John Lennon, Paul McCartney on The Tonight Show, May 14, 1968, Complete Audio
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 มิ.ย. 2024
- The history is well known: John and Paul guested on The Tonight Show while in New York City to promote their new self-managed enterprise, Apple. Unfortunately, that night Joe Garagiola was guest-hosting for Johnny Carson, and, unbelievably, his first guest was long-faded actress but now just known-for-being-known Tallulah Bankhead.
Both John and Paul were disgusted and embarrassed with the appearance, as Joe presented them with the most inane questions they'd been asked over a thousand times before, questions more suited for, say, 1964, but not at this stage of their musical development. And Tallulah was clueless. It was a wasted opportunity.
NBC subsequently erased the show, using the videotape for a future Tonight Show episode, thus leaving its preservation in the hands of fans who had recorded it on their reel-to-reels. One fan in particular captured snippets of John and Paul's appearance on his family's 8mm movie camera.
Those moving images have been circulating for years; it's since been made available on other TH-cam channels. But the complete audio hasn't. Though I'm finding that it reportedly once was but the channel that had put it up was taken down. I'm uncertain whether it was specifically because of the audio or instead of other uploads on that channel.
On the late evening of May 14, 1968, I, then towards the end of my high school junior year, was among countless fans who had attached alligator clips to their home tv speakers and connected it to their reel-to-reels. I recorded John and Paul's entire appearance, save a few seconds turning the tape over while Bankhead was making yet another inebriated and incoherent point.
In July 1981 I dubbed the original 1968 reel-to-reel appearance onto a new tape, and I've used that new tape for this upload. Now, 43 years later, what I've done here is attach the scant home-movie footage to the audio, syncing it as best I could. I've left the audio as is, with its occasional flaws and all. We'll soon see if this survives on the channel.
By the end of May 1968, all four Beatles, now back in London, would begin recording tracks for the White Album.
Tallulah Bankhead would die seven months later of double pneumonia.
Paul wouldn't guest on The Tonight Show for another sixteen years when he came on to promote his film "Give My Regards to Broadstreet." This time Johnny was there for the chat. Carson Entertainment Group has made it available on its channel.
Note: There have been a number of comments suspecting that the reason Johnny wasn’t hosting that night was his dislike for the generation of music that The Beatles had inspired. As Joe explained when asked where Johnny was, Carson was on one of his Stand-Up tours and was that night performing in Gaithersburg, Md. It was a touring schedule made long before the John/Paul booking. Joe had been guest-hosting that entire week of May 13-16.
So while there may be some merit to Johnny’s attitudes about the music, that was not the reason why he wasn’t there that night, nor, indeed, that entire week.
Leave it to the geniuses at NBC to erase the moving picture record of the ONLY appearance by two Beatles on the Tonight Show! Also, what a double pity Johnny wasn't available to give the lads the interview they well deserved😢
Regardless of its less-than-stellar quality, I'm thankful, Don, that you had the foresight to record the audio of this historic interview and, later, save it for posterity!
Johnny Carson is no doubt partially responsible.
@@andydixon2980 Yeah, he was probably ducking the whole deal.
@@andydixon2980Carson was furious about it, actually… the decision was made without his knowledge
My sentiments exactly! It's a historic appearance. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the shortcomings of the audio/video. I mean it is John and Paul, after all. 👍
That was standard practice.
People, recognize how much work was done to get this to the point it's at. Most uploaders would just take the surviving footage and play it as is, with painful audio gaps. This particular uploader hits every possible detail, though. He kept every fragment and (I'm sure with time consuming effort) edited every gap to smooth it out for us.
Yes, a commendable effort!
This is fantastic!!! Thanks for this!
Thanks for helping preserve TV History, Mr. Giller!
Thanks for posting this. It’s an historic document; the most complete version of this I’ve ever run across.
If Johnny Carson would have been there that night for the interview of John and Paul together, that would have been epic❣ This is still a rare moment seeing these two Beatles at the same time together for the interview. Thank you ❤🙏🎸🎼⭐✨
Don strikes again with more great classic clips ❤❤ thank you!!!
Excellent! Thanks for this.
Joe Garagiola was possibly the worst interviewer of these guys I've ever seen. And Tallulah drove it all the way over the cliff. So sad.
LOL He was a baseball player, a fill in. Where have you been?
