Video may have waited until 1981 to kill the radio star, but like Bob Dylan, The Beatles were cutting that particular edge fifteen years prior.
As they often did, the Fab Four followed Dylan’s progressive lead into the music video era: the latter’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” promotional clip (which was recently re-cut to match a new mix of the song) from 1965 is widely considered to be the first music video, and was surely on the minds of Capitol Records heads when the time came to promote Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. And while various clips The Beatles made at that time have been seen before—including the dyed-out video for “Strawberry Fields Forever,” which appeared in The Beatles Anthology—the group are now releasing a previously hard-to-find video for era-smashing Sgt. Pepper’s cut “A Day in the Life.”
The video splices together footage of recording sessions with candid shots of the group (as well as Mick Jagger and Keith Richards) and the orchestra who provided the track’s musical heft. It’s being released in advance of 1+, a repackaging of the 2000 compilation 1, which brought together all twenty-seven of The Beatles’ number one hits. This new edition includes new audio mixes, alternate versions, and what Uncut describes as “rarely seen and newly restored films and videos.”
You can watch the “A Day in the Life” clip below.
1+ is out November 6 on Apple Corps LTD/UMG.
(via Uncut)
