7th August, 2017 in Entertainment

All you need is love

We forget perhaps that we only use the phrase ‘all you need is love’ because John Lennon did. The song with this straightforward title was written for the Beatles by Lennon in 1967, as the ultimate anthem of the Summer of Love. 

It was premiered as part of ‘Our World’, a BBC initiative which took shape that year as the first live global television broadcast – two decades before Live Aid. When the Beatles were asked by the BBC to come up with a song for this extravaganza, both Paul McCartney and Lennon worked on material. The band chose Lennon’s song, which was duly tailored for the occasion.

‘Our World’ was broadcast via satellite on 25 June 1967, less than a month after the release of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Beatles’ landmark album that had redefined recorded sound. The two-hour programme was watched by over 400 million viewers in 25 countries. As expected at the time, the Soviet bloc countries pulled out only days before transmission, denying a possible further 150 million viewers. A technical achievement at the time, these days ‘Our World’ is remembered chiefly for the Beatles’ performance.