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!
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. 👍
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 ❤🙏🎸🎼⭐✨
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.
Paul was surprisingly thoughtful almost always, and John never gladly suffered a fool or took one too seriously. In May '68, I, too, was a high school junior and loved the Beatles, but I didn't have your ambition. I'm glad you did this work back then because I still love the Beatles as much as I did then, and I'm happy to view this!
Thank you for sharing this. I was four years old when this interview was done. This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. If only Johnny Carson were there.
@@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.
How could anyone blame Tallulah? She practically did the host's job for him, and much better too. She was clueless about the Beatles but not disrespectful to them and rather genuinely curious, and tried to alleviate some of the awkwardness. It was Joe who was hopelessly lost.
Mr. Don Giller, I thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for doing all you have done since that march 1968, to record, preserve and whatever else took to finally share with us here in TH-cam this moment. I don't care if that interview went very bad. Still is a chance to hear the boys as they were in real life, although they were uncomfortable. You just got a new subscriber.
I really appreciate that John and Paul traveled with and provided their own cannabis plants for this show! They were the Snoop Dog and Woody Harrelson of their day and great musicians as well!
Thank you for sharing!! I remember being mesmerized when I first heard and saw snippets of the audio/video back around 1994 when I attended one of the Beatlefest conventions. There was a guy who I will call "Maxwell" who always had the good stuff in his hotel room (i.e. bootleg CDs and vinyl). This particular time, he was selling copies of a VHS tape that he called "1968" which included Beatles outtakes from that year (Hey Bulldog for example). In it, there was this interview, albeit very incomplete, maybe about 5-6 minutes total and the audio was not synchronized at all. He was an LA guy and told the story that supposedly NBC had actually thrown out a ton of the Johnny Carson show tapes from the late 60s and early 70s. So who knows what other gem interviews are long gone from the NBC archives?
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
John actually stated that he was not happy whatsoever that Johnny Carson would not be present. He instead got some "ex-baseball player who knew nothing about show biz." Both John & Paul were anxious to ask Carson about their new Apple Records business endeavor that they were just starting up.
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.
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.
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.
They both were shy ... plus Joe Garagiola wasn't asking them good questions..he was too intimidated.. but I think they were not to thrilled to be there.. very strange vibes ...
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.
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?
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.
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.
@@dongiller Ha! Except that if she'd done all of that, she wouldn't have ever been Tallulah Bankhead. People in theater are just that: theatrical. Why does everyone need everyone else to be perfectly polite all the time? She shot some juice into the interview which was going nowhere with Joe who was clearly out of his element. If Carson had been there, she probably would have been more respectful in a sense and if she'd piped in, as most likely, Carson would have made a face or done something funny to show that she was interjecting into their time. But she was merely showing her own perceptions/perspectives in the "generation gap" which was still a very much commented on thing then. Personally, I didn't see her perspective of seeing their effect on her family and friends as being irrelevant but reaching out to her peers in the audience who very often wrote the Beatles off. I really doubt Joe would have ever had a flow going at all period. It was not his scene. He wasn't a music guy and was considered profoundly square and corny in his own day. It's a shame that Carson didn't take advantage of being there. Carson came around much later with Paul McCartney a few years after Lennon was killed. And Paul let him know that it took him long enough to come around. The outreach of Carson was enormous in those days. Because there are so many informational and entertainment options, we have nothing currently that can compare to the vast audience that Carson held in those days. His power of swaying audience opinion was profound and Lennon & McCartney knew it. They were not invincible and knew they needed a host with much better affinity for cool. At any rate, thank you again for posting it and allowing me to listen in and the discussion as it were.
This is exciting as a Beatle's fanatic of 60! Who cares re: should have been Johnny Carson doing interview. John was hilarious as always and Paul very calm, love them!💕💕
Thanks for your work that went into that Don. Yes, the interviewer is pretty bad, but I quite like Tallulah Bankhead and I think John and Paul would have as well.
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.
