The Daily Mail today:
Beatles boss confirms lost 'gems' may soon be released
Stolen tapes of The Beatles' final recording sessions, which contained more than 200 one-off performances and unique covers, could be commerically released as soon as next year, the head of Apple Corps has confirmed.
Speaking at the trial of Nigel Oliver, 55, from Slough, who yesterday was sentenced to a two-year supervision order for handling stolen goods, Neil Aspinall, the Beatles' first road manager and now head of the Apple Corps estate, told the court: "These tapes have huge commercial value."
Among the gems on the tapes were versions of Rod Stewart's Maggie May and Bob Dylan's Blowing In The Wind, previously unheard in public.
Mr Aspinall said: "They've got over 80 hours or more of sound footage on them of The Beatles recording and chatting about everything.
"There's lots of very unknown stuff and music on there that they wouldn't have recorded in a normal session. For example, they covered over 200 songs on these tapes, songs of the day such as Bob Dylan."
The "Get Back" sessions as they have become known were recorded on 2 January 1969, in a damp room at Twickenham Studios.
The 500-plus tapes record the group, who had dominateed popular music for the past decade, making their final album - arguing, singing to contemporary songs and jamming to unreleased tracks.
But their attempts to find a way past the tensions that were beginning to divide them failed and the group later split.
The album that emerged, Let It Be, was released to coincide with their break-up.
Oliver was allegedly caught during an undercover sting in 2003 set up by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry in order to recover the tapes, which went missing at the end of the recordings in 1969.
Since their disappearance bootleg fragments of the recordings have emerged all over the world - each selling for hundreds of pounds.
Beatles fans expect the recordings to emerge very slowly as not to flood the market.
There may also be legal issues involved surrounding the ownership of the Lennon/MCartney tracks.
