for years called "In Our Time". Discussions about science, history, art, philosphy and pretty much everything else where he comperes usually three or four academics who really know their stuff and can present it in a way that's understandable to non-specialists. The BBC decided to make the complete archive publicly (and hopefully permanently) available, which they've never done for anything else in the same way.

It's the kind of thing that makes the BBC stand out from the commercial channels amd is well worth a browse.

OK, diversion over, back to the Beatles.

Interesting watching that after the more recent George Martin documentary. McCartney was much less 'mannered' and flippant back then, more thoughtful and interesting.

Rain
I had recorded the Pepper one on VHS back then - The Beatles were practically all I listened to back then and every little bit of info, clip or photo I could find was precious. 
 
Haven't seen the Abbey Road one though - this should be interesting! Thanks for sharing!

It's probably hard to find, but "Let It Be" (the film) is as open and clear about them as you will ever find, and if you listen to the 7 Christmas Shows that the Beatles had for their fan club, you pretty much get a good sense of their personalities and where a lot of their ideas came from.
 
The harder part, was one other side thing ... Spike Milligan saying that they had created a film about running jumping and standing still, and later the cameraman for that directed the Beatles doing the same thing, and that film went huge ... and the Goons forgotten! And rock audiences, have a tendency to not care about history, either.

Yeah, the Beatles were OK, but what have they put out recently?  Huh? 

craigb
Yeah, the Beatles were OK, but what have they put out recently?  Huh? 

Weird ... I've been wondering what Stravinsky, Beethoven and Albinoni have done lately. Even the CHB ... but, I've been told they are long dead, Craig! Something is wrong ... the music still lives, dude!

The sold a few albums in the past.




Statistic Verification
Source: RIAA, Apple Records, EMI
Research Date: 2.19.2014

Let’s not kid ourselves, the Beatles were the biggest band on the planet, period. If you disagree just let the stats below do the talking. Over 2 billion albums sold! Come on! How many people have sold 2 billion of anything let alone recorded music? Their recording studio may as well have been a money printing mint.

The Beatles Total Album Sales Statistics Data
Total Albums Sold 2,303,500,000
Total Albums Sold on iTunes 585,000
Total Singles Sold on iTunes 2.8 Million
Sales By Available Markets
United States 209.1 Million
Canada 13.6 Million
United Kingdom 7.5 Million
Germany 7.3 Million
France 3.1 Million
Australia 2.8 Million
Japan 1.9 Million
Argentina 1.6 Million
Brazil 600,000
Sweden 584,000
Austria 570,000
Switzerland 450,000
Beatles Billboard Chart Statistics
Total weeks on chart 1,278 weeks
Total number ones 15
Total weeks at number one 175 weeks
Album with longest time spent at number one ("Please Please Me") 30 weeks

And they did that over a mere 6-year career. Compare to, say, the Eagles, who sold ~150 million over 40 years.

Were the Beatles officially recognized as the first "super group"? 
 
If not the first, then surely the best behaved. I can't remember a single press article about them trashing hotels or treating fans like insects. They were after all, the lads. Even my parents liked them in 64.