Clip: Bernie Andrews - Recording Sessions for BBC Top Gear

Описание: A BECTU History Project Interview recorded at Bernie's home on 6th February 2008 by Mike Dick and Jackie Wilson. Bernie talks about recording live studio sessions for BBC Radio 1 programme ‘Top Gear’ in October 1967 It was first hosted by Pete Drummond but eventually John Peel, championed by Bernie , came to present the programme. Bernie would record six different sessions in a week. The first two programmes included sessions by Pink Floyd, Traffic, the Move, Procol Harem and the Who. He goes on to talk about recording sessions with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones on Saturday Club working with George Martin and Andrew Loog Oldham.

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Bernie Andrews (17 August 1933 – 11 June 2010) was a BBC radio producer and the man behind the early BBC radio appearances of many of the leading pop artists of the 1960s, including the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix.

He grew up at Eltham, southeast London. After doing his national service in the RAF, he worked as a Post Office telephone engineer. He joined the BBC in 1957 as a technical operator. He would often sit in on live studio recording sessions for such music programmes as Saturday Skiffle Club, but his official duties as a tape operator and editor confined him to programmes like Sports Report.

His big breakthrough came when he was appointed a producer in the Popular Music division and joined Saturday Skiffle Club’s successor, Saturday Club presented by Brian Matthews on the BBC Light Programme. From 10.00am to noon every Saturday morning the programme was one of the few shows to feature pop music – a mix of discs and tapes of specially recorded BBC sessions. As a result it reached an enormous audience of ten to twelve million listeners.

The Beatles made their debut on the show on 26th January 1963 – the producer of the session was Bernie Andrews. He went on to produce all the Beatles sessions on Saturday Club. Bernie became a personal friend of the group, regularly inviting them to his flat in Shepherd Street in Mayfair which he shared with Terry Doran – a close friend of George Harrison and a business associate of Brian Epstein. On tour in the early 1960s, they sent him regular letters and postcards from all over Britain and beyond. In 1967 Andrews helped to launch the BBC career of the presenter John Peel, becoming his first producer on his nightly Top Gear programme on Radio 1.

In 1980 John Lennon spoke affectionately of Andrews in his last radio interview, recorded the night before he was murdered. Brian Epstein described Bernie as "someone who I and the boys have a great deal of affection for, because he is probably one of the best producers in the Corporation".

See the full interview at the History Project (http://www.historyproject.org.uk) - home of the largest archive of oral history interviews with professionals from the UK's film, television, radio and stage industries.