Kaleidoscope, a British company specializing in re-discovering lost video and TV shows made a joint public call with BFI last year to find the Top 100 Lost TV Shows. Near the top of that list was probably the best known BBC music show, Top of The Pops. One of their shows that’s considered lost included The Beatles performing their song released only as a single, “Paperback Writer”. Supposedly, it’s been thought that only 11 seconds remained of that performance.
But as Forbes and The Guardian report, David Chandler (a music enthusiast) discovered a series of 8mm film reels that includes a 92-second live performance of The Beatles on Top of The Pops. Now, after digitally remastering the footage and enhancing its sound, Kaleidoscope is preparing to show the recovered show at England’s Birmingham City University on Saturday, June 1st. The recovered footage also includes performances by Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Hollies, Small Faces, and Ike & Tina Turner, among others.
As Forbes reports, the future of the footage will be decided by the BBC, which has also “recorded a large archive of Beatles material, including the Live at the BBC albums, now re-released and remastered with extra tracks and totaling more than 4 hours of music. The 130 tracks include dialog and many songs not released by the band in any other form.”
