Cult Corner: Rock Out With John, Yoko, Bowie, and Janis On ‘The Dick Cavett Show’

When we talk about streaming culture, we’re usually enthusing about what’s new, but one of the best things about streaming is how it’s made old and obscure cult hits available to a new generation. Presenting Cult Corner: your weekly look into hidden gems and long-lost curiosities that you can find on streaming.

In 1968, ABC gave Dick Cavett his very own daytime talk show. The program became such a success that they soon moved him to late night, opposite Johnny Carson’s The Tonight Show. While Carson remains a titan in late night, Cavett’s legacy is in his brilliance as a interviewer. He could devote entire episodes to one subject and chose to invite guests from then offbeat world of rock and roll. Because of this, he’s one of the few people to give American television audiences some of the most profoundly interesting portraits of our rock royalty.

You might have thought that if you weren’t alive in the early ’70s to catch John Lennon and Yoko Ono cracking quips and stirring up trouble on The Dick Cavett Show that you’d have to do some serious leg work — in archives or on YouTube — to find a hi-res version of the program. Luckily, those purveyors of long-lost pop culture curiosities, Shout! Factory TV, have a collection of spectacular Cavett shows available to stream for free right now. Three of them feature John and Yoko at the height of their anti-establishment lovefest.

One of the Lennon and Ono interviews starts with references to Aldous Huxley and “sucking on a malted down at Nathan’s.” There’s banter about politics and jokes about George Harrison. They’re referring to a lot of timely stuff that still makes sense to the pop culture savant of today. It’s like a kooky time capsule that captures what the world was like in 1972 — but that also illustrates how influential that time was to our culture today.

The Dick Cavett show doesn’t just feature great interviews with these stars, though. There are also usually live performances of some of their biggest and most influential hits. So, you can see Stevie Wonder singing “Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours,” listen to Janis Jopic wail on “To Love Somebody,” or catch David Bowie ease into “1984.”

I’m warning you: if you watch any or all of these episodes, you might just die of cool.

Right now you can stream interviews with the following music legends on Shout! Factory TV: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Janis Joplin, Ray Charles, David Bowie, Ray Charles, George Harrison, Paul Simon, Sly and the Family Stone, Billy Joel, and Jefferson Airplane. Keep in mind that a lot of these shows include interviews with other celebrities of the day like Shirley MacLaine and live performances of the artists’ greatest hits, and they aren’t all structured the same, so you have to skip around if you’re looking for a specific segment.

All in all, it’s just epic to have these shows available in such high quality on streaming. It’s like taking a peak into a different time, a different world, and a different era of entertainment. [Watch The Dick Cavett Show]

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[Gifs: ABC]