With a new approach, the Beatles decided to just send filmed segments of their new songs to the TV shows that they would have personally appeared on before. Why bother going? Promote an album so people would buy it? They’d done that. Have a hit record and let it sail up the charts to number one? They’d done it dozens of times by now. What they did as George Harrison says in the Anthology video was invent what became MTV, or "videos" as they are now commonly known. I remember feeling slightly cheated when the group stopped showing up live on Ed Sullivan’s stage. ....but then they’d show a filmed song performance, and they were STILL cool! I do remember longing for more but soon the films of "Hey Jude" and "Revolution" made up for all of the longing to see them again. Today’s generation of fans takes for granted that they can go to the TV, fire up the VCR and watch the Beatles perform these songs in the Anthology video series. Back then we saw them do "Revolution" on a Sunday night, and then the following Sunday we saw Paul at his piano as the rest backed him on "Hey Jude". Then it was years before I saw these clips again. It staggers the mind to think that John died a couple of years before VCRs began to be commonplace in households around the world. But that was how we saw them then and they were always worth waiting for. Like the annual showing of "The Wizard of Oz", also usually a Sunday event that I’d look forward to...it was something that drew us to the television before the program even started. We were ready to see the magic for this brief time. With the Beatles it always got more brief. In the early days it was a couple of different segments and five or six songs per show. Later though it was the one song only and it was a very controlled filmed performance. Gone were the smiles on their faces in reaction to the screaming audience members. To this fan though they were just too cool to smile by now anyway. They all had attitude and they all had given all that they were going to give to live audiences. To me they were "locked away" somewhere, and I simply had to wait for them to come back with a new song to promote sometime in the future. Even the movies had been fleeting. They were ninety plus minutes of course but a couple of years later they were long gone from the theaters and only happy memories for their fans. Even in 1976 or so, I remember making a point of getting home early on a Saturday night because a local channel was showing Hard Days Night. Now I can pop downstairs and throw in all of their songs and all of their films and performances. The music and movies still hold fascination today but back then when we couldn’t control when we saw or heard them they were even more fascinating. Back then we’d watch them only when they were there. Again it was always worth waiting for...because they were still cool. Rubber Soul and Revolver brought new sounds to the world but they were still the same four guys and that’s all I cared about. I would go to the library and take out these records along with the earlier ones. Revolver was really ground breaking music. The Indian sounds and John’s songs in particular were so different than anything else we were hearing at the time. Play a few songs from the other groups of 1966 and then "Tomorrow Never Knows". You’ll see just how different and cool they were.
With the changes within the Beatles came the changes in John. They were hand in hand and it’s hard to say which was cause and effect. When the touring ended he had no idea of just what he should do with himself. First he went to Germany and then to Spain, to act in a film called "How I Won the War" for Richard Lester, the man who had directed the Beatle films. John felt a real need to do something with his time and break new ground artistically. He’d already published two books and been in the world’s most successful musical group. Acting was at least something new and different. Neil Aspinal, the Beatles faithful roadie accompanied him. After a while he found himself to be lonely and bored and John invited Ringo to come and visit him. One very significant thing happened there though. John wrote possibly the coolest song ever, Strawberry Fields Forever. It was a fond memory for John who had known a real place with the name, but it was more than that..It was introspective and it was pleading for something different, something unidentifiable. Strawberry Fields was a special place and special state of mind perhaps. The writing of the song, the recording of the song and eventually the actual sound and feel of the ground breaking tune was what solidifies John as the coolest songwriter/performer ever for me. I have really strong memories of hearing it as a kid. As mentioned previously I would get Beatle records at the library and listen to them repeatedly. Somehow though I have a really strong memory of hearing Strawberry Fields outside at a skating rink in the winter. The part that fades out and then fades back in at the end, I can remember that echoing outside over the loudspeakers in the park surrounding the ice rink. I was about eleven or twelve years old, and I knew it was different than other songs I’d heard on the radio. It’s exciting to think about now the memory of it is so strong. Later on I also remember going to a friends house who had a really good stereo and he owned the album. He was the one who told me about "I buried Paul". He played the end of the song at 45 speed on the 33 1/3 record, and it seemed clearer to me that John really had said that!
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