Auction tomorrow

The real deal?

Tomorrow, April 1st is auction day for various materials relating to the recording of the Beatles in concert at the Star Club, Hamburg from December 1962, including the so called “original unedited mono Master 7-inch safety reels”, which we will refer to as the “raw tapes”. These tapes could be the stuff Beatles fans and collectors are most looking forward to, because all releases of the concerts have been from edited, truncated, jumbled up and processed so called “master tapes”, which everyone agrees has done the tracks more harm than good.

With the “raw tapes” in one’s possession, one could establish the correct order of the songs, and it might also reveal more stage banter and perhaps incomplete songs left out of the releases from 1977 and throughout the eighties.

The tapes are likely to be a direct transfer of the material from the four track original, damaged 1962 tape used to record the band on the scene, as rescued by Ted Taylor and Allan Williams in 1973. But until we get a chance to hear the tapes in full, we won’t know. Samples from the tapes have been posted on the auction site, and the quality and sonic ambience is said to be similar to the snippets from these concerts as used in the “Living In The Material World” documentary film – and different to the sonic ambience of previous album releases of this material.

Previously a legal release, until the Beatles won a court case in 1990.

Meanwhile, the Misterclaudel bootleg from these same concerts, said to be from the “raw tape” has proved to be no such thing, it is sourced from the same processed versions that can be found on other releases. Indeed, they even included the tracks from a genuine release of Johnny and the Hurricanes’ Live at the Star Club Vol II album, which the bootlegger wrongly identified as being Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes.

Link to the auction

Meanwhile, another interesting, earlier tape has been found, which is the song “Some Other Guy” recorded at the Cavern Club in Liverpool September 5th, 1962. The tape is to go under the hammer on November 4th, 2015 from Adam Partridge Auctioneers in Liverpool. The contents of the tape is well known from needledrops of acetates featuring this version of the song, but sourced from a tape, the quality is bound to be better than previously heard incarnations of the recording.