Actually, I thought that Tallulah added a bit of spice. Joe had to go, though.😅
@@waynej2608 Yeah, Tallulah was the best part! Her genuine misunderstanding could've led to some fun comedic moments, if they had run with it. I especially loved when she thought that they'd tried to take in a baseball game, not realizing it was their concert venue, and she talked about not understanding cricket. Classic.
@@waynej2608Agree with everything u said. This is what I thought, also!
I'm just as much a Tallulah fan as a Beatles fan. Her autobiography is "mahvelous, daahling." Cool bit of preservation here.
Amazing work Don!
Amazing -- thanks so much!
Cool to hear this and see it a little bit. Thanks
Thank You Don!
Thanks, Don!
Don! Thanks so much for having the awareness to record this audio in the first place and for posting it now. It’s fascinating and cringe inducing. Joe G is so condescending! Everything they say shoots right over his shiny noggin.
I didn't find him condescending, just a bit out of his depth. I think he genuinely liked The Beatles.
this would be after they released the "lady madonna/the inner light" single and while the were beginning work on the white album and the "hey jude/revolution" single. surprised there was no mention of or attempt to promote "lady madonna." thanks for the video.
Great job on the Audio. Very clear
Thanks; I really didn’t do anything other than making it louder.
@@dongillerIt is much appreciated, nonetheless.
? Far too much bass.
Can you eq sound for voice - boost mid & treble range? Thanks.
@@robertriordan1823 Won’t happen. Appreciate what’s here for the first time in 56 years.
Some here don't like the guest host. However he indeed was funny in the sports world and was particularly beloved by the baseball community. He was great at telling sports stories. His book "Baseball is a Funny Game" was for me literally laugh-out-loud funny. Baseball fanatics still love it, at least those entertained by history of the 60s and earlier. I was surprised that I still related because it was so funny.
Thank you Don.
Thanks Don! Beatles forever!
Great, Don! Nice surprise!
I really miss your uploads. A “will it float” ultimate compilation would be killer 😂. Any way you can continue to post letterman compilations on any other platform?
Possibly never, unfortunately.
@@dongiller That’s unfortunate. It’s nice of Worldwide pants to allow you to keep this channel up though, I just miss the big comps
Yeah, Hugh gratitude for that.
And thanks!
Can't believe there is no high quality video for this interview, it's john lennon and paul mccartney for gods sake, in their damn prime. Also Johhny Carson didn't even interview them wtf. They dropped the ball with this one
Nobody reads my descriptions.
Joe Garagiola was also a game show host. Just a few years later he was a host of Sale of the Century I saw a taping at 30 Rock, maybe in the same studio, don't know.
A baseball player and broadcaster, not an interviewer.
Heard an interview with Garagiola, he said he enjoyed his banter with McCartney, but was aware John Lennon was upset Carson wasn't there.
This is wonderful and I'm so glad you bothered to rig up a taping as it happened and then 55 years into the future propped it up for thousands of current Beatle fans to see and hear it as it was taped over by NBC. But I've got an axe to grind about your introduction which gives a thorough account of your process but sadly misleads on a main character. Tallulah Bankhead wasn't "long faded" but was concurrently playing on Broadway at the time of this broadcast. Ms Bankhead was clearly a little tanked but hardly clueless. She held her wit and as a 66 year old would do then; as now, brought up the youth in her personal life and how they were experiencing the Beatles because they were such a complete presence after JFK. She was communicating her personal experience with the phenomenon. McCartney and Lennon seemed like a complete break from the past yet they referenced it continually as they were both heavily influenced by the music of Bankhead's era. She was NOT "known for being known" as people get propped up today. She was a highly respected theater actress of stages all over the world who had done some film and was very well beloved for a radio show that was WAY ahead of its time because it was far more honest than most with counter cultural in-jokes. She demanded a fairly sophisticated ear for the time or at least an ear that wanted to hear more than the crap that was pummeled to people (not unlike now.) She would die just a few months later of pneumonia because of heavy alcoholism and pill taking due to being in a world of homophobic nit wits. She was a force to be reckoned with but not a celebrity for no reason. That's absurd and I'm not sure where anyone would come to that conclusion. That may have simply been your impression as a teenager but it wasn't the case. The reason she was also behind the desk was because her wit was notorious and her interest in the counterculture started long before there was such a word. She'd been a long time ally of Bohemia.
