Television: Paul McCartney interviewed for Scene Special

Paul McCartney gave an interview on this day for the Granada Television late-night show Scene Special.

The interview was conducted by producer Jo Durden-Smith, and was recorded in a ground-floor studio at 3 Upper James Street in central London. The subtitle of the show was It’s So Far Out It’s Straight Down, and it was directed by John Sheppard.

McCartney discussed the London counterculture, appearing in four separate sequences in the 29-minute programme. Also included were the editorial board of International Times, the Indica Bookshop’s founder Barry Miles, footage of Pink Floyd performing ‘Interstellar Overdrive’ at the UFO Club, a ‘happening’ at Piccadilly Circus, and footage of a poetry gathering at the Royal Albert Hall featuring Allen Ginsberg, Adrian Mitchell and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

If you don’t know anything about it [the counterculture], you can sort of trust that it’s probably gonna be all right… It’s human beings doing it, and you know vaguely what human beings do.

The straights should welcome the underground because it stands for freedom… It’s not strange, it’s just new. It’s not weird, it’s just what’s going on around.

It’s So Far Out It’s Straight Down was broadcast in the north of England at 10.25pm on Tuesday 7 March 1967.