Bev Bevan Diaries: The Move were way ahead of MTV!

THERE came a time in 1967 that The Move decided to make it in the movies.

This was long before the advent of MTV, of course. That was still 14 years or so in the future.

Music videos hadn't even been invented yet - and VHS tape recorders wouldn't be launched until the 1970s.

But we decided that we wanted to make a film to promote what would be our next single, I Can Hear The Grass Grow.

We always liked to be the band who were willing to try something new, and making a movie seemed like a great idea.

To be honest, there wasn't much of a script. We were all sitting in the middle of a wood and we had a butler serving us tea and biscuits!

I seem to recall that it was filmed on Wimbledon Common.

Suddenly all these girls appeared from the trees, saw us and started tearing us to bits. Or, at least, that's what the script called for.

There was a tramp rambling round in there as well. We'd actually found him in the woods, slipped him a ten bob note, and asked him to appear in the film.

That was his bit of history in the making. He's probably a stockbroker now - or maybe he's sitting in the House of Lords.

When it came to movies, everyone wanted to get in on the act. The Beatles and The Monkees had already announced plans to make new films and suddenly it was the bandwagon to jump on to.

Cliff Richard, it was reported, was toying with the idea of making a serious drama about the Vietnam War and the Dave Clark Five were being lined up for roles in a thriller, neither of which materialised.

Brian Jones of the Stones wrote the soundtrack for a movie too, inspired no doubt, by the fact that his girlfriend Anita Pallenberg was to have the starring role.

The movies were still big business in '67. There was The Graduate with its Simon & Garfunkel soundtrack; the shockingly violent Bonnie & Clyde; Paul Newman eating boiled eggs in Cool Hand Luke.

And, of course, there was Sidney Poitier breaking the race barrier in the utterly brilliant In The Heat Of The Night.