Lost footage of the Easybeats performing Friday on My Mind discovered after 55 years

Lost footage of the Easybeats during their first performance on BBC's Top of the Pops has been found after 55 years. Australian painter Lucy Culliton discovered it while sorting through the belongings of her late father, former television director Tony Culliton, at the family’s home in the Blue Mountains. Hiding at the back of a shelf were a handful of reel-to-reel audio tapes – one was marked ‘Easybeats print – Friday On My Mind’. The National Film and Sound Archive has now digitally scanned the 16mm film.

Stevie Wright was just 19 at the time, the rest of the band were just a year older. No wonder they still look so healthy.

After arriving in London in July 1966, the band recorded a number of songs with Ted Albert at EMI's Abbey Road Studios, but these were deemed unsuitable by United Artists Records and Albert was removed as producer. The band was then teamed with freelance producer Shel Talmy, who had achieved great success with his production for the Who and the Kinks. United Artists also felt that the band's song writing was too "unsophisticated" for the competitive UK market. The label had already released the Wright/Young composition "Come And See Her" as a single in the UK on 15 July and it had not sold well. Dutch-born Harry Vanda, now having a stronger grasp of English, replaced Stevie Wright as George Young's song writing partner at this point.

After auditioning several titles for Talmy, "Friday on My Mind" caught the producer's ear as the next single. The band recorded the song with Talmy at IBC Studios, London in September, with Glyn Johns (Rolling Stones engineer) as studio engineer. "Friday on My Mind" was released in the UK on 14 October 1966. It reached #6 on the UK Charts, No. 1 in Australia, No. 13 in Canada, No. 16 in the US, the Top 10 in Germany, the Netherlands and France, and sold over one million copies worldwide.