Australian interview with The Beatles released

In 1964, before their Australian tour, The Beatles spoke with Melbourne radio host Binny Lum.

Now, 50 years later, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia has published the 16-minute unedited conversation and you can listen to it below.

Over the years, clips of the chat have been broadcast and included on special discs, but the full interview had never been released.

Radio curator Maryanne Doyle said: “The Beatles were at the height of their popularity and it was a real coup that an Australian radio personality, unknown in the UK, had managed to secure an interview with the English rock band, the hottest property in show business. The fact that this occurred says as much for Lum’s tenacity as her well connected network of contacts.”

Lum’s recordings (including interviews with a young Barbra Streisand, Fred Astaire and many other Australian and international personalities) were donated to the NFSA by her husband Geoff Charter and her daughter Sharon Terry.

The Beatles’ celebration will continue with a special free event, The Vinyl Lounge – The Beatles Down Under, at the NFSA Theatrette in Canberra on Friday at 5:30pm.

NFSA sound curators will play the band’s best tracks – directly from rare British, Australian, Japanese and Spanish vinyl pressings from the 1960s – as well as selections from the interview disc The Beatles Down Under.

They will also show television footage featuring the band about to board their transcontinental flight, John Lennon’s aunty Mimi Smith in Australia, and excerpts from their press conference in Adelaide.

In other Beatles related radio news, 2CH will air a special with Bob Rogers tomorrow at 12midday. The one-hour documentary that will feature Rogers' exclusive interviews with the band, their manager Brian Epstein, and a view from ‘inside the bubble of Beatlemania’ by the man they called ‘The Fifth Beatle’.