Friday Flashback: The Easybeats

Friday Flashback on my Mind….

Rare footage of 60s sensation The Easybeats was recently discovered in a performance at UK’s Top of the Pops.

The surviving footage, broadcast on BBC TV on this day 55 years ago (1966), was discovered by acclaimed New South Wales artist Lucy Culliton, in her late father’s belongings. Hiding at the back of a shelf was a little white box marked ‘Easybeats print – Friday On My Mind’.

The NFSA has digitally scanned the 16mm film print for long-term preservation in its collection, and is also pleased to be returning a digital file master to the BBC archives.

NFSA Senior Curatorial Officer Simon Smith told TV Tonight, the vision was one of the missing holy grails of Australian rock music history.

“It’s a really exciting find – Australia’s most successful rock group of the 1960s, performing their most popular song on the most watched music show on British television – and one that had not been seen for over half a century,” he said.

“This is such a fantastic find and one that could easily have never occurred but for the NFSA’s existing connection with the Culliton family. It’s thanks to them and their interest in our audiovisual heritage that this film found its way to us.

“Getting on TOTP was the television pinnacle for music artists in Britain. The viewing audience of Top Of The Pops was larger than the entire population of Australia at the time!” he said.

“These sorts of discoveries give us hope of finding other significant missing moments from the history of television. Now if we can just locate the 1975 Graham Kennedy Show ‘Crow Call’ episode or Hoges on New Faces…”!