Many years ago when I was a lad it was my habit of an evening to listen to the weeknight music documentary at 1am on the local government broadcaster. Some of these were great, and some of them literally sent me to sleep, but most were good. This is where I first heard The Stones At the Beeb, Hendrix At The Beeb and Bowie At The Beeb (already being familiar with The Beatles At The Beeb of course!) I also remember a multi part BBC series on the history of sound recording, which was great and I've wanted to hear again ever since. Oh well.
At the end of each show they would usually announce what the next one would be, and one night in 1989 came the tantalising message, "tommorrow night we bring you part one of a fourteen part series, The Beeb's Lost Beatles tapes..." Well, I can tell you I sat bolt upright at those words. Being somewhat out of the loop where I lived I had never heard of any such series, and in the days before internet there was no way of getting information about anything. So I had a restless 24 hours waiting and wondering what the hell I was in for. "Lost" tapes? Seriously? To a BBC fanatic like me this was music to my ears.
The next night, armed with my trusty bedside cassette recorder I listened intently and immediately discerned a few things I had not heard before. There seemed to be an extract from an actual recording session for I Feel Fine. Where had THAT come from?? But then as the first episode progressed I recognised many of the tracks were coming from Yellow Dog's "Beatles At The Beeb" vinyl series which had begun appearing at the tail end of 1987. I suspect that Kevin Howlett's buddy Mark Lewisohn tipped him off and possibly even lent him the records to dub. It's kind of hard to imagine the BBC forking out money for someone tro buy bootlegs of their own lost tapes! Indeed, at the British Library where the BBC radio archive is held there are still several reel to reel dubs of these old boots. Quite funny to think of Beatlegs residing in such a hallowed institution. As the series progressed though I began to hear a lot of chat items and some musical items that were completely new, and my anticipation grew each night as it wound through to the final episode. I think my favourite moment were She Loves You and I'll Get You in episode 2 which were entirely new and had been handed back by Bernie Andrews (as part of the complete 5th birthday saturday Club). Kevin also seems to have been given a backstage pass to the Transcription Services archives where he found a lot of chat material on tape and disc that had been overlooked previously. He won a Sony radio award for his work, and deservedly so.
Anyway... let's fast forward 20 years. My AM radio dubs were less than ideal and I went through several other versions in the intervening years searching for a high quality copy. Firstly I swapped with some guy who had recorded the Radio 1 airings in 1988 off FM, but after a lot of time and hassle spent organising that trade, they turned out to be even worse sounding than mine! Then there was the horrible Unicorn bootleg... well, the less said about that the better. Then there were a few 21st century airings of a more promising nature but rather "lossy" sounding. There was also the Westwood One version of the series, disingenuously titled "The BBC's Beatles Tapes - The Original Masters", but this was a shorter and less satisfying version with a rather more sober narration. There are also the Transcription Services vinyl lps issued to overseas broadcasters, but these are all shortened by five minutes and are missing stuff. Finally someone sent me digicopies of the original Radio 1 reel to reel masters, and at last I was happy!
Which brings us up to now. I've resisted sharing these for a long time, because I wanted to present them in style. The biggest problem is that a lot of material was taken from 80s boots and sounds rather wanting by today's standards. Sweet Little Sixteen sounds like an old Edison wax cylinder. Some of the boots they copied were good but they did not transfer them well, which is just as bad. So while recovering from an operation last week I decided I would finally go through every episode and rehabilitate them all for 2019. My approach to this has been to leave in situ anything that comes from an original tape or BBC transcription disc, and upgrade anything that comes from a boot. The end result is that you can now enjoy this award winning series in it's best quality ever, with broadcast-quality audio across the board. Many of the tracks I've replaced with new restorations I have been working on over the past six months and these sound especially good. I dare say you will have never heard I Gotta Find My Baby sounding so clear and natural. Everything has been done seamlessly so there are no noticeable joins between old and new.
So tune in and enjoy the revatilised Beeb's Lost Beatles Tapes, probably the most enjoyable radio series about the Fabs ever made, and now in pristine Fab quality! Fully indexed and with artwork, ready to be burnt onto seven discs at your leisure! Pardon? Hello? Love these Goon Shows! |