My God, Joe G. was not only did a horrible job but he was a big ASS to boot. Where in the heck was Johnny??.....I have to believe this interview would have gone totally different had he been there....and it would have been saved! Paul was about ready to go to sleep on Joe...that would have not happened with Johnny. Thanks Don for posting this Don !
The reason some New Yorkers didn't recognize them in '68' was because long hair had become popular by then. Apple was an experiment on their part, and Brian was gone. This was their Apple announcement, and they didn't stay long. Neither did Apple. They were disappointed Johnny wasn't there. Pattie Boyd told George about The Maharishi. Then they showed up for his stuff, and the rest is still history.
I read somewhere that Lennon and McCartney almost refused to do this show because they wanted the guy who gave them their warm-up interview to do it on the show instead of Garagiola. Seems like this entire day was a disaster for them, which is a shame because I believe it's the final recorded interview featuring both John and Paul.
I have to say, your comments are far more compelling and interesting than the conversation. How Paul and John got roped into having to deal with Garagiola and this woman is just bizarre. Let's face it, Johnny would have asked fluff, obvious questions as well (all you have to do is watch the McCartney appearance with him years later to confirm this), but it couldn't have possibly been this awkward. If you watch the McCartney interview with Johnny in 1984, Paul is very flippant and disengaged, with really short answers. I wonder if he was still ticked off about 1968.
At least this pops up, always heard they were on, but found it hard to believe and for a long while it was said they were but the tape of lost or ruined, so I had my doubts, esp since this would have been done a month or so before their big song Hey Jude came out and was no. one for a couple of months. I still can't believe this for they were almost too big to a talk show!
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.
As much as I love Johnny it shows how out of touch he was even then with the cultural fabric of the time. The two greatest composers of the twentieth century getting the second slot.
To be fair, at the time, the lead, featured guest(s) would always appear last on the then-90-minute show. For a simple reason: to keep the viewers watching.
Joe was a fuh king sportsGASter, a lot of hot air. Talullah said she went to Hollywood so she could "f**k that delightful Gary Cooper!" Thank q to any studios who kept their television master tapes in good shape, like WB, CBS
It's kind of incredible that the Beatles, from Epstein's death in 1967 to their dissolution in 1970, had no management. They had accountants, lawyers, and a press agent but no management. They would be micro managed today, and far richer than they were in the 1960s.
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.
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!!
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.
My favorite bit, personally: 11:00-11:25. When John's just said their life is calm and the interviewer asks Paul if he agrees. John's smile at Paul because he knows Paul's anxious and stressed is so sweet. Paul says, "It's very hectic, New York," then the interviewer asks, "what's so different about new York?" And Paul responds with sound affects. He's the type of neurodivergent that gets overstimulated and doesn't know how to use words and it's adorable.
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi :/ calm down dude he's creative duh. But those things I pointed out are not marks of creativity. Lots of creative people (ie John) don't have those traits. Those are markers of neurodivergence.
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi this is seriously so weird. If I had pointed out that Paul had really dark hair and you had said, "dark hair shut up ... The word is CREATIVE!" It would've been just as logical as your current argument. His creativity and his reaction to a noisy environment/ability to express himself through words are two very different, unrelated things.
@@laurenwood1975 I shouldn't have went off deep end ..if you want to label people this or that that's up to you..its not for me to say otherwise ..good luck on your journey of self discovery
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi lol you're so funny. I like how you decided you were in the wrong and so deleted your earlier comments. I feel sorry for you and I really hope you don't have any neurodivergent children
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
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.
John and Paul at such a pivotal time in rock history. They were making the Beatles Again/ White Album, music that tirnthe world of music upside down.. and we only see this, no Johnny, no color ,
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.
Classic interview "mismatch" boondagled buffone questions very awkward!!! Ha ...great this even survived... its like the match game small talk interview... goodness !!!!
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.
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.
Thanks for helping preserve TV History, Mr. Giller!
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 ❤🙏🎸🎼⭐✨
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!
Appreciate all the long editing you done on this
Thanks for posting this. It’s an historic document; the most complete version of this I’ve ever run across.
Excellent! Thanks for this.
