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John Lennon’s last live performance in front of an audience took place at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City for the television program “Salute To Sir Lew – Master Showman” on April 18, 1975. The program was broadcast both in the United States (June 13, 1975) and in the United Kingdom (June 20, 1975), but these were two different 60 minutes versions of the program, formatted for the individual countries.
In both versions of the program, John Lennon performs the two songs “Slippin’ and Slidin’” from his new album, “Rock’n’Roll” as well as his most famous song from his solo career, “Imagine”.
Now it turns out that a videotape located in the British Film Institute BFI contains an unedited recording, and there is another song that was performed but not broadcast. This is also one of the songs from “Rock’n’Roll”, his top 20 single hit “Stand By Me”.
The TV conservators in the Kaleidoscope group obtained a copy of this tape back in 2017, but were unaware that it contained more than what was broadcast. Robert Reinstein has now reviewed the tape and concluded that this is a new discovery.
Ray Langstone tells us that he is certain that the tape originates from Polygram’s TV archive of past ITC programmes. The catalogue was sold back to ITV around ten years ago, but ITV already had the broadcast version and gave the unedited tape to the BFI.
Kaleidoscope will be showing either the full tape or, at the very least, “Stand By Me” at the Midlands Art Centre Birmingham in June 2025.
Here is a short film clip showing some of the differences between the US and UK versions of the programme, as well as a bit of the newly discovered performance of “Stand By Me”.
Thanks to Ray Langstone and Robert Reinstein.
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