Happy New Beatles Year!

It was 50 years today that The Beatles auditioned for Decca Records. Ever since the mid-seventies, the Decca audition tape has been floating around among Beatles fans, but always from the same source tape. Some of the tracks were released by small record companies in the eighties and nineties, until The Beatles/Apple won a court case, and became the exclusive owner of the recordings. In 1995, The Beatles released the album Anthology 1, which included five of the songs performed at the audition: “Searchin'”, “Like Dreamers Do”, “Hello Little Girl”, “Three Cool Cats”, and “The Sheik of Araby”. The full session tape goes like this:

“Like Dreamers Do” (Lennon–McCartney)

“Money (That’s What I Want)” (Gordy/Bradford)

“Till There Was You” (Meredith Willson)

“The Sheik of Araby” (Smith/Wheeler/Snyder)

“To Know Her Is to Love Her” (Phil Spector)

“Take Good Care of My Baby” (King/Goffin)

“Memphis, Tennessee” (Chuck Berry) (not released)

“Sure to Fall (In Love with You)” (Cantrell/Claunch/Perkins)

“Hello Little Girl” (Lennon–McCartney)

“Three Cool Cats” (Leiber/Stoller)

“Crying, Waiting, Hoping” (Buddy Holly)

“Love of the Loved” (Lennon–McCartney)

“September in the Rain” (Warren/Dubin)

“Bésame Mucho” (Consuelo Velázquez)

“Searchin'” (Leiber/Stoller)

2012 is a big year for The Beatles, and will no doubt be a year which we’ll see some new Beatles releases. Why I think this is the case is because EMI has always used the release of “Love Me Do” in 1962 as a reference point to stage their Beatles anniversaries. But we fans know that New Year’s Day is the real anniversary. So how about it, Apple? Even though this is the Pete Best incarnation of the Beatles, the full Decca audition tape is riper than ripe for an official release. And in late 2011, a new and better source tape started to circulate among Beatles collectors…

5 Responses

  1. Tony says:

    Info on the new source tape? Can't find any mention of it anywhere…

  2. Brian Fried says:

    Also, please keep in mind that EMI ceases to be in 2012 — it's been bought by Universal, and Universal will probably want to recoup some of the cost with more releases.

    The only down side is that Universal doesn't like iTunes, and the Beatles initiative might slam to a halt. [And that's bad, to me, since Anthology 3 got fixed on iTunes!]

  3. db says:

    There's a bootleg called "Nevermind the Tremeloes … Here's The Beatles" which claims to be dubbed from the master reel (minus the Anthology tracks). It does sound pretty good, better than the Yellow Dog version I would say.

  4. db says:

    from the blurb that came with the download:

    "This is the new 'HBNL' source. Basically this was one of the 1st dubs from the master edit reel which was possibly used for the bootlegs that came out in the 70s. This is as good as it gets though people might argue."

  5. chessman says:

    what's the true order of the songs they played? lotta conflicting info

Leave a Reply to chessmanCancel reply