Paul was surprisingly thoughtful almost always, and John never gladly suffered a fool or took one too seriously. In May '68, I, too, was a high school junior and loved the Beatles, but I didn't have your ambition. I'm glad you did this work back then because I still love the Beatles as much as I did then, and I'm happy to view this!
Grateful for this audio document. ❤
This is fantastic!!! Thanks for this!
Thank you for sharing this. I was four years old when this interview was done. This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a while. If only Johnny Carson were there.
Thank you for capturing this!
Good to see that there is some footage, despite the poor quality.
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!
How could anyone blame Tallulah? She practically did the host's job for him, and much better too. She was clueless about the Beatles but not disrespectful to them and rather genuinely curious, and tried to alleviate some of the awkwardness. It was Joe who was hopelessly lost.
Don strikes again with more great classic clips ❤❤ thank you!!!
Yes. I watched this when it aired. It didn’t go anywhere. And Joe was the wrong guy to interview them.
Joe was a dyed-in-the-wool idiot
Heard an interview with Garagiola, he said he enjoyed his banter with McCartney, but was aware John Lennon was upset Carson wasn't there.
Mr. Don Giller, I thank you very much from the bottom of my heart for doing all you have done since that march 1968, to record, preserve and whatever else took to finally share with us here in TH-cam this moment.
I don't care if that interview went very bad.
Still is a chance to hear the boys as they were in real life, although they were uncomfortable.
You just got a new subscriber.
Thank you!!
Cool to hear this and see it a little bit. Thanks
Amazing work Don!
I'm just as much a Tallulah fan as a Beatles fan. Her autobiography is "mahvelous, daahling." Cool bit of preservation here.
I really appreciate that John and Paul traveled with and provided their own cannabis plants for this show! They were the Snoop Dog and Woody Harrelson of their day and great musicians as well!
Thank you for sharing!! I remember being mesmerized when I first heard and saw snippets of the audio/video back around 1994 when I attended one of the Beatlefest conventions. There was a guy who I will call "Maxwell" who always had the good stuff in his hotel room (i.e. bootleg CDs and vinyl). This particular time, he was selling copies of a VHS tape that he called "1968" which included Beatles outtakes from that year (Hey Bulldog for example). In it, there was this interview, albeit very incomplete, maybe about 5-6 minutes total and the audio was not synchronized at all.
He was an LA guy and told the story that supposedly NBC had actually thrown out a ton of the Johnny Carson show tapes from the late 60s and early 70s. So who knows what other gem interviews are long gone from the NBC archives?
Hey mate there's heaps of stuff here and it is a lot better than this stuff this is the worst one I ever have been on
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.
@@dongillerSOME of us do!
I suspect Johnny purposely snubbed them.
@@walterroma7368 I suspect you didn’t bother to read the description.
You are amazing…thank you for your dedication and selflessness.
What a classic, not seen before.
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.
Thanks, Don!
Amazing -- thanks so much!
thanks for posting
the interview is horrible though
only stupid questions
John actually stated that he was not happy whatsoever that Johnny Carson would not be present. He instead got some "ex-baseball player who knew nothing about show biz."
Both John & Paul were anxious to ask Carson about their new Apple Records business endeavor that they were just starting up.
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.
Thank you Don.
Thanks Don! Beatles forever!
This is amazing !
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.
Give it a few years, A.I will probably be able to fill in a realistic HD recreated video just from the audio.
It's too bad Johnny Carson wasn't there that night.
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.
They both were shy ... plus Joe Garagiola wasn't asking them good questions..he was too intimidated.. but I think they were not to thrilled to be there.. very strange vibes ...
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.
By all accounts, Joe Garagiola was a wonderful man. He was well liked by all his peers. You’re absolutely right about everything.
Wonderful bit of history
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!
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.
