Origins Of The Music Video

WHO INVENTED THE MUSIC VIDEO?
The music video is generally considered to have been born on the BBC’s Top of the Pops in November 1975. Glamorous rock band Queen found they were unable to appear on Top of the Pops as they were on tour.
They worked over two days and spent the considerable sum at that time of £4,000 on recording their latest single, Bohemian Rhapsody, on the relatively new medium of video tape.
There were no home video reorders until the late 70s/early 80s, but broadcasters were recording TV programme on huge 2 inch video tapes.





In fact, Queen were not the first band to make a video or film recording to promote a song on television.
It was The Beatles who can be credited – as with so many things to do with pop music - as the real inventors of the music video as a promotional tool.
By 1965 The Beatles had achieved worldwide fame, and they could not physically appear on all the television shows throughout the world that wanted them.. They also found appearing on live TV and live performances in general, to be repetitive and mundane, interfering with the creativity and freedom they found with studio recordings.
As far back as November, 1965, they made a series of promotional films specifically designed for television companies throughout the world. Promotional films with iconoclastic humour and a sense of fun were made of the singles We Can Work It Out, Day Tripper, Help!, Ticket To Ride and I Feel Fine. Some of these short films emerged in more sophisticated forms in The Beatles’ film Help.
On 19 - 20 May, 1966, the group filmed further promotional films for Paperback Writer and the less well known song Rain. Each video was assembled in both colour and black-and-white edits, as while America had been enjoying colour TV since the late 1950s, most European channels were still in the very early stages of colour broadcasts (Britain’s first colour broadcast came with BBC2’s transmission of the 1967 Wimbledon tournament). Several different takes of both Paperback Writer and Rain were filmed in order to give different versions to rival broadcasters, who could then boast of having Beatles ‘exclusives’.

STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER
1967 marked a real breakthrough in the evolution of the music video although they were still created on film - with the film promos for Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane.



On 30 - 31 January, 1967, The Beatles filmed a single promo film for each song and, for the first time, both films were created without any pretence of performing the song, allowing the feel of the songs to storyboard the action.
The feel of the films is much more sophisticated than the earlier efforts, with some impressively artistic cinematography (particularly on ‘Penny Lane’, where the setting sun creates some rather beautiful images).
The director was Peter Foldmann, a Swedish friend of Klaus Voormann, who The Beatles had known since their time in Hamburg in 1960. Voormann’s then-girlfriend Astrid Kirchherr became very close to the ‘fifth Beatle’ Stuart Sutcliffe and created the famed ‘mop top’ Beatles hairstyle. Voormann designed The Beatles black and white Revolver album cover. Klaus Voorman also designed The Beatles Anthology album covers, which used an intricate collage effect to tell The Beatles story across three integrated designs.
Arguably the most fun Beatles’ music video was their last - the one for Hello, Goodbye, filmed on 10 November, 1967, at the Saville Theatre, London, and directed by Paul McCartney himself - make sure you see the last minute or so.




THE MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR
The culmination of the Beatles’ small-screen work came in 1967 with the small album and made for TV film The Magical Mystery Tour.



This was the closest thing to a feature-length music video.
Combining the very loose plotting of their first films with the anarchic randomness of their short promos, it was broadcast on Boxing Day 1967, a rare treat for the band’s eager fans.
Sadly, it was heavily criticized by the critics, and was unfairly viewed by many as a self-indulgent mess, bringing an unsatisfactory end to the Beatles’ TV work.
In fact the music is vintage Beatles, and seen as a prototype music video it is astonishingly good, very inventive and forward looking.
The Beatles last truly live television appearance was on 25 June 1967, where they performed the anthemic All You Need is Love as part of a famous BBC global satellite link-up, called Our World.