I wish ‘70s-style TV variety specials would make a comeback. They represented everything great about awful showbiz crap. Actors who couldn’t sing sang and singers who couldn’t act acted. They almost invariably contained terribly-scripted sketch comedy in which stilted dialogue abounded. And ALL aspects of the productions were pushed past their badness thresholds—the musical orchestrations were exactly too bombastic, the costumery was exactly too glittery, and the stars were exactly too far past their prime. That shit was choice.

On Thanksgiving of 1977, ABC-TV aired the one-hour Beatles Forever, a musical tribute to the Fab Four, starring Diahann Carroll, Ray Charles, Anthony Newley, Paul Williams, Mel Tillis, Bernadette Peters, Anthony Dowell, and Tony Randall. Yep, some crazy bastard thought Tony Randall singing Beatles songs was going to be good TV! About the only respectable performances came, unsurprisingly, from the great Ray Charles, who’d already been performing “Yesterday” as part of his own concert repertoire for years. A different kind of respectable performance came from Anthony Newley, by then deep into the Borscht Belt phase of his career, tackling George Harrison’s dense and trippy Sgt. Pepper’s number “Within You, Without You.” Dangerous Minds’ Marc Campbell wrote about that a few years ago, check it out here, its histrionics could permanently warp you. If only the video would turn up online—Canadian sound collagist and radio host Otis Fodder‘s description of the segment sounds about ten light years beyond bonkers:

This special starred a ton of folks, but this performance by Anthony Newley (with his over-dramatic vocal stylings) take the cake. The video clip of this is a laugh riot in itself with Anthony’s eyebrows doing most of the singing (as they move in a hypnotic motion that send you into a pure Zen state). It’s also very important to note that while Anthony sings this song he is in a Grecian bath room, in a toga, fog covering the ground and there are ladies in waiting!

For the most part, the show was heavy on tacky medleys, wherein every singer got a chance to quickly trainwreck a choice bit of a classic song. Audio of the entire show was made available in MP3 form by WFMU as the kickoff of their 2007 “365 Days” project. Video is maddeningly difficult to find, but the final medley survives on YouTube. It starts off quite nicely, with Ray Charles performing a respectful and tasteful take on Let It Be‘s “The Long and Winding Road.” Then, in under a minute, it all goes straight to hell.