An early Beatles audition tape recorded in 1962 has been discovered in a Vancouver record store – find out more below.
Last week, Rob Frith, owner of Vancouver’s Neptoon Records threw on an old tape lying around the store labelled ‘Beatles 60s Demos’, thinking it was just a bootleg. After listening to the tape, and posting a snippet of it onto social media, he discovered that the tape in his possession was a rare, direct copy of an early audition tape by the Beatles.
He wrote on his initial post on social media: “I picked up this tape years ago that said Beatles Demos on it. I just figured it was a tape off a bootleg record. After hearing it last night for the first time, it sounds like a master tape. The quality is unreal. How is this even possible to have, what sounds like a Beatles 15 song Decca tapes master?”
A snippet of the tape can be heard in the background of the video below.
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Speaking to CBC about his discovery, Frith shared that he “thought it was just a reel-to-reel tape that somebody had put bootleg things on,” but quickly realised after talking to a couple of fans and doing research that the tape was the real deal. “It seemed like the Beatles were in the room,” he said of its quality.
The audition tape was recorded on January 1, 1962 with Decca Studios in London, but Decca ultimate passed on signing The Beatles. The band would then go on to sign with Parlophone Records and release ‘Please Please Me’.
Bringing the tape to his friend Larry Hennessey’s studio to listen to the tape for the first time as he didn’t have the right equipment for it personally, Frith explained how he and Hennessey knew they had a special version of the tape and not a bootleg version that was released in the ’70s.
According to Hennessey, who CBC reports is “experienced in music preservation”, recognised that the record was on white tape, known as a leader tape: “The way that’s wound on the tape, you can see that it separates the tracks… it’s not a fast copy or a bootleg.”
After his clip of the tape made the rounds on social media, Frith was put in touch with the person who originally brought the tape to Vancouver: Jack Herschorn, former owner of Mushroom Records in Vancouver.
During a trip to London in the ’70s, a producer Herschorn knew had given him the tape, suggesting he sell copies of it in North America, but Herschorn refused to do that: “I took it back and I thought about it quite a bit… I didn’t want to put it out because I felt — I didn’t think it was a totally moral thing to do.”
“These guys, they’re famous and they deserve to have the right royalties on it… it deserves to come out properly,” Herschorn told the CBC.
As for what’s going to happen to the tape, Frith isn’t eager to sell it, but is willing to give Decca a copy if it if they wish to release it. Otherwise, he’d like to hold on to it, unless Sir Paul McCartney personally visits Neptoon Records, in which case Frith would be happy to personally hand him the tape.
Today (March 26), Frith has shared a clip of the tape’s first song, ‘Money’ on Instagram for fans to listen to. You can check it out below.
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In other Beatles news, Paul McCartney recently announced details of a new book titled Wings: The Story Of A Band On The Run. It is described as “a rousing, stereophonic celebration of the songs, collaborations and performances that would shape the soundtrack of the late 20th century”, and set to contain countless previously-unseen photographs.
Since then, he has teased that he hopes to finish a new solo album this year, played three surprise intimate gigs in New York City and reunited with Ringo Starr while at his final ‘Got Back’ tour date in London last year.