Ever See This Before? Me Either!
I acquired this and the other two very rare photos in the comment section Sunday afternoon, just hours before I saw them on the 8 o’clock CBS concert special. This black Mylar set was the first one up for the Beatles Saturday morning rehearsal. You can see Neal Aspinall standing in for George Harrison, so this was at the very start of the day as Aspinall was soon relieved of stand in duty by Vince Calandra. On seeing this, Sullivan immediately nixed Bill Bohnert’s set saying, “this is the Ed Sullivan show, not the Beatles show”.
Here is a color shot and notice Ringo is playing a set of White Pearl finish Ludwigs. I’m told that he bought this set as a spare the first day they got to NYC as several concert dates were also coming up on this first short visit.
This is set designer Bill Bohnert’s original sketch of the set. I wonder what ever happened to this one and the “arrow” set? Anyone know?
I’m told that Ed nixed the backdrop because he said everyone knew who they were.
The mics they used remind me of golf balls. It’s funny that on one of the Sullivan shows in Miami (dress rehearsal) the mics kept moving away or down and Paul had to try and sing into them.
The white drums were delivered by mistake by the local Ludwig drum dealer. They were quickly replaced with a new set of Ringos signature black oyster pearl drums
Glad they changed the set to the arrows… More modern and said the story better!