Dear Sir or Madam...

Been in the middle of a big fat Beatles binge lately, largely fueled by a stack of bootlegs (or "Beatlegs" in geek-ease) I've recently acquired.

Among that stack were some of the Dr. Ebbetts remastered things (from mint original vinyl), and listening to those Beatles-supervised mono mixes has been like hearing much of this stuff for the first time (and I've probably heard these songs thousands of times). I've really developed an all-new appreciation of Paul's bass-playing, something the thinner stereo mixes concealed. I urge you to seek out these Ebbetts bootlegs. (For Paul's sake if nothng else.)

Anyway, for Christmas, my wife got me a shady-looking import Beatles DVD (from Russia, no less) that presents a ton of Beatles TV appearances and promo films in their entirity--not talked over, excerpted or spliced up.

Making my way to the DVD player, I was struck by all the misspellings on the package: "Hey Tude," "Paperblack Writer," etc. The ones I was really stoked about were "Paperback Writer" and "Rain," my two favorite Beatles songs and my candidate for the single greatest 45 ever released ("Good Vibrations" would be #2).

I'd seen clips and stills from these films before. Produced to promote the record without the Beatles having to actually make a series of TV appearances, these films may have created the music video as we now know it. They were shot in London's Chiswick Park in May of 1966, and directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg (who'd go on to direct "Let It Be"). The photo above is from that shoot.

The band's hanging out in Chiswick Park, miming to the record. Paul's got his Hofner bass, John his Rickenbacker and George a red Gibson SG. Ringo's drums are nowhere to be seen, so he just sits around tapping his feet. (Why didn't someone just throw Ringo's Ludwigs in a truck and run them over to the shoot?)

As music videos go, these are really not all that extraordinary. But it's the Beatles, it's 1966 and it's "Rain" and "Paperback Writer." In 1966, The Beatles, The Stones and Bob Dylan had pretty much cornered the market on Cool. And it's been a slow slide downhill ever since. It really don't get no better than this.

You can see both of these films on YouTube in fairly decent quality. Go look 'em up.