Add articles to your saved list and come back to them any time.Greg Perano was such a huge Beatles fan that in June 1964 he climbed a hill in his home town of Picton, on New Zealand’s South Island, to hear them play. They were performing in Wellington, 100 kilometres away. Ah, the optimism of youth.
“This guy was really good at editing in camera, so the seven minutes we have takes us through the whole concert,” he says. “It has the Beatles walking onstage, then excerpts from a whole lot of songs, and then it’s them walking off at the end.“There’s moments where he’s standing on stage filming Ringo, and he’s right in front of Paul and George who look straight at him … so he had amazing access. He was obviously well-connected.
Standard 8 film being a silent medium, the lucky finder has no music copyright worries to contend with. But the contents of the other reels gave him pause. These were family films, beautifully shot and edited. They had to be returned. The name on the box was an unusual one which he had little trouble tracking down.The late Gil Wahlquist, he discovered, had been a, and later his own name. Filmmaking, alongside music, was one of his many passions.
Compared to the modern international concert experience, “it was incredibly primitive”, she says. Moreover, “the reality of the Beatles concert is that I don’t recall hearing a note of music because all the girls screamed. They screamed and screamed.”