Wednesday, July 17, 1968
Last updated on September 29, 2024
Location: London Pavilion, Piccadilly Circus, London, UK
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Session Jul 16, 1968 • Recording "Cry Baby Cry"
Article Jul 17, 1968 • "Yellow Submarine" world premiere
Session Jul 18, 1968 • Recording "Cry Baby Cry", "Helter Skelter"
Session Jul 19, 1968 • Recording "Sexy Sadie"
Next article Jul 20, 1968 • Jane Asher announces her separation from Paul McCartney
Yellow Submarine (Animated film)
1968 • For The Beatles • Directed by George Dunning
On this day, the world premiere of the animated film “Yellow Submarine” took place at the London Pavilion on Piccadilly Circus, London. The four Beatles attended the event (and the after-party). George Harrison and Ringo Starr were joined by their wifes, John Lennon by his new girlfriend Yoko Ono, but Paul McCartney was the only one arriving alone. His fiancée Jane Asher was absent and would announce the end of their relationship three days after.
Among the other guests were Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones, Ginger Baker from Cream, some members of The Who, Status Quo, The Bee Gees, Grapefruit, Twiggy.
Afterwards, they attended the celebration party at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. Paul spent some time talking to Clem Curtis, lead singer of The Foundations, and promised to write a song for this group. This promise never materialized.
From The Beatles Book, N°62, September 1968:
Shortly after eight o’clock on the evening of Wednesday, July 17, 1968, Beatlemania gripped tightly on London’s West End for the first time in a couple of years. In all directions – along Piccadilly and down Regent Street, up the length of Shaftesbury Avenue – traffic came to a standstill as thousands upon thousands of fans gathered as close as they could get to the London Pavilion theatre to see the Beatles arrive for the World Premiere of “Yellow Submarine”.
Lines of London “bobbies” linked arms to hold back the pressing masses of bodies belonging to faithful Beatle People. The last time Piccadilly Circus had seen this kind of thing was back in the Julys of 1964 and 1965 when “A Hard Day’s Night” and then “Help!” had their equally spectacular gala openings!
In the theatre’s narrow foyer scores of reporters and cameramen jostled with the famous. The Beatles Monthly publisher Sean O’Mahony, editor Johnny Dean, photographer Leslie Bryce, and yours truly wedged ourselves at the foot of the staircase as the celebrities began to arrive.
“I hope one of you will buy me a drink or two after all this!”, muttered a perspiring Irishman, a Pavilion staffman whose impossible task seemed to be to keep a clear passage for the stars and yet to let the Press photographers get their stuff.
Two people covered from head to feet in yellow bandages handed out apples. An enormous Blue Meanie pranced about on the pavement. A Rolling Stone struggled through the doorway. Some Bee Gees, Ginger Baker of the Cream and most of the Grapefruit foursome arrived. Twiggy and Justine held an unscheduled Press conference on the stairs to announce their engagement.
Of the Beatles, Ringo was first to arrive. Maureen was with him, wearing a beautiful white lace blouse. Then came George in yellow suit and matching hat with a Yellow Submarine badge just above his forehead. Pattie wore yellow, too — with a purple headband. Last came Paul, John and Yoko Ono – Paul sporting a very fine yellow silk tie, John in a white suit with a dark-blue, ruffle-fronted shirt.
Inside the theatre a short cartoon feature was already on the screen. But that didn’t slop the television crews following each freshly-arrived Beatle all the way into the circle and down to the centre of the front row, cameras whirling and bright hand-held lamps shining out about them!
The end of the film was by no means the end of the evening’s celebrations. From Piccadilly Circus, streams of cars crossed London to the Bayswater Road and The Royal Lancaster Hotel. There the Rank Organisation threw a celebrity party to launch their new Yellow Submarine discotheque room. Most of the famous faces we’d seen over at the Pavilion re-appeared between 11 p.m. and midnight at the Royal Lancaster. Southern Television were organising star interviews. Deejays like Pete Brady. Tony Blackburn, Simon Dee and Kenny Everett were tucking into plates of help-yourself salad. Fan club secretary Freda Kelly and her husband, Brian, chatted to a variety of Beatle backroom boys from NEMS and Apple. On the fresh-air side of the big glass doors Piccadilly’s Beatles People re-assembled for further glimpses of their fave foursome. Downstairs in the Yellow Submarine discotheque at least 100 people did their best to dance in an area which might accommodate 50 in comfort. Champagne was served with much generosity by dozens of waiters. Gradually one found one’s feet grinding more and more broken glasses into the carpet – not because of wild carelessness on the part of the guests – but because the tight crush made spillings and smashings all too inevitable.