Joe was the jocular jock that wouldn't intimidate anyone but was good with sports stories so he's way out of his league here and they all sense it. Tallulah saves the day by keeping it respectful and they were both doing what a lot of older people were doing with the Beatles: giving it all legitimacy to stay relevant.
I'm sure in a lot of producers' minds, pairing a chatty baseball hero with teenage music heroes would have been a magic combination but the Tonight Show was inordinately square about what was going on around them and felt they had to be square to appeal to the sanctity of mid-west conservative sensibilities. Johnny wouldn't have flown in for this and his love of Jazz had to also do with being brought up in the 40s. He never brought on particularly outre jazz musicians, either. But he did love music and funny people. He probably wouldn't have done as well with them either. Their wit was in a class of honesty that was above everyone else which is why it was so particularly radical and breathtaking...not unlike Tallulah's during her own shows. In many ways, she was the John Lennon of the stage and of radio and while not the idle of bobby -soxers, even some teenagers liked her.
Outside of that, thank you endlessly for coming up with this.
Fair points, all. Except for the notion that she “saved” anything. A more common and appropriate behavior would have been to shut the hell up after her own guest segments, and allow the next guest (or guests) to be the focus during their own segments. Instead, she continued to interject herself, constantly interrupting with wholly irrelevant asides about her own life experiences. Wholly inappropriate. Joe couldn’t get any sort of flow going with John and Paul with Bankhead’s injections.
So for that I’ll stand by my description.
@@dongiller Except she was behind the desk with Joe and co-hosting and not on the down end of the couch. So she was expected to interject. They did this when they'd have a main and co-host. She was there to spice up Joe's pal-o-mine banter. Unfortunately, she was too tanked to do it without much awkwardness. M&L were probably fairly stoned too. I didn't find it irrelevant but wholly relevant to putting them into context or insisting that she found them to be serious, which for her generation was validating them. Most 40 somethings let alone 60 somethings wouldn't have done that then and saw them as a annoying flash in the pan for teenyboppers that wouldn't go away. Regardless, I'm really thankful you were able to document the thing and have enjoyed watching it twice. And I appreciate you taking the time to respond.
No, she was _not_ co-hosting, regardless where she sat. She was just another guest on the show who was the first to appear.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on this. In the early days of the Tonight Show they sometimes had brief co-hosts behind the desk to co-interview and add to the discussion. If she was another guest, she would have been seated on the sofa. She was invited there to add to the conversation. So she wasn't interrupting. But she was a bit hammered.
Mike Douglas did the co-host thing for a week. The tonight show might use a co-host for one night and then it became clear to just use Johnny with Ed as the announcer/sidekick.
It's too bad Johnny Carson wasn't there that night.
Don Giller strikes again!
Wow, rare. Too bad Johnny didn't bother to show up.
Did you record every Late Night with David Letterman? How many tapes did you go through? What motivated you to record and keep them?
I began videotaping every show after I got my first VCR in mid-February 1985. (I had been taping them onto audio cassettes before then.) All shows (on video) previous to then were acquired via aired repeats, trades, and then dupes from the studio masters.
How many tapes? No idea. A lot. The trick was to never play them until the technology was developed to digitize them, which I did, starting in earnest in the Fall of 2015, finally completing it in January 2019.
Why? Because no one else was.
It’s a shame that Joe Gargiola obviously did no prep for this interview. There is just nothing here. He might was well been interviewing empty chairs.
Macca later on was on Carsons show but Lennon was probably insulted by Carson not being there. I’m glad it was recorded at least.
Paul was clearly insulted too, since it's the first thing he brought up to Johnny and then gave him nothing to work with all interview.
There are pictures of the Doors walking around in Central Park in 1968 as well. Perhaps they crossed paths.
Give it a few years, A.I will probably be able to fill in a realistic HD recreated video just from the audio.
always had a great story
Idea for Apple turned into TH-cam
Miss Bankhead seems to have enjoyed a drink or two before the show. Good lord, what a woman to listen to. It is incredible to me that the Tonight Show managed to fumble this interview. You'd think the studio people would've wanted to see JC interviewing PM/JL. Paul being very nice at 5:08, you can tell the interviewer picked up on Paul being moody ("not breakin' a mood, am I?"), most likely due to the god awful interview and the infuriating fact that Johnny Carson wasn't there!!
5:26
8:33
9:21
10:51
11:47
17:10
18:58
19:13
Nice job syncing up the video with the audio. That must've taken some effort.
