Ready Steady Gone?

[moorlock2003]

I just read that The Hollies appeared on Ready Steady Go! no less than 16 times. No footage has emerged, but why? Does Dave Clark still hold the rights? The Hollies and Dave didn't get along but is this the reason no clips have surfaced?

[johnt]

According to this link, BMG acquired the rights to Ready Steady Go in 2018:

www.bmg.com/uk/news/BMG-acquires-rights-to-iconic-TV-show-Ready-Steady-Go.html

I would guess that many of the episodes have been wiped, just like those early editions of Top Of The Pops.

I used to watch every episode of Ready Steady Go and Top Of The Pops in the 1960s and it's such a shame that only a few exist.

[moorlock2003]

It just seems odd to me that so many episodes are apparently lost. In the US we had Shindig!, Hullabaloo, and Shivaree, with all episodes surviving, plus many local teen shows like Hollywood A Go-Go, Shebang, Boss City, Groovy, and The Lloyd Thaxton Show, with many clips from most of those shows still around. If Ready Steady Go! was such a significant show, it doesn't make sense that many episodes were apparently not preserved.

[Stranger]

I think a lot of it comes down to failure to realise the future economic value of these things in the era before Home Video. Videotape was an expensive commodity to TV stations. I suppose for this reason the ABC In Concert show was officially junked as well as some many of those British shows.

Hollywood also melted down prints of their movies to retrieve the silver from the nitrate prints, believing it to have more economic value than the movie itself. Many classic and not so classic movies have been lost that way.

I was just reading the other day about how no complete print of The White Parade survives which was nominated for Best Picture in 1934.

[anthony]

Apr 29, 2021 19:20:57 GMT Stranger said:

I think a lot of it comes down to failure to realise the future economic value of these things in the era before Home Video. Videotape was an expensive commodity to TV stations. I suppose for this reason the ABC In Concert show was officially junked as well as some many of those British shows.

Hollywood also melted down prints of their movies to retrieve the silver from the nitrate prints, believing it to have more economic value than the movie itself. Many classic and not so classic movies have been lost that way.

I was just reading the other day about how no complete print of The White Parade survives which was nominated for Best Picture in 1934.

I know so many early uk stuff was scrubbed and reused from all shows, Doctor who etc, The theory was it was watched once, replayed once and that was it. I remember when I was a kid you just never thought of seeing something a second time, it was the way of the world back then, these days movies just come into the cinema and most people have already watched it, just different times. Anyway on the other hand you have so much stuff that will never be released by the guy that did the LTAW DVD, what’s the point if it was kept or not really, we are not going to see it.  Plus storage probably would have been an issue 

[cameron]

We almost lost the Hollies' early session tapes and some masters when EMI had a clear-out in 1972/3. Almost entire back catalogues of some of the top EMI acts from the early 1960s were wiped to re-use the tapes and make space in the EMI tape vault. Fortunately, the success of many of the Hollies compilations that appeared all over the world from 1971-1973 to cash in on EMI losing their contract with the group ensured that nearly all of the tapes were kept in the end, as the Hollies were still deemed relevant enough to warrant further releases. Groups that had come and gone by this point, such as Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers and Herman's Hermits lost huge portions of their session tape library in the cull. Thankfully, the Hollies Ltd owns all the post-1966 masters, so they're all safe and all survive. 

You have to consider how transient popular music had been back then until that point. It was unfathomable to still be seriously interested in a popular music artist from 50 years ago. Music from the 1910s and 1920s had no real place in popular culture by the late 1960s, so it was just assumed that the music of the 1960s would follow a similar fate - just as skiffle, rock and roll and doo wop had done before it. Even popular Jazz had transformed enormously from the early 1900s to the 1960s. And to a degree, the music of the early 1960s at least DID die out for a decade or so. It was said somewhere that by the mid-1970s, Wings had a following of young fans who weren't aware that Paul McCartney was in a band before Wings! 

I think the Disco and Punk movement, plus the rise in electronic music, alienated a lot of people at the time, and you see this resurgence of 1960s music by the late 1970s and the emergence of an 'Oldies Circuit'. I think the pace of popular music evolving from around 1964-1971 also warranted a lot of people re-visiting it later on and many 1960s singles became chart hits again in the following decade. It was because of the 1960s that the music industry began to re-evaluate its attitude towards older music and the importance of re-packaging and re-releasing existing masters. 

[moorlock2003]

Apr 29, 2021 19:20:57 GMT Stranger said:

I think a lot of it comes down to failure to realise the future economic value of these things in the era before Home Video. Videotape was an expensive commodity to TV stations. I suppose for this reason the ABC In Concert show was officially junked as well as some many of those British shows.

Hollywood also melted down prints of their movies to retrieve the silver from the nitrate prints, believing it to have more economic value than the movie itself. Many classic and not so classic movies have been lost that way.

I was just reading the other day about how no complete print of The White Parade survives which was nominated for Best Picture in 1934.

Who said ABC's "In Concert" was junked? The Hollies complete segment as aired finally emerged after 40+ years.

[Stranger]

May 5, 2021 16:49:30 GMT moorlock2003 said:

Apr 29, 2021 19:20:57 GMT Stranger said:

I think a lot of it comes down to failure to realise the future economic value of these things in the era before Home Video. Videotape was an expensive commodity to TV stations. I suppose for this reason the ABC In Concert show was officially junked as well as some many of those British shows.

Hollywood also melted down prints of their movies to retrieve the silver from the nitrate prints, believing it to have more economic value than the movie itself. Many classic and not so classic movies have been lost that way.

I was just reading the other day about how no complete print of The White Parade survives which was nominated for Best Picture in 1934.

Who said ABC's "In Concert" was junked? The Hollies complete segment as aired finally emerged after 40+ years.

I posted this information previously, maybe it was on the old forum so I don't have the reference anymore. What survives of the show are some private copies made for the producer or something. The actual tapes weren't kept.