The Beatles Plus 50 It was fifty years ago today…

Today John Lennon attended an artistic happening in London called “The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream.” And this may be of some historical importance, because also in attendance was — drumroll please — Yoko Ono.

Among the many performers at this event were — just to list the names I recognize — Pink Floyd, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, the Move, the Pretty Things, Pete Townshend, John’s Children, Alexis Korner, Champion Jack Dupree, Graham Bond, the Creation, Denny Laine, Suzy Creamcheese, and Dick Gregory. (The Mothers of Invention had been scheduled to appear but ran into problems with the Musicians Union.)

Among the names I don’t recognize: Social Deviants, The Purple Gang, The Block, The Cat, The Flies, Charlie Browns Clowns, Glo Macari and the Big Three, The Interference, Giant Sun Trolley, The Stalkers, Jacobs Ladder Construction Company (the runner-up for best band name), and (winner!) Utterly Incredible Too Long Ago to Remember Sometimes Shouting at People.

I became rather fascinated with the Utterly Incredible etc. but couldn’t find much about them. ukrockfestivals.com, which has a great web page about the Technicolour Dream, says that this was actually two separate bands, “Utterly Incredible Too Long Ago to Remember” and “Sometimes Shouting at People.” But according to the Wikipedia bio of guitarist Jimmy McCulloch:

In April 1967, McCulloch played lead guitar for the Utterly Incredible, Too Long Ago to Remember, Sometimes Shouting at People during the 14-Hour Technicolour Dream event, which was held on the grounds of the Alexandra Palace in London.

Any way you slice it, it’s a hell of a moniker. McCulloch, by the way, later played with Paul McCartney in Wings for a few years and was a member of Thunderclap Newman.

Anyway, back to The Beatles: it’s not clear whether John and Yoko actually interacted today. At this point it had been five months since they met, but the cosmic machinery that would eventually bring them together had been ticking along very slowly. It would not complete its work for another year or so.

This footage of the Technicolour Dream appears to show John watching an art piece created for the occasion by Yoko, where a pretty girl on a ladder has her bra snipped off with scissors. Quite an effective attention-getter, that.

P.S. You can read some reminiscences of the Technicolour Dream, which give you a rather better idea of what the whole scene was like, here.