There was a discussion on the radio the other evening about the morality or propriety of major events which are only live ‘as if’ – the classic music performance at the Obama inauguration was one of those discussed. Lesley Garrett took a particularly hard line – if the audience have paid for live that is what they should get, warts & all
I was thinking this is all a bit too precious, when I remembered The Beatles
Our response to the shocking rumour that The Beatles did not actually sing live on stage any more was simply to refuse to believe it. Even when it was more or less admitted – it had become impossible for the Fab Four to hear each other because of the volume of screaming from the audience – we preferred just to pretend it was not so
One evening back then I emerged from the tube station on Holborn Kingsway at about 7pm one Friday evening to be met by an astonishing sight: hundreds & hundreds of little girls running about in a state of near hysteria
Turned out that The Beatles had been appearing on Ready Steady Go which went out live each week from the basement studios at the corner of Aldwych & Kingsway
The building later became the home of the General Register Office Indexes of Births Marriages & Deaths which had been moved out of nearby Somerset House, & became familiar to many as St Catherine’s House, the place to go if you needed a copy of your birth certificate
The explosion of interest in Family History meant that larger premises were needed & so the Family Records Centre was set up near Sadler’s Wells
Even that is no more. The general public can consult the records these days only ‘as if’ live on microfiche in a few centres. Otherwise they exist in the virtual world of the internet
And nobody would let hundreds of little girls go out unaccompanied in Central London on a dark evening