The longer clips would go out of sync, so I slowed them down slightly to get them to sync a bit better. Still not perfect, though.
I mean,its not like it was 200 years ago...and this all we got??? How? ...
Nobody reads my descriptions.
@@dongiller this one isn't _everybody_ 😎
You can tell Garagiola is trying hard to show how he was funny and 'cool', too. But instead, it just showed how clueless and out of touch he was w/ these guests. Lousy timing on Carson being gone, but who knows how that might've gone. But it would've had to have better than this. Maybe they didn't have the cheat sheets then w/ topics to talk w/ the gues about.
For those speculating on what Carson may have thought of the Beatles, here's a clip of part of his interview with Ringo in 1981 cued to a relevant spot....th-cam.com/video/bArj93zbhWQ/w-d-xo.html
thanks donz. lennon said in a later interview they were on the tonight show "with Joe DiMaggio or whoever it was " haha. i liked garagiola maybe not the best choice for a sub-host. i think tonight show was doing the novel idea, 'revolving guest hosts' then , but as another poster said it was probably a snub by carson
As I replied to someone else: As Joe explained, Johnny was in Gaithersburg, Md. that night, part of a stand-up tour scheduled long before the John/Paul booking.
@@dongiller ok, before booking, no snub. i didnt see the other comment. thanks
This interview didn't go all that well, probably because John and Paul were disappointed that Johnny wasn't there. Also Garagiola is a goof ball, anyway. Bankhead is interesting, of course.
An observation: Johnny Carson not being there was most likely a snubb to John & Paul here. It's well known that Mr Carson didn't like The Beatles or any other revloutionary bands of the 60s that completely changed the musical landscape. Johnny Carson was a Sinatra fan/jazz man and resented the Beatles knocking the great Sinatra and many others from the 40s/50s off their musical pedestals.
Fast forward to 1984 and observe the icy interview between Johnny Carson and Paul McCartney. He knew he couldn't avoid the Beatles popualrity, even in 1984, and Paul tries to give Johnny a hard time in this interview.
That wasn't why Johnny wasn't there - check Don's responses above.
@@daveg6839 his description has all answers
Johnny should have come back from holiday for just that one day for this. Carson should have been doing this. It would have been mindblowing!
He wasn’t “on holiday,” please read the description, in particular the Note at the end.
Leave it to nbc to not have johnny there that night not have better questions and not line up these classic interviews more often not promote them ahead of time so on.
They were bilging money and instead of paying it as taxes they decided to branch out into shops, movies, and individual artists. It was well meaning, except they couldn't hassle the shop part. Very revealing when John asked if this was 'in color'. It was about mid way into the years where color TV was common.
Yet another interview where John dominates the conversation and Paul is diffident and barely coherent, but for some reason the interviewer insists on claiming that Paul is somehow the spokesman for the group. He still carries that label around his neck to this day and yet I have yet to witness him performing that function, at least not at the time.
I’d suggest the opposite, that it was Paul who spoke more than John. Haven’t timed it, though.
And before John's life had been hijacked by Yoko, how did that ever happen?
This is a few weeks before the Esher sessions at George’s house when they began the recording of the White album. Only audio? Yea, that’s great . How stupid can they be?
Nobody reads my descriptions.
@@dongiller I saw it. It still sucks
You’re so welcome.
@@dongiller good posting nonetheless
Lennon seemed so bored.
More like Nocluellah Blankhead. Awful
She died later that year. Her wild life had caught with her. Read her wikipedia page. She was wishing to die by her early 50s. She's 66 here.
American drivel
NBC Sucks
Joe Garagiola has no sense of people. He actually thinks that Paul was the one with the razor-sharp wit, not John. But then again, what can you expect from an empty-headed retired mediocre baseball jock.
He's 42. I'm sure his appreciation for their music is on the same level of appreciation we have for Taylor Swift's music. I don't think there's any disrespect here on his part. He understood their popularity with the younger generation but didn't worship them. He was definitely a sub-par interviewer for the day. I'd take him over today's talk show hosts.
@@zefallafez This has nothing to do with age or era. Leonard Bernstein was older than this dolt, & he considered The Beatles (especially John & Paul) musical geniuses. To compare Taylor Swift to Lennon or McCartney shows you have no credibility when it comes to understanding music &/or art.
@@johnnybmean74 I'm just seeing it from his perspective.