A clip of The Beatles only live Top Of The Pops performance, which was presumed to have been lost, has been unearthed in Mexico.
The fab four pre-recorded several songs for Top of the Pops, but only gave one live appearance on June 16th, 1966.
Due to when it was recorded, the BBC did not maintain tapes long after the programmes aired, meaning that footage of the performance has long been considered lost.
But now a collector in Mexico has discovered the only surviving recordings of the show: a silent 11-second clip of the group performing ‘Paperback Writer’ has been found.
The rare clip was captured by a family in Liverpool who recorded the televised footage on an 8mm camera.
The footage has now handed over to Birmingham-based missing TV footage specialists, Kaleidoscope.
Kaleidoscope’s Chris Perry said that the recently uncovered footage is a “holy grail” for Beatles fans: “People thought it was gone forever because videotape wasn’t kept in 1966. To find it all these years later was stunning.”
Further footage which was once considered lost, which featured an early clip of The Beatles’ promotional video for their single ‘Something’, has also been unearthed.
The newly discovered clip will be screened on the 20th April as part of the ‘Music Believed Wiped’ programme at the BFI in London.
Photo via BBC/Kaleidoscope