At various moments all four Beatles dropped in. Again Ringo was first – the others were still finishing dinner at a nearby restaurant. You could tell if there was a new Beatle in the room because the crush would ease off where you were and increase in the region around the latest arrival!
All told the whole crowded, yellow, star-studded, champagne-sparkled evening gave the Beatles’ cartoon film a splendid send-off! And for weeks afterwards there were all-evening queues outside the Pavilion and Studio One, the pair of West End cinemas at which “Yellow Submarine” was being shown. Indeed, both locations reported capacity business all along the line.
Now the film is playing at strings of leading theatres throughout the country, in major cities and key resorts. Again it seems as though “Yellow Submarine” is proving a record-breaking box office attraction – despite that brief spate of exaggerated Press stories at the beginning of August suggesting that the film wasn’t as popular as everyone expected it to be outside London’s West End.
Frederick James
AT THE REVOLUTION IN LONDON
Go down to the Revolution, we thought. Take a photographer and get some pictures of the star names. And what a night we picked! It was the premiere night of “Yellow Submarine” and the club was chock full of pop people afterwards.
Not that this Not that this was a great surprise, for the Revolution (in Bruton Mews, just off Mayfair’s Berkeley Square) is currently enjoying a run as the most popular of the “in” places.
It was, in fact, the night of another premiere that the doors opened for the first time. Then the film was “Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush” on January 4 and after the film the party was held there.
Since then, regulars have included Julie Christie, Francoise Hardy, Terry Stamp, Dahlia Lavi, Mia Farrow, Paul McCartney, Peter Sellers, Nina Simone, the Grapefruit, the Bee Gees, plus most pop writers, photographers, fashion designers and leading hair stylists. […]
Paul McCartney and Clem Curtis (of the Foundations) shared a table and by the end of the evening Paul had promised to write a song for the Foundations – proof of the club’s conviviality!
From New Musical Express – August 3, 1968
YELLOW SUBMARINE’ PREMIERE
TONY BARROW RECALLS THE LAUNCH OF THE BEATLES’ CARTOON FILM AT THE LONDON PAVILION IN JULY 1968
Four years and eleven days after the opening of “A Hard Day’s Night”, the London Pavilion cinema was under siege again from thousands of Beatles fans. By then (1968), nobody expected to see another outbreak of Beatlemania.
The boys hadn’t been touring for two years and it seemed as if the wild crowds which used to halt traffic and close whole streets surrounding concert venues in the mid-sixties were now part of the pop world’s past history. But on July 17, 1968, renewed scenes of Beatlemania in all its noisy glory filled London’s Piccadilly Circus with the happy sound of youthful screams and yells and chants of adoration aimed at the Fab Four. The occasion was the world premiere of “Yellow Submarine”.
This feature-length cartoon film was a bit of an oddity. After “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!”, the Beatles had been expected to make a third movie for cinema release. In the event, a number of scripts were rejected, either because of Brian Epstein’s obsessive desire to avoid involving his group in controversial screen roles, or because the stories were simply not good enough. To prevent contractual problems, ‘Eppy’ agreed in 1966 to the making of a third film, one which would involve little or no effort on the part of John, Paul, George and Ringo. This was “Yellow Submarine”, an animated feature with a soundtrack carrying ‘a dozen Beatle songs’, albeit few new ones and no spectacular new ones.
Brian Epstein led the Beatles to treat “Yellow Submarine” as little more than a business deal, a contractual obligation fulfilled painlessly, nothing they need worry about too much. After his death, when the cartoon was in production, the Beatles paid little attention to what was happening, apart from providing — under pressure and with little genuine enthusiasm — the four fresh numbers which Brian had promised the producers.
These consisted of two titles left over from the previous year’s “Sgt. Pepper” sessions, Paul’s “All Together Now” and George’s “It’s All Too Much”, an extremely long number which was cut for the cartoon soundtrack; plus John’s “Hey Bulldog” and another Harrison composition, “Only A Northern Song”.
John dashed off “Hey Bulldog” at an Abbey Road recording session in February 1968. He said: “I had a few words at home so I brought them in and whipped off the song.” Film producer Al Brodax didn’t like the finished piece, and it wasn’t included in U.S. copies of the film.
“Only A Northern Song” was a last-minute contribution to stem protests from Brodax that he hadn’t been given his agreed quota of new numbers by the Beatles. Indifference on the part of Lennon and McCartney left the field clear for George to offer something. He wrote this at Abbey Road in one hour flat in the middle of the night.
