In the summer of 1967, often referred to as the Summer of Love, I had just graduated from high school and had my first summer job. Both Randy Klopp and I had gotten jobs at the nearby VA Hospital. In those days VA stood for Veterans’ Administration, but it has since been renamed to Veterans’ Affairs.

We took turns driving to work, which was about a 20 or 25 minute trip each way, as we took the back roads rather than Rte. 422, but regardless of who was driving, Randy was in charge of the radio. So he always had a pop station on. I heard more top 40 hit songs that summer than I had ever heard in my entire life up to that point.

I had nothing against top 40 music, but left to my own devices I would have opted for something else.

Though we must have heard nearly an hour’s worth of top 40 songs every day for those nearly three months, I really only have clear memories of two of them: The Association’s “Windy” and that song about wearing flowers in your hair if you go to San Francisco by whomever. 

But that’s the summer that The Beatles released “All You Need Is Love” after they performed it live for the world on that satellite program. It became a number one hit both in the UK and here in the United States, but I don’t recall ever hearing it on the radio. I don’t recall ever hearing it until it was released here in the States as part of the Magical Mystery Tour album.

Very strange.

All I can think of is that, whatever radio show Randy had us listening to, it may have been doing a countdown to the number one tune, and we simply weren’t in the car long enough to reach reach number one.

Anyway The Beatles YouTube account has just released a cleaned up and color version of that live performance from June of 1967. The backing track and backing vocals had been recorded ahead of time, but Paul and John are singing live, Paul is playing bass live, and George’s four measure guitar solo is live. Also, the orchestra musicians are all playing live as well. For reasons having to do with mic bleed through (or something), except for the opening snare drum roll, Ringo is miming the drumming that he recorded earlier.

To get an idea of what it looked like on the original satellite transmission in black and white, here is the video from that broadcast starting with a bit in the control room with producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick.