the film was probally destroyed by yoko because she did not like john playing with cheap trick.....they are said to be on there....missing or destroyed is the question...
Cheap Trick did not perform on the Aug. 18-19 video performance at the Hit Factory. It was the Double Fantasy session musicians that were videotaped as Cheap Trick had already been fired the previous week. These session musicians redid I'm Losing You.
You can hear part of that missing Hit Factory video shoot here:
See this site from the late 1990s for background on the missing videotape:
http://web.archive.org/web/20080729224728/http://www.vintagebb.com/lennon.htmlMoreover:
If John didn't destroy his Hit Factory videotape--and if the tape is truly missing from Yoko's archive--Fred Seaman becomes a most likely "person of interest" in this matter.
a) Seaman was present during the Aug. 18-19 1980 video shoot at The Hit Factory (according to his tell-all book). Significance: Seaman knew what was on the 1" tapes and could have realized the black market collector's value of the footage after John's death.
b) As the Lennon gofer, Seaman was probably one of the persons Yoko asked to retrieve the Hit Factory videotapes from director Jay Dubin. Significance: Seaman would have seen the 1" videotape boxes if he picked them up from Dubin and hand delivered them to Yoko. Thus Seaman would know what tape box to look for if he later stole John's videotape from Yoko's media archive in 1981 (the year he was fired by Yoko).
c) After John's murder, Seaman was convicted of stealing things from the Lennons and selling them on the collectors market -- including John's letters
Remember, when Milk & Honey was released in 1984, only the cassette piano demo of "Grow Old With Me" survived in Yoko's archive. So by 1984, John's guitar demos of Grow Old With Me were already stolen! It would take another 25 years for the stolen guitar versions to surface on a bootleg.
There is so much evidence pointing to Seaman as the culprit of stealing a lot of stuff from the Lennons circa 1981 (the year Yoko fired Seaman). As Seaman was convicted of stealing John's letters and diaries, how much of a stretch is it to conclude he stole the "Grow Old With Me" acoustic guitar cassette demos? And how much of stretch is it to conclude he may have stolen John's Hit Factory videotape as well?
A picture of Fred Seaman: