Somewhat new Beatles footage discovered …

November 21, 2007

… at least new to me.  In 1964, when planning a spring/summer tour around the world, Ringo got tonsilitis.  Plans were already made, and surprisingly, their manager decided to go ahead without him.  A replacement drummer, Jimmy Nicol, was brought in and played in Ringo’s place for a handful of shows – I think it was 9.

There is some footage of the four of them playing in Holland in the Beatles Anthology video series, but they are miming, which sort of stinks (apparently miming was a fairly common practice back then). There was a brief snippet of them playing in Hong Kong, Jimmy’s last show before Ringo rejoined in Australia, but there was no sound.

Last night, on Youtube, I found an entire 2 minute video clip which purports to be Beatles + Jimmy playing at a concert in Holland.  It’s certainly him playing, and the sound of the song is different than I’ve ever heard before.  The audio doesn’t quite sync up with the video, though, which brings down the wow factor a bit.  Also, I can swear I’ve seen bits of this video footage of the crowd in other compilations, usually just when people are putting together Beatles crowd scenes.  Diehard fans will know what I’m talking about.

Even so, I do believe it’s a relatively obscure video find.  I know there’s much more to be unearthed in the coming years, and I look forward to seeing cleaned up versions as I grow older.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=dJulGC4eDwU

Posted in Beatles, Music