George said later: “It was a joke relating to Liverpool, the Holy City in the North. The copyright belonged to Northern Songs Ltd., which I didn’t own, so it doesn’t really matter what chords I play, what words I say, or time of day it is, as it’s only a Northern Song’.”
The second side of the “Yellow Submarine” album was filled with George Martin’s original soundtrack score. Although it ended up selling over one million copies worldwide, this record failed to top the charts in Britain, blocked from the No. 1 spot for a spell by the Beatles’ own two-record set, which sold nearly seven million copies, more than any previous double album in recording history.
When the Beatles actually saw “Yellow Submarine” they were genuinely shocked that ‘Eppy’ had written off the entire project so casually. By this time it was difficult for them to start lavishing praise on the production in public, having paid so little personal attention to the making of it. But, in private, insiders heard them speak highly of the spectacular and innovative animation techniques. They hadn’t expected to find the film so enjoyable. In separate conversations with me at the time, both John and Paul expressed belated disappointment that they hadn’t involved themselves far more actively in the production, rather than leaving writers Lee Mintoff and Al Brodax to get on with it. John was particularly taken with Mintoff’s original creation of ‘Pepperland’. One could easily imagine Lennon himself creating belligerent ‘blue meanies’ and menacing ‘apple bonkers’!
The scenes inside and outside the London Pavilion cinema on premiere night were made all the more colourful because 1968 was the era of ‘the beautiful people’. Most of the capital’s ‘in crowd’ presented themselves in Piccadilly Circus that evening in their brightest new finery, many wearing brilliant shades of yellow for the occasion. While lines of policemen held back the fans, celebrities were delivered to the Pavilion entrance by a constant stream of Rolls-Royce cars and sleek limousines. Both male and female guests offered a non-stop fashion parade of multicoloured outfits, stunning hairstyles and sparkling accessories. A tall Blue Meanie greeted suitably startled new arrivals, who were handed apples by people swathed in yellow.
One or more of the Beatles themselves might have missed the star-spangled premiere, but for the fact that the group was in the middle of a marathon series of recording sessions, so everyone had to be in town. The Apple headquarters had just moved from Wigmore Street to Savile Row, another centre of much personal interest for John, Paul, George and Ringo.
Ringo and Maureen turned up soon after 8pm, claiming the instant attention of several dozen newspaper cameramen. Maureen wore a magnificent white lace top, buttoned to the neck. Ringo had a flamboyant bow tie inside his lavish suit. George and Patti wore yellow. Paul, John and Yoko Ono were the last to draw up outside the Pavilion. Paul had a flashy yellow tie and dark suit in contrast to John’s dark shirt beneath a white suit. Together they made a colourful bunch.
A supporting cartoon was already showing as the Beatles were led to their front row seats in the circle. The press and television news men crowded down the aisle after the Fab Four, flashing cameras and TV lights distracting the rest of the cinema audience — most of whom didn’t mind a bit, as it gave them their first chance to see what the VIPs were wearing.
In celebration of the premiere, the Rank Organisation opened a small and exclusive new Yellow Submarine Disco under their Royal Lancaster Hotel at Bayswater. It was here that the Beatles and their many guests drove from the Pavilion. More than 200 people packed into the disco for a midnight party attended by hosts of familiar faces from Bee Gees to Rolling Stones.
Champagne flowed freely and splashed generously over suits and gowns for the rest of the night, the small room heaving with happy revellers. The Beatles came and went, while the rest of us stayed on to take full advantage of Rank hospitality.
John said to me as he struggled through the crowd towards the door: “I want to write the next Beatles cartoon film.” But he never did.
Meanwhile, “Yellow Submarine” met with mixed reaction from both the press and the public. Some hailed it as a great work of animated art. But many Beatles fans were put off by the fact that the voices of John, Paul, George and Ringo were not used to speak the dialogue on the soundtrack. In fact, I think the use of actors for that job had its positive side too. The Beatles never enjoyed speaking lines from scripts. Actors, on the other hand, took on the task with enthusiasm, giving larger-than-life impressions of the Four Mop-tops which fitted the bill perfectly in the circumstances, and gave the film extra touches of humour which might otherwise have been lacking.
There was also something else very special for fans of the Beatles in “Yellow Submarine”. The faces and figures of the four boys were preserved permanently as they’d looked at the height of Beatlemania. Visually, this was the clean-cut image ‘Eppy’ had always wanted the group to project. The real-life Beatles rebelled against that image and, quite naturally, grew physically more mature-looking as the years went by. But even now, twenty years after the premiere of the picture, “Yellow Submarine” shows four good-humoured, happy, youthful Beatles as they were in their heyday, not a wrinkle in sight — and ever more shall be so! Perhaps that’s where the true magic of the movie lies.