@@dongiller Ha! Except that if she'd done all of that, she wouldn't have ever been Tallulah Bankhead. People in theater are just that: theatrical. Why does everyone need everyone else to be perfectly polite all the time? She shot some juice into the interview which was going nowhere with Joe who was clearly out of his element. If Carson had been there, she probably would have been more respectful in a sense and if she'd piped in, as most likely, Carson would have made a face or done something funny to show that she was interjecting into their time. But she was merely showing her own perceptions/perspectives in the "generation gap" which was still a very much commented on thing then. Personally, I didn't see her perspective of seeing their effect on her family and friends as being irrelevant but reaching out to her peers in the audience who very often wrote the Beatles off. I really doubt Joe would have ever had a flow going at all period. It was not his scene. He wasn't a music guy and was considered profoundly square and corny in his own day. It's a shame that Carson didn't take advantage of being there. Carson came around much later with Paul McCartney a few years after Lennon was killed. And Paul let him know that it took him long enough to come around. The outreach of Carson was enormous in those days. Because there are so many informational and entertainment options, we have nothing currently that can compare to the vast audience that Carson held in those days. His power of swaying audience opinion was profound and Lennon & McCartney knew it. They were not invincible and knew they needed a host with much better affinity for cool.
At any rate, thank you again for posting it and allowing me to listen in and the discussion as it were.
This is exciting as a Beatle's fanatic of 60! Who cares re: should have been Johnny Carson doing interview. John was hilarious as always and Paul very calm, love them!💕💕
Thanks for your work that went into that Don. Yes, the interviewer is pretty bad, but I quite like Tallulah Bankhead and I think John and Paul would have as well.
Paul was on with Johnny promoting his movie Give My Regards to Broadstreet in 1984 plus celebrate Johnny’s birthday.
Thank You Don!
Trivia>
Tullulah's dad was was Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was also a player on Alabama's first college football team in 1892.
Very cool. To think her dad was part of the Crimson Tide is very cool.
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.
Great, Don! Nice surprise!
Great Mr Giller!
There are pictures of the Doors walking around in Central Park in 1968 as well. Perhaps they crossed paths.
My God, Joe G. was not only did a horrible job but he was a big ASS to boot. Where in the heck was Johnny??.....I have to believe this interview would have gone totally different had he been there....and it would have been saved! Paul was about ready to go to sleep on Joe...that would have not happened with Johnny. Thanks Don for posting this Don !
Where was Johnny? Nobody reads my descriptions.
Wow, rare. Too bad Johnny didn't bother to show up.
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.
The reason some New Yorkers didn't recognize them in '68' was because long hair had become popular by then. Apple was an experiment on their part, and Brian was gone. This was their Apple announcement, and they didn't stay long. Neither did Apple.
They were disappointed Johnny wasn't there.
Pattie Boyd told George about The Maharishi. Then they showed up for his stuff, and the rest is still history.
I read somewhere that Lennon and McCartney almost refused to do this show because they wanted the guy who gave them their warm-up interview to do it on the show instead of Garagiola. Seems like this entire day was a disaster for them, which is a shame because I believe it's the final recorded interview featuring both John and Paul.
I have to say, your comments are far more compelling and interesting than the conversation. How Paul and John got roped into having to deal with Garagiola and this woman is just bizarre. Let's face it, Johnny would have asked fluff, obvious questions as well (all you have to do is watch the McCartney appearance with him years later to confirm this), but it couldn't have possibly been this awkward. If you watch the McCartney interview with Johnny in 1984, Paul is very flippant and disengaged, with really short answers. I wonder if he was still ticked off about 1968.
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_ 😎
5:26
8:33
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11:47
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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.
Does anybody have the epic kraus interview which occured around this time
At least this pops up, always heard they were on, but found it hard to believe and for a long while it was said they were but the tape of lost or ruined, so I had my doubts, esp since this would have been done a month or so before their big song Hey Jude came out and was no. one for a couple of months. I still can't believe this for they were almost too big to a talk show!
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.
John and Paul shined through this whole interview for me. I don't care about the interviewer people at all, they annoy me.🙄
As much as I love Johnny it shows how out of touch he was even then with the cultural fabric of the time. The two greatest composers of the twentieth century getting the second slot.
To be fair, at the time, the lead, featured guest(s) would always appear last on the then-90-minute show. For a simple reason: to keep the viewers watching.
