The Shadows on Top of the Pops

(I originally published this post over a year ago, but it was a bit rubbish so I've rewritten it with a lot more information and photos! I still have more things to add - coming soon)

A list of every time The Shadows featured on Top Of The Pops, assembled with info from the Popscene forum and a bit of sleuthing. Studio appearances are in bold. 

18th March 1964 - Theme For Young Lovers (record played with footage of the crowd dancing)

13th May 1964 - The Rise And Fall Of Flingel Bunt (promo film, repeated 20th May) 

31st December 1964 - Genie With The Light Brown Lamp (danced to by The Go-Jos) 

25th February 1965 - Mary Anne (repeated 11th March)

12th August 1965 - Don't Make My Baby Blue (repeated 19th August)

16th December 1965 - The War Lord

3rd March 1966 - I Met A Girl

7th July 1966 -  A Place In The Sun

17th November 1966 - The Dreams I Dream

13th April 1967 - Maroc 7 (promo film - the film survives!)

11th May 1967 - Bombay Duck (promo film, presumably lost but photos can be seen here)

11th April 1968 - Dear Old Mrs. Bell

27th February 1975 - Let Me Be The One

27th March 1975 - Let Me Be The One

19th June 1975 - Run Billy Run

11th January 1979 - Don't Cry For Me Argentina (repeated 25th January)

8th February 1979 - Don't Cry For Me Argentina

10th May 1979 - Theme From The Deer Hunter

24th May 1979 -  Theme From The Deer Hunter

31st January 1980 - Riders In The Sky

15th February 1980 - Riders In The Sky

28th February 1980 - Riders In The Sky 

Of their 1960s studio appearances, only Don't Make My Baby Blue survives in full.  

 

(I just listened to it again and I forgot how much I like that song, one of their best vocal tracks from the Burns period. I love the bit where Bruce takes over lead vocals for a line and chimes in with "So you'd better take good care of her" then goes back to harmonising with Hank. I just think it's a nice touch!)

 

A clip of The Dreams I Dream from 17th November 1966 does exist, but this has only ever been shown at a BFI event and as far as I know has never appeared anywhere else. 

I have no idea where I found this photo, but I seem to have a picture of the broadcast - looks like someone took a photo of their television 59 years ago!

 

 

Also there is a colour photo of the studio, where you can see Hank is on piano and Brian is out of shot.
 

Now for a slight detour into Marvin, Welch & Farrar studio appearances on Top Of The Pops:

4th February 1971 - Faithful

18th February 1971 -  Faithful, You're Burning Bridges, My Home Town (a short-lived 'album slot' feature where an artist would play three songs from an album). An audio recording of My Home Town and a short interview with Tony Blackburn exists from this episode.

13th April 1972 - Strike A Light or Marmaduke (?) I have an audio recording of Strike A Light supposedly from this episode, but every source I can find online says it's Marmaduke that was performed. I don't know which is wrong.

Here are two photos from the 18th February 1971 MWF album slot: I'm taking an educated guess at which songs are being performed in the photos.

The boys all with acoustics, Bruce is singing, holding a microphone instead of playing - Faithful?

Scan of a photo from my collection. My Home Town? Hank with his greenburst Marvin to play the little solo at the end. If you look near his feet you can see he is "using" a Cry Baby wah pedal too.

 

The second Let Me Be The One performance (in the still image below) and Run Billy Run have been wiped and have not resurfaced in any form. However the 27th February performance of Let Me Be The One was recovered in 2020 as a black-and-white recording by Kaleidoscope. I don't think we will ever get see this though, as they seem to be very protective over their archive.

 

Let Me Be The One, 27th March 1975. Bruce miming bass again!

All their TOTP appearances from 1979-80 survive, so I put them together into one video.

Before I started gathering them all to compile, I had only seen one or two of these before, the rest were totally new to me, although they weren't particularly hard to find. All the clips from episodes that have been repeated by the BBC are in good quality, but the blurrier clips haven't been repeated and presumably were taken from home recordings on VHS tapes.

Use the timestamps in the description if you don't want to watch the Shads mime to the same tunes multiple times in a row.

In some of the earlier clips they look like they really didn't want to be there... My personal favourite of these is their last appearance ever(!) where, unusually, Brian's been brought to the front to showcase his ace drumming and bash those Syndrums, and George is so enthusiastic and full of energy as always, and Hank looks really good with that jacket to match his black and gold Strat! Here's a bit of useless trivia: to achieve the unusual camera angles with a large and heavy studio camera, special equipment had to be used called a CHAR, aka a "Camera Head Attachment (Rocking)".

And as well as Marvin, Welch, and Bennett, the other Shadows appearing were:

Don't Cry For Me Argentina:

11th January and 8th February 1979: George Ford bass, Alan Hawkshaw keys

 Theme From The Deer Hunter: 

10th May and 24th May 1979:  Mo Foster bass, Dave Lawson keys

(I think the bassist for the 24th is Mo Foster?) 

Riders In The Sky:

31st January 1980 - Mo Foster bass, Dave Lawson keys

15th February and 28th February 1980 - George Ford bass, Dave Lawson keys 

 28 Feb '80: Brian to the fore!

11 Jan '79: Bruce, George, and Hank, plus flowers