I think there is a pretty vital "clue" revealed in the following passage regarding a mystery some of us have been trying to solve for years: What is the origin of that a capella "Friends" TV performance that first appeared on AMC's Am-Pop Beach Boys compilation years ago. I think this may be something worth noting:
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"In Savannah, I arranged for us to go to a local television station and tape an "interview" with the group that could be dropped into local talk shows in the tour cities, most of which were unaccustomed to having such big-name guests. By allowing the Savannah station to broadcast it, we got the taping and twenty copies of the tape at no cost. I could feel Nick Grillo's approval radiating all the way from L.A.
As we began the taping, Mike Love asked me to stand behind the camera and "act silly to keep us all happy." I did my best, but they looked very down and depressed on the tape. I wondered what, if anything, Maharishi had really done for them---and how the reality on this tape could possibly work as a selling tool.
Several of the subsequent talk show producers were disappointed in the quality of the tape and used it on the condition that I would come on in my Nehru suit and introduce it. One live broadcast in Philadelphia was especially harrowing. I had to come running down a long ramp into a crowd of dancing teenagers where I was then interviewed by the very speedy host."
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Just for reference, there have been multiple discussions about that video clip through the years, use the search engine and you'll find some of them. But here's one to check too, where said clip is discussed along with multiple TV appearances the band did in 1968:
http://smileysmile.net/board/index.php/topic,26557.msg649480.html#msg649480What is written above would both explain such a mystery clip that seems to have no firm origin in terms of familiar TV shows and hosts at that time, and also plant it firmly within the timeline of when such a TV appearance singing the title song from "Friends" and talking TM would have made the most sense - They were promoting the tour and the new music.
So they got the interview done at a local TV station, and subsequently got copies or dubs of the interview that could be sent to other TV stations and markets to broadcast - This lines up with how things were done in TV news and entertainment in 1968. The Beatles sort of pioneered this with how they'd record their promo clips for new singles and have them sent to various shows and stations so they wouldn't need to physically appear at those studios to make an appearance.
It would answer the questions about where the hell were they for this Friends interview, and who is the host or whatever else, because it was done at a local TV station and not the major talk shows, whose sets and hosts we have firm photo and video evidence of where we could pin it down and say "this is Carson, this is Merv, etc". With a little more digging - unfortunately over 50 years after the fact, this could be narrowed down to a particular region if not TV station to pin it down even further.
But the issue becomes if those 20 dubbed tapes of the interview - according to the author - were sent out to numerous TV stations, we could find a dozen different stations which aired it, which also means more copies could exist.
The author mentioned a rather chaotic appearance on a Philly TV show: I'm guessing, and my fellow Philly area cohorts could back this up, that in 1968 this was Jerry "The Geator With The Heater" Blavat's TV dance program on which the author had to appear and run down a ramp or whatever. Unless I'm missing one, it was The Geator and Hy "Hyski A-Rooni" Lit who had the two TV dance and music programs located in Philly at the time, Bandstand had already moved to LA by '68. We can see more of Hy Lit's old clips because they survived and I believed were syndicated, I don't think as many of The Geator's films survived...and Hy Lit's show (and Hy himself) were not as manic on-air as The Geator. Just a guess, but a semi-educated one.
If Ian can further hammer out the details on this Savannah date and clarify if it was actually Savannah or instead NC, it would be great to get that info and further digging could be done.
But on the surface, it feels like the author in that passage is describing the mystery "Friends" TV appearance that has been baffling some of us for almost 2 decades now since it was made public on AMC.