The Parallel World of Beatle Bootlegs
The Beatles’ bootleg recordings are performances by The Beatles
that have been circulated to the public without the consent of
The Beatles or EMI.
In many ways, these “bootlegs” are even more interesting to
listen to than the officially released versions. Not better, but definitely
more interesting.
In fact, they represent a “parallel universe” where The Beatles
exist in a much different form than we are used to hearing on their
issued albums.
The term “Beatle bootlegs” most often refers to audio recordings,
but also includes video performances. From the earliest Beatles
bootlegs, in the late 1960s, the group has been one of the most
bootlegged artists.
Bootleg recordings arise from a multitude of sources, including
broadcast performances, recordings of live shows, test discs, privately
distributed copies of demos, and covertly copied studio session tapes.
The largest single source of Beatles bootleg material is the set of Nagra
audio tapes from the 1969 filming of the Get Back/Let It Be rehearsal
and recording sessions. Performances for the BBC, stage and concert
recordings, and studio outtakes have also been extensive sources of
Beatles bootlegs.
The first popular Beatles bootleg was “Kum Back”, available around
September 1969 in a plain white sleeve with no mention of a record
company. The vinyl bootleg was based on an acetate of one of the early
rough mixes of the Get Back album (which would later become Let It Be).
Other notable bootlegs to appear in the early 1970s were Yellow
Matter Custard, containing 14 BBC Radio performances from 1963,
and Sweet Apple Trax, a double album of songs and jams from the Get
Back rehearsal sessions.
In 1978, a copy of The Beatles’ Decca audition tape was bought
by bootleggers who released the songs over a series of 45 rpm singles.
Bootleggers of this era often copied and repackaged each other’s
releases, so popular titles often appeared from more than one bootleg
label. The biggest labels for Beatles material in the 1970s were
Kornyfone (TAKRL), ContraBand, Trademark of Quality, and Wizardo.
In 1988 EMI planned to release an album of alternate takes and
previously unreleased songs called “Sessions”, but The Beatles
objected after it had been compiled. By the end of the year bootleg
copies were widely available.
During the cataloging and review of the EMI archives in
preparation for that album and a multimedia show given at Abbey
Road Studios, it’s suspected that high quality copies of some of the
material were surreptitiously made.
This may have been the source of the “Ultra Rare Trax” CD
series, produced by Swingin’ Pig, that started appearing in 1988. This
publication provided takes never previously bootlegged in clarity that
rivaled official releases.
The Internet eliminated the need for bootlegs
The availability of high-speed Internet has transformed the
bootlegging industry. Richie Unterberger, author of the 2006 book The
Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film, says that it is now theoretically
possible to assemble a complete collection of the circulating
unreleased Beatles recordings without ever buying a bootleg.
As digital technology progressed since the CD releases of The
Beatles’ studio albums in 1987, audiophiles became increasingly
disappointed with the sound quality of the official CDs. Several
bootleggers undertook their own re-masterings of the entire Beatles
catalogue, of both mono and stereo original releases, typically using
premium vinyl pressings played and digitized with high-end audio
equipment. While these unauthorized copies are not bootlegs as
commonly defined, their creation and distribution channels overlap
with bootleg products.
Some of the widely distributed collections are the “Millennium
Re-masters” series and The Beatles’ Re-masters on “DLH Records”, in
addition to the series by the bootlegger known as “Dr. Ebbetts”.
Several other bootleggers have created their own collections of remasters distributed solely in the form of digital downloads, including
“Purple Chick,” which supplements the re-mastered albums with
related outtakes.
The official re-mastering of The Beatles’ catalogue in stereo and
mono released in September 2009 may have made bootleg re-masters
obsolete. The Beatles’ official catalogue of their original stereo studio
albums has since been issued via digital download through iTunes.
Future releases
A considerable amount of additional uncirculated Beatles material
is believed to exist, either in private possession or studio vaults, as
mentioned in documents and recollections.
The set of tapes that generates the most interest are those owned
by the estate of George Harrison. They were recorded in Harrison’s
home – not Abbey Road studios – and thus are the legal property of
Harrison’s heirs, not EMI.
In May 1968 The Beatles met at Kinfauns, the Esher home of
George Harrison. Twenty-seven songs, mostly acoustic, were made
public from this session. Of the twenty demo songs not officially
released, fifteen would be recorded and released on The White
Album.
Why are these tapes so interesting and important?
The reason- says Unterberger, is because there really isn’t any other parallel in the unreleased
Beatles catalog for the 27 known recordings that resulted. At no other time, to our knowledge,
did The Beatles so methodically rehearse and make demos for an upcoming album outside of
EMI’s studios. And there’s no other set of tapes that show The Beatles, as a group, making
demos for a large batch of songs in a mostly acoustic setup.”
He adds that whatever the state of The Beatles’ nerves when
they recorded their demos on Harrison’s Ampex 4-track machine, they
certainly do not sound anxious or distracted. After studying them in
detail, he reports that in fact, the performances have a remarkably
carefree, jolly quality. Almost as if it is a campfire sing-along and songswapping session, rather than the initial work on the most eagerly
anticipated album of 1968.
He writes:
“Unpredictable, joyous whoops punctuate the proceedings, as
well as ensemble backup vocals and all manners of crack-up asides and
spontaneous scatting, often but not always from the mouth of John
Lennon. Far from just laying down the tapes as a work aid, The Beatles
are quite obviously having fun – having a blast, actually. Maybe the
group, and particularly Lennon, welcomed these quasi-sessions as a
safe haven of sorts from the hassles of the outside world, their music
being the one thing they always guarded as inviolable.”
Why Beatle bootlegs are enjoyable to listen to
Unterberger says the reason the subject of Beatle bootlegs is so
important is that it relates to the subject that made them famous in
the first place: the music. He adds:
“With a group so compellingly human and utterly enjoyable as
The Beatles, that always seemed to be the first, and primary, side of
their art.”
He believes there is a lot of good to great music that the group
never put out during their lifetime, which is very easy to enjoy,
regardless of whether you care about when it was produced or why it
did not come out.
“Hearing different versions of the same songs we have come to
love is fun and interesting – even if they’re not quite as hi-fi as the
tracks you’ll find on Beatles CDs in the chain stores. In addition to
being valuable from a historical perspective, this material is essential for
a full appreciation of the group’s evolution, influences, and creative
processes.”
The veteran music critic admits that every time he hears these
recordings they are different, changing – just as The Beatles had.
“There are always unsuspected surprises, hidden connections to
be made, and small to significant revelations as to what was going on
behind the scenes. I was always taken aback at the sharp turns they
made, always marveling at their mastery of continuing to evolve while
maintaining the identifiable qualities that had made them so appealing.
The unreleased music and film tapes give us another side of them to
put it into better perspective.”
What we can learn from the bootlegs
The New York Times music critic Allan Kozinn wrote in 1994 that
after the band split up and its legacy was undergoing serious
examination, it became clear that America had seen only part of the
picture.
He writes:
“Imported records showed that the early American albums were
truncated distortions of the British originals. And bootleg recordings of
British radio shows brought even hotter news.”
Kozinn explains that these pirated disks revealed that while
Americans were hanging by their radios awaiting the hits, British
listeners regularly heard The Beatles performing live on the BBC.
Between 1962 and 1965, the band played 88 songs on British radio,
most in multiple versions, for a total of more than 280 performances.
Included were 36 songs the group never recorded. In the brief period
these recordings cover, The Beatles evolved from a high-energy
provincial dance band into polished performers and sophisticated
songwriters.
Live at the BBC was released worldwide in 1994 as a compilation
album featuring performances by The Beatles that were originally
broadcast on various BBC Light Programme radio shows from 1963
through 1965.
Says Kozinn:
“These radio recordings add significantly to our knowledge of
what made The Beatles tick: even the familiar songs were played in
arrangements that were harder-edged than the fussed-over studio
versions.”
He points to I’ll Be on My Way, a Lennon-McCartney song The
Beatles never recorded for EMI, and a magnificent cover of Arthur
Alexander’s Soldier of Love. Among the familiar songs are a supple
version of Baby It’s You and hard-rocking takes of I Saw Her Standing
There, I Wanna Be Your Man, Thank You Girl and Long Tall Sally that
blow away the studio versions by every measure except sound quality.
How many tapes and recordings are still in the
vaults?
Apple’s subsequent release of another six discs of unreleased
material in the Anthologies project still leaves an enormous amount of
material owned by EMI. The question is whether Apple and EMI will
recognize the public’s ferocious appetite to hear The Beatles’ music –
warts and all.
It’s understandable that until now, The Beatles have hesitated to
issue more albums, as it would cannibalize their existing catalogue. It’s
not clear how well the market would be able to absorb the newlyissued releases and still maintain sales of the already-issued albums.
For Kozinn, the fact that so much music remains unreleased
means that Beatles fans and scholars are being prevented from
understanding what it took to get these songs to where they are when
we hear them on the record. People who want to study The Beatles’
music would find it useful at this point to receive longer sections of
the session tapes.
He adds:
“A student of The Beatles’ work can understand exactly how the
performances that were eventually released fell into place. For
instance, you can hear, in the series unreleased edit pieces of the
intro, that they tried all kinds of approaches: humming the melody,
singing it, singing it with one voice in a falsetto, an octave higher, and
playing it on guitar and on harmonica. Hearing all the outtakes of I Saw
Her Standing There, you learn a lot about the early recording process:
that, for example, they would record a full performance live, then
overdub handclaps using what now seems a weirdly complex process
involving two recording decks (since they did not have multi-track
recording), and experimented with edit pieces for the guitar.”
Kozinn says that later on in their studio work it gets more
complicated since the availability of multi-track technology meant that
they erased tracks as they were working, and built their songs from
the ground up rather than take by take. Consequently, the rejections
are often no longer available.
Kozinn is hopeful that despite the tendency of Apple to exploit
Beatles music via RockBand or on ITunes, rather than looking at the
unreleased material, the company’s current president Jeff Jones might
change that.
“He has a history at Sony Legacy of digging out and releasing
unissued tracks, as ways of making reissues of classic albums more
interesting to buyers who have already bought them several times, as
well as to new buyers.”