The first release of tapes from The Beatles German stage show recorded 31st December 1962.
These tapes were recorded by Adrian Barber on a mono Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder using a hand-held microphone. He had been asked to make recordings by Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, a Liverpool singer who sung with the Dominos. Once the Beatles has some commercial success, Taylor offered these tapes to Brian Epstein, but Brian would only offer as much as £20 for them as he felt they had no comercial value. Little did Brian realise, but the tapes did in fact legally belong to Parlophone anyway, as they had been made AFTER the signing to E.M.I. of their contracts, but there was some confusion over the date of recording of the tapes. Although, once again, listening to them, it was clearly December 1962 ... John mentions Christmas between songs, and Buddy Holly's "Reminiscing" had only just been released in late 1962.
They then lay in derelict ofices until 1972 when they were found under piles of rubbish by Allan Williams who had managed the Beatles before Brian. Williams offered the tapes to George and Ringo for £5,000, but at that time Apple were going through financial difficulties so they too turned them down.
After spending £50,000 on cleaning up the sound, and transferring them to 16-track tapes, Williams found a buyer and the first release was in Germany. Immediately the Beatles sued, but lost the case because the judge ruled that the tapes were of historical interest, they were not trying to fool anyone by pretending it was a new release (the records clearly stated "old recordings"), and, the Beatles should have sued earlier and not left it until a release was imminent.
33 songs are apparently on the tapes, 26 are here. But the U.K. version of this album (and German version) had 4 tracks different to the U.S. version, which of course meant that the four "missing" songs in the U.K. often turn up as long lost rarities. The missing four were :
"Where Have You Been All My Life"
"Sheila"
"I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry Over You"
"Till There Was You".
Two other tracks were alternate versions of "To Know Her Is To Love Her" and "Roll Over Beethoven", which obviously weren't required as the best versions were used.
This means one track is left, "My Girl Is Red Hot" which has never appeared anywhere !
Unfortunately, the finished article caught the Beatles just as they were about to release "Please Please Me" in Britain, and clearly the thoughts were on home. Their lack of enthusiasm comes across in the inroductions and comments between the songs and of course the recording quality is still very poor.
BUT this is an essential historic document.
In 1981, after the Lingasong release was deleted, the rights to the tapes were again sold and again were treated to a further re-mix providing a bit clearer sound yet again. But the new owners Audio-Fidelity spoilt re-releases with cheap packaging and labelling errors.
