PINK FLOYD Transmission: Now Possible

RC’s resident archive film consultant Keith Badman reports on the recent recovery of two of Top Of The Pops’ most legendary moments

I shall never forget the time and date, approximately 3:30 on the afternoon of Tuesday, 10 November 2009, when Dick Fiddy, of the British Film Institute, showed me the two, recently recovered editions of Top Of The Pops.

Finding lost clips from this now defunct, longrunning BBC music series has been a passion of mine for years, and he knew it. To witness that day, 42 years after their original transmissions, the longlost debut appearance by Pink Floyd and only studio performance on the show by the American band, The Turtles, was, quite frankly, astonishing.

Knowing the BBC’s original disdain for classic recordings such as these (tapes were routinely wiped; films habitually junked), we have to ask, just where did this truly amazing footage originate? From the archives of one Bill Harrison, is your answer.

He has been storing, cataloguing and repairing both audio and video material for various clients in the music industry for many years now. Top-name bands, record companies, composers and arrangers have all utilised his first-class services.

“During the course of going through one of my clients’ old material,” Harrison told me, “I came across an old, half-inch, Sony reel-to-reel video, which he’d kept since 1967 because he believed it contained some precious family stuff. The tape, which had …

by Keith Badman
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