Special thanks to ThisDayinMusic.com.
On June 25, 1967, the BBC put on the world’s first global satellite television broadcast. The program was called Our World, and consisted of five different segments from five continents, a tremendous technological undertaking in 1967.
Selected countries were to produce two items that best symbolized the their life and culture. The BBC chose to produce a four-minute report on Scottish town Cumbernauld and also asked The Beatles to come up with a special song that would reflect the times and the occasion and be understandable by all watching nations. As an incentive, The Beatles would receive £2,000 for their performance.
John Lennon, always good for a slogan, as he’d show consistently post-Beatles, came up with a perfect summer of love peace anthem, “All You Need is Love.”
The ambitious satellite link-up was devised by the BBC and executed by the pioneering producer Aubrey Singer, who pulled in an incredible lineup of contributing countries and networks: Australia (ABC), Austria (ORF), Canada (CBC), Denmark (DZR), France (ORTF), Italy (RAI), Japan (NHK), Mexico (TS Mexicana), Spain (TVE), Sweden (SRT), Tunisia (RTT), United Kingdom (BBC), United States (NET) and West Germany (ARD). Our World was also shown Belgium, Bulgaria, Finland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Monaco, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland, although those countries did not provide content. It would have been more, but just a week before the planned broadcast, the Soviet Union and several Eastern Bloc countries backed out.
The Beatles showed up at EMI’s Studio One in the early afternoon of June 25 for a camera rehearsal. On this day in 1967, at 9:36 p.m. U.K. time, The Beatles and a 13-piece orchestra played live to a pre-recorded backing track.
The band sat on stools for the historic performance. Behind The Beatles, a menagerie of famous friends gathered to lend support. Beatle buddies included Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Moon, Eric Clapton, Pattie Harrison, Jane Asher and Graham Nash.
The wildly ambitious project was a huge success, although the BBC did receive several letters of complaint, proof that in the U.K. in 1967, Lennon was becoming an increasingly polarizing figure as the lovable mop-tops continued their path to hippie weirdness. Comments from unimpressed viewers included: “This country has produced something more meritorious and noteworthy than The Beatles (much as I admire them)”; “We did not do ourselves justice”; “Have we nothing better to offer? Surely this isn’t the image of what we are like. What a dreadful impression they must have given the rest of the world”; and “after all the culture etc. shown by the other countries, The Beatles were the absolute dregs (incidentally I am a Beatles fan), no wonder people think thing we are going to the dogs!”
Not that the BBC told The Beatles, instead thanking manager Brian Epstein in a letter for a performance had been “highly regarded” by the BBC and the audience. The negative comments were buried until released recently when they surfaced via the U.K.’s Freedom of Information Act.
But despite the reticence of some at having the Liverpool foursome represent the United Kingdom, the Beatles had the last laugh. This was 1967 after all; the summer of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (which had been out for just three weeks) and the band were un-Beatle-able. “All You Need is Love “went straight to #1 in the U.K. and, naturally, topped the charts in the U.S.
Quoted in The Beatles Anthology, Epstein summed it all up perfectly: “It could hardly have been a better message. It is a wonderful, beautiful, spine-chilling record.”
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