While colour lights up your face…
Though John Henshall had already stated (in recent online activity and yet another appearance on Johnnie Walker’s Radio 2 show at the weekend), that the BBC showing of The Jean Genie would, after all, go ahead on Wednesday 21 December 2011…we thought that, due to the on/off nature of this story in recent weeks, we would wait until we’d got it from Auntie’s mouth directly before we announced anything.
The BEEB kindly obliged and provided us with the statement below…As I write this, this statement is so hot-off-the-press that the BBC schedule hasn’t even been updated to include The Jean Genie yet…
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Top of the Pops Christmas Special to broadcast ‘lost’ David Bowie footage
Some ‘lost’ archive footage of David Bowie performing The Jean Genie in 1973 on the BBC’s seminal pop programme Top of the Pops is to be broadcast on TV for the first time in almost 40 years.
Top of the Pops Christmas Special (BBC Two, Wednesday 21 December 2011, 7.30pm) is to show the rarely seen performance which had previously been considered lost.
Retired cameraman John Henshall from Oxfordshire had kept a copy of Bowie’s appearance and had not realised the footage had been wiped from the BBC Archive and was highly sought after.
David Bowie’s performance of The Jean Genie was recorded on 3 January 1973 and transmitted the following day and has not been broadcast on TV since.
Mark Cooper, Executive Producer of Top of the Pops 2 said:
“Bowie singing The Jean Genie is electric and the kind of piece of archive that not only brings back how brilliant Top of the Pops could be but also how a piece of archive can speak to us down the years. I can’t imagine what other piece of TOTP from the early 70s would be as extraordinary a find.”
The four minute clip of David Bowie and The Spiders from Mars performing live will be shown in full. It shows Bowie and the band in full ‘glam’ outfits, with Bowie also playing the harmonica.
The Jean Genie was originally released as a single in November 1972 and eventually peaked at Number 2 in the UK Singles charts.
The song was the penultimate track on Bowie’s 1973 album, Aladdin Sane, and was written in New York City. The title, according to Bowie, was a loose pun on Jean Genet, the provocative French writer.
Other artists featured in the 90-minute Top of the Pops Christmas special include Slade, Wham, Pet Shop Boys, Coldplay and Adele.
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I have a feeling there will be a fair few of us ‘letting ourselves go’ on Wednesday evening. (Exits to cries of “You did that a long time ago, Blam!)
See listings for repeat performances in your area.