Tony Barrow – From The Beatles Monthly Book – June 1988
YELLOW SUBMARINE PREMIERE
RICHARD BUSKIN TALKS TO A BEATLES FAN WHO MANAGED TO SNEAK INTO THE EXCLUSIVE PREMIERE!
In 1968 David Stark was a fifteen-year-old schoolboy, who like countless other Beatles fans the world over was prepared to go to almost any lengths in order to meet up with his idols. During the next few years he achieved this aim on several occasions, but the first — and possibly the most daring — of his encounters occurred on Wednesday, July 17, 1968, the day of the “Yellow Submarine” world premiere in London.
After arriving in Piccadilly Circus with a school chum in mid-afternoon, and spending several hours watching the gathering crowds from the roof of the cinema (thanks to an open door at the side and a conveniently placed elevator), the two lads managed to enter the theatre’s ‘dress circle’ only to be stopped by an usher who demanded to see their tickets.
“I told him that we’d left our tickets when we came in downstairs”, recalls David, “and when the manager arrived and asked us why we were there in the first place I replied that we had been sent tickets by our ‘good friend’ Clive Epstein, whom I had in fact met while on holiday a few years earlier. Well, the manager wasn’t too convinced with that explanation and took us to the bar to find Clive — gulp! — but he was more impressed when I spotted Dick James and asked him if he had seen Clive. He told me that he had been held up in Liverpool, at which point the manager said, ‘Okay, I can see you know people here. You can stay, but next time hold on to your tickets!’ Unbelievable luck!”
Even more incredibly lucky was David’s choice of seats — immediately behind the Fab Four and their friends!
“We just stood around as everyone came in”, he recalls. “I remember seeing Status Quo, Grapefruit and some members of the Who. And then all of a sudden camera flashguns started going off everywhere, and the whole place buzzed as the Beatles arrived with their entourage. They went down to the front row of the ‘dress circle’, closely followed by the photographers, and as the photographers left I noticed two empty seats behind Paul!
“At this point I was really sweating it out, especially when I looked to my right and saw that I was sitting next to Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones! I thought we were going to be thrown out at any moment. Eventually I plucked up the courage to ask him if it was okay to sit there, and he said it was, as the seats were reserved for Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, but they were still in the States! John Lennon then turned around and asked Keith Richard something like ‘So who are your friends?’, and Keith said, ‘Oh sorry, haven’t I already introduced you to Mick and Marianne?’
“It was quite amazing, sitting there behind the Beatles and watching the first screening of their new film! I remember during both ‘Hey Bulldog’ and ‘All Together Now’, Paul turned around and asked me what I thought of the new songs. Obviously, I thought they were absolutely great, but I was hardly going to run them down even if I felt otherwise!”
A better opportunity to speak to John, Paul, George and Ringo came after the feature-length cartoon finished and received its ovation from the audience. The Beatles stayed in the foyer, waiting for the pandemonium outside to subside a little and for their cars to arrive, and David took full advantage of the situation to talk to both John and George.
“Everyone was really up”, he recalls. “They were obviously pleased with what they had seen on the screen. John, with Yoko at his side, was telling me about the new Apple offices they had just moved into in Savile Row, and when I asked him if the Beatles were recording any new songs he said he’d been working on one that was constructed around a children’s nursery rhyme. I worked out later that he must have been talking about ‘Cry Baby Cry’. George, meanwhile, in his yellow suit and hat, told me he hoped his soundtrack album for the ‘Wonderwall’ film would be released sometime later in the year.
“Apart from meeting the Beatles, the most vivid memory I have of that night was the incredible sight of thousands and thousands of people outside the cinema, all struggling to get a glimpse of their idols and chanting the chorus to ‘Yellow Submarine’. Incredible!”
David did not attend the party held afterwards at the Royal Lancaster Hotel — after all, he had not been invited! — but at least he had seized what was probably the last ever opportunity to experience Beatlemania at first-hand.
From The Beatles Monthly Book – June 1988
The Beatles Diary Volume 1: The Beatles Years
"With greatly expanded text, this is the most revealing and frank personal 30-year chronicle of the group ever written. Insider Barry Miles covers the Beatles story from childhood to the break-up of the group."
We owe a lot to Barry Miles for the creation of those pages, but you really have to buy this book to get all the details - a day to day chronology of what happened to the four Beatles during the Beatles years!
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