Thursday, February 23, 2012

Breathe



The second week of February, 1970, found all four Beatles busy with individual recording projects. George was in Trident Studios on the 7th producing and playing on a new Radha Krishna Temple single, "Govinda". Ringo was still occupied at EMI with sessions for Sentimental Journey, and from the 10th through the 20th, Paul was at Morgan Studios, supplementing his home recordings of the past few weeks with new material for his first solo LP, McCartney.

As ever, John was the busiest Beatle, promoting "Instant Karma! (We All Shine On)" while editing footage of the Montreal bed-in for a documentary feature scheduled (but not destined) to precede Let It Be in UK cinemas.

From February 8th through the 11th, Yoko's ex-husband Tony Cox was staying at Tittenhurst along with Kyoko, and was granted permission to videotape the couple's activities for yet another potential documentary. Although Yoko has held up any official release of the tapes, a sample of the February 9th video does circulate, albeit with tampered audio:



"Instant Karma" was promoted on Top Of The Pops February 5th with a hastily-assembled clip of footage mostly culled from the BBC's 24 Hours documentary of the previous December:



By February 11th, John and Yoko were in a BBC TV studio taping a performance (mimed apart from John's live vocal) of "Instant Karma" for use in future episodes of Top Of The Pops. Take 4 (in which Yoko holds up cue cards) was aired first, on the 12th, with take 3 (in which Yoko knits) following a week later.

A few days after it aired, John and Yoko fielded questions about their TV appearance, along with other listeners' queries, during an interview on Radio 1's Midday Spin, hosted by DJ "Emperor Rosko". The recording date is unknown, but it was most likely broadcast on the 21st of February.

No comments:

Post a Comment