The Beatles – New live single

She Loves You – Live in Stockholm 1963

A small Italian company – Kutmusic – seems to have taken advantage of the loophole in EU copyright legislation to release two songs from the famous Swedish radio concert in 1963. Heralded as possibly the best live recording of the Beatles ever, this concert was exploited for The Beatles’ Anthology in 1995 – but only five of the songs from the concert appeared on that album. The remaining two, “She Loves You” and “Twist And Shout” are presented on this CD single.

The radio programme was called “Popgrupp från Liverpool på besök i Stockholm” (“Pop group from Liverpool visits Stockholm”), and has been broadcast several times on Swedish radio, starting in 1963. The last broadcast was in October 2013, duly reported in this blog.

Bootleg Recordings 1963

When the official “Bootleg Recordings 1963” was released for Christmas 2013 on iTunes, we gathered that the release was intended to close that copyright loophole, but it fell a bit short to do just that. There were other 1963 recordings in circulation among fans and collectors that weren’t part of that release. These we listed in a blog post from December 18, and the two tracks presented here were on that list.

The backside of the sleeve

The CD sleeve mimics the seventies “green series” of singles, and lists Hans Westman as the (original) engineer of the recording, and Nicola Battista as the engineer responsible for audio restoration.

It has been speculated that the great quality of this performance by the Beatles was mainly because their Vox amplifiers hadn’t been delivered to Sweden yet, so they had to make use of the Fender amplifiers that were available in the studio. The Beatles were under contract to use Vox amplifiers only, but they figured they could get away with not using them this time, since they were only heard and not seen – apart from by the radio studio audience. This, combined with a good recording studio and an enthusiastic audience made for a superb performance, resulting in a great live record of the Beatles in 1963.

This single is listed over at Discogs.

Kutmusic website

6 Responses

  1. Huston Piner says:

    I also read somewhere that the studio's audio system was designed for violins and generally acoustic recordings. The Beatles loud Rock music overloaded the system creating distortion on the guitars. After recording the show the engineer apologized but when the Beatles heard it they proclaimed it excellent and told him, "We like distortion."

  2. Foxx says:

    I don't know about Italian, but in Dutch the name of the label "kutmusic" is 'somewhat odd'.

  3. RHWinter says:

    Where to buy?

  4. Guus says:

    € 7,50 incl. europe shipement

  5. Nicola Battista says:

    Paypal options has been now added to: kutmusic.com/the-beatles-she-loves-you-twist-and-shout-live-in-stockholm-1963.html

  6. bri286 says:

    And there's more 1963 copyright-free material on its way – check out amazon.co.uk/Work-Progress-Outtakes-The-Beatles/dp/tracks/B00NEDAUJQ/ref=dp_tracks_all_1#disc_1.

    There's also a double vinyl version on sale…

Leave a Reply