LOL ❤
Wow thank you don
Don Giller strikes again!
Idea for Apple turned into TH-cam
Joe was a fuh king sportsGASter, a lot of hot air. Talullah said she went to Hollywood so she could "f**k that delightful Gary Cooper!" Thank q to any studios who kept their television master tapes in good shape, like WB, CBS
They have an ex baseball player interviewing them. He wasn’t even a good baseball player.😂
I can't believe those idiots at NBC erased the tape! My God!!
It's kind of incredible that the Beatles, from Epstein's death in 1967 to their dissolution in 1970, had no management. They had accountants, lawyers, and a press agent but no management. They would be micro managed today, and far richer than they were in the 1960s.
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
lol. no one ever has knocked Sinatra off a pedestal. Get real.
always had a great story
Lennon didn’t think much of baldy Gargiola. He was certainly square. The old lady was actually pretty good with her insights. Tallulah.
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!!
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
When Johnny Carson was 90 minutes long beng the second guest really wasn't a slight. The pace was a lot different...
The featured guest was usually the last of the night, only to keep the viewers.
My favorite bit, personally: 11:00-11:25. When John's just said their life is calm and the interviewer asks Paul if he agrees. John's smile at Paul because he knows Paul's anxious and stressed is so sweet. Paul says, "It's very hectic, New York," then the interviewer asks, "what's so different about new York?" And Paul responds with sound affects. He's the type of neurodivergent that gets overstimulated and doesn't know how to use words and it's adorable.
Neurodivergent shut up.. creative is the word..CREATIVE !
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi :/ calm down dude he's creative duh. But those things I pointed out are not marks of creativity. Lots of creative people (ie John) don't have those traits. Those are markers of neurodivergence.
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi this is seriously so weird. If I had pointed out that Paul had really dark hair and you had said, "dark hair shut up ... The word is CREATIVE!" It would've been just as logical as your current argument. His creativity and his reaction to a noisy environment/ability to express himself through words are two very different, unrelated things.
@@laurenwood1975 I shouldn't have went off deep end ..if you want to label people this or that that's up to you..its not for me to say otherwise ..good luck on your journey of self discovery
@@PaulKeogh-td8oi lol you're so funny. I like how you decided you were in the wrong and so deleted your earlier comments. I feel sorry for you and I really hope you don't have any neurodivergent children
John said this appearance, was the most embarrassing thing he was ever on!
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
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.
Hmm...Mohammed comes to mountain or mountain moves to Mohammed...!?$!😂 The end result is the same.
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.
I remember watching this, so disappointed Johnny was off.
John and Paul at such a pivotal time in rock history. They were making the Beatles Again/ White Album, music that tirnthe world of music upside down.. and we only see this, no Johnny, no color ,
“The Beatles Again” was an Allen Klein concoction, released in February 1970. No Beatles involvement at all.
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.
Can't believe they had this show without Johnny Carson being there.
This was a bit cringy.
Uhh...no Joe..
Worst picture quality I have ever seen.
Nobody reads my descriptions.
I wonder why they hooked up J an P with Joe G? He was a sports announcer--this wasn't particularly his thing.
Nobody reads my descriptions.
That must be Barbara Walters sitting next to Joe.
Nobody reads my descriptions.
@@julianadamico4702 Descriptions are our friend.
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.
This must hav been when the show was still in New York. I think that Johnny moved it out to L.A. not long after this.
1972.
@@dongiller Oh, thank you for that clarification.
Horrible interview. Johnny would have been so much cooler. But thanks for saving what you did!!🎶💚👍
Classic interview "mismatch" boondagled buffone questions very awkward!!! Ha ...great this even survived... its like the match game small talk interview... goodness !!!!
lol at Paul, clearly bored, "oh no, you're doing great!"
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.
Who is the bald host?
That is Joe Garagiola? Nefer was a fan of him
Nobody reads my descriptions.
And before John's life had been hijacked by Yoko, how did that ever happen?
Tallulah would die later that year
Nobody reads my descriptions.