What does still exist is due only to TV-viewing Beatles fans trying to capture the moment, back before the days of home VCRs. A small portion of the interview was captured on silent home-movie film by a Beatles fan aiming an 8mm movie camera at their TV set. The 2 minute home movie of the TV screen, while producing a poor-quality picture and only a very small fraction of the full 22 minute appearance, unfortunately is the only known ‘video’ in existence of John and Paul’s 1968 appearance on the Tonight Show.
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Luckily, all of the audio was recorded by another Beatles fan who decided to capture the TV interview by placing their amatuer audio recorder next to their TV set.
There have been some fairly successful attempts to synchronize the surviving 2 minutes of silent, low-quality video with the segments of audio that correspond with it. The 9 photos presented below are enhanced still-frames from one such video which circulates among collectors.
It was an important time. The Beatles were currently announcing their new company Apple Corps, they had just returned from meditation in India, and they would soon begin the recording sessions for The White Album upon returning to England. Below is the transcribed text of this lost American network television appearance from May 14th 1968: John Lennon and Paul McCartney speaking with guest host Joe Garagiola (JG), and actress Tellulah Bankhead (TB), on NBC’s Tonight Show.
JG: “Ladies and gentlemen, from the Beatles– John Lennon and Paul McCartney!”
(excited screams and applause as they walk out)
JG: “Good evening, good evening. Can I ask you something? How did you get here? Not from England, but from the hotel with all the people out there?”
JOHN: “Uhh, car.”
JG: “Car. Did you have any problems?”
JOHN: “No, no. All under control. (jokingly) Well how are you, Johnny?”
JG: “Well, I figure you’ve been interviewed all day– if there’s any questions you’d like to ask us…”
JOHN: “What are you doing?”
(laughter)
PAUL: “Mmm, where’s Johnny?”
JG: “Where is he? Gaithersburg!”
ED McMAHON: “Gaithersburg!”
JG: “A wonderful town.”
TB: “May I ask you, a big favorite all over the world, a question? Are the other two gentlemen… of the four of you… are they still in India?”
JOHN: “No, they’re in England.”
TB: “I want to ask you something, because I wish I’d learned to meditate, and I can’t… I don’t know how you do it. I would love to.”
JOHN: “Well you gotta go and find out, haven’t you.”
TB: “Well I’m not going that far.”
JOHN: “Oh well.”
(laughter)
PAUL: “Forget it.”
TB: “If it’s taken me this long, and couldn’t do it, I couldn’t learn there.”
JOHN: “Well, you can’t learn to swim if you keep inland, can you? Unless you’ve got a pool around you.”
TB: “Oh honey, I can float sitting up. Don’t be silly.”
(laughter)
JG: “I get the feeling there are two different conversations here!”
PAUL: “Yeah right, yeah. We had a bit of trouble today– this fella– We did an interview for the educational program. And he started asking us questions, and they were quite sort of serious questions, you know. So it was a choice between just laughing it up, or answering seriously.”
JG: “So what did you do?”
PAUL: “We were a bit serious.”
JG: (jokingly) “You? Serious?”
PAUL: “Yeah. We were just sort of– (clears throat comically) –not too serious, you know, just sort of.”
JG: “Listen, of all the…”
PAUL: “So tell us a joke!”
(laughter)
JG: “I don’t really have that many jokes, you tell me a joke.”
JOHN: “We don’t know any.”
TB: “I think they’re very serious fellows.”
PAUL: “That’s it. We are, you know.”
JOHN: “We can never remember ’em, you see.”
JG: “Would you like to be a comedian?”
JOHN: “No.”
JG: “In many ways you are.”
JOHN: “Well…”
(laughter)
JG: “The four of you, socially, are you that close, or are you…?”
PAUL: “Yeah.”
JOHN: “We’re close friends, you know.”
JG: “Sometimes when you work together– I’ve been with groups that when the job’s over, that’s it. Do you have houses pretty much together?”
JOHN: “Within twenty miles all together.”
JG: “If you couldn’t have been in music– if it hadn’t happened for you– what do you think you would like to do?”
JOHN: “Ahh, I don’t know. Films for me.”
(Paul relaxes back comfortably)
JG: (pause) “How about you, Paul… I’m not breaking your mood, am I?”
PAUL: “No. You’re doing great, you know. But, umm…”
(laughter)
PAUL: “So, what would I like to have been?”
JOHN: “A policeman.”
PAUL: (to John) “…no. Not a policeman.”
(laughter)
PAUL: “Uhh, I don’t know, you know. I was nearly gonna be a teacher but that fell through, luckily.”
(music swells for a commercial break… Paul begins humming along… girls scream)
JG: (to John) “Why don’t you read that (cue card) and see what the reaction is.”
JOHN: “And now a word from your local stallion.”
(laughter)
JG: “…a word from your local STATION!”
JOHN: “We were very pleased, you know.”
JG: “You just kinda wandered around? You just walked around? The police weren’t with you?”
JOHN: “No, we just walked out, you know. We often do it. If people don’t know– expect us, what are they gonna do but see a bit of long hair walking around like all the other long hair.”
(laughter)
JG: “How long have you been in New York now? We just found out about it.”
PAUL: “Three days.”
JOHN: “Is it three, now?”
PAUL: “Three days.”
JOHN: “And we still haven’t got a tan.”
PAUL: “And it’s been enough, you know, actually.” (laughs)
JG: “When you get into a city– You were on tour, and you got to alot of cities. How much of it do you really see? It’s ballpark to a hotel, I think.”
JOHN: “You just pick up the vibrations. We never saw it, you know.”
PAUL: “The room.”
JOHN: “A castle full of rooms all over the place.”
JG: “How about this new organization, ‘Apple’?”
JOHN: “Oh yeah. Well you see, our accountant came up and said, ‘We got this amount of money. Do you want to give it to the government or do something with it?’ So we thought…”
JG: “Which government?”
JOHN: “Oh… Any old government.”
(laughter)
JOHN: “So we decided to play businessmen for a bit, because, uhh, we’ve got to run our own affairs now. So, we’ve got this thing called ‘Apple’ which is going to be records, films, and electronics– which all tie-up. And to make a sort of an umbrella so people who want to make films about… grass… don’t have to go on their knees in an office, you know, begging for a break. We’ll try and do it like that. That’s the idea. I mean, we’ll find out what happens, but that’s what we’re trying to do.”
PAUL: “If you want to do something, normally you’ve got to go to big business and you’ve gotta go to ‘them,’ the big people, you know.”
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