Beatles/At the Beeb 1963

Between March 1961, before their debut, and June 1965, after their debut, The Beatles performed nearly 300 songs live over a total of 52 times, in BBC studios and theaters with audiences. For The Beatles, TV and radio appearances were important promotional opportunities for record sales, and they must have been as essential as the band’s live performances. In the 1960s, the number of hours that radio stations could air records per day was strictly limited by the union. That is the reason for the large amount of live performances on BBC. The reason why enthusiastic fans and collectors find special value in BBC live recordings is probably the uniqueness of the songs they performed. In fact, in 1963, when the band appeared most frequently on BBC radio, a large number of cover songs that were not recorded were played and aired on BBC programs. These songs were the repertoire that the band liked to play at the Star Club in Hamburg and the Cavern Club in Liverpool before their debut. These precious programs were basically only broadcast once at the time, and were hardly noticed until the broadcast of the BBC special “The Beatles at the Beeb” in March 1982, which commemorated the 20th anniversary of the band’s first appearance on BBC Radio. Unfortunately, the master tapes that had already been broadcast were erased and reused for other programs due to budgetary constraints at the time, so when the BBC itself realized the importance of the sound sources and searched the station’s archives in later years, the preservation conditions of most of the programs were very poor and the material was hopelessly gone. This long-awaited release, the Complete BBC Tapes, has been more meticulously revised and worked on in terms of the contents, with an emphasis on the maximum possible upgrades and longer recording times than before, and has attempted to restore and record the original broadcasts from the time the live performances were performed in the best possible condition. (Commentary 1) From the 10th episode of the series, broadcast on August 20, 1963, the AM recordings of 20, 21, and 28 were recorded on “OUTTAKES 2” (TMOQ) in 1972, and the AM recordings of 24, 25, and 30 were recorded on “YELLOｗ MATTER CUSTARD” (TMOQ) in 1971, making their first appearance on the market. There was no recording of this episode using the Yellow Dog FM recording taper, so a tape of an AM recording using a different taper was recorded on the 1987 LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.5”. Although it is classified as an “AM recording”, the tape containing the 10th episode of the series recorded on “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.5” captures the high range quite well, and has a strange nuance of sound quality, as if it were an FM broadcast recorded via an off-speaker. This was the first time that the MC between songs appeared on this disc. The four Beatles songs, excluding 20 and 21, were released by Margaret Ashworth on the single “LIVE AT THE BBC” in 1994 and “BABY IT’S YOU” in 1995. In 2003, Yellow Dog Box released 24, 25, and 30 as “LIVE AT THE BBC”, 28 as a take from the single “BABY IT’S YOU”, 20 was replaced with the FM sound source from the 9th performance, and five guest AM tracks 22, 23, 26, 27, and 29 were added. In 2013, 21 was finally released by Margaret Ashworth on “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2”. In this work, the five Beatles songs are recorded as Margaret Ashworth’s 2013 remaster, 20 as FM sound source, and the guest appearance and all MC are recorded as Yellow Dog tape source. Only the opening MC before 20 and part of the ending MC after 30 are missing, and almost the entire program has been recorded in a state close to the full-length version. The performance of the three programs was somehow managed to be completed by July 16th, but it seems that there was not enough time for the MC part, and in this episode, only the MC of the host and no talk part of the Beatles. “She Loves You” is a repeat broadcast from the 9th series. There are also “Bush House Tape” versions of 24 and 25. “Glad All Over” from this sound source is included in “FROM US TO YOU” (The Swingin’ Pig) released in 1989. 22 “My Whole World Is Falling Down” is a cover of Brenda Lee’s 1963 hit song. During The Beatles’ tour of France in January 1964, Sylvie Vartan, who performed with them, also performed this song on stage. (Note 2) Episodes 11 and 12 of “Pop Go The Beatles” were recorded in Manchester, away from the usual BBC studio in London, to coincide with The Beatles’ schedule during their domestic tour. From the 11th episode of “Pop Go The Beatles” broadcast on August 27, 1963, songs 9 and 15 made their AM debut on “YELLOＷ MATTER CUSTARD” (TMOQ) in 1971, song 14 on “OUTTAKES 2” (TMOQ) in 1972, and song 8 on “BEAUTIFUL DREAMER” in 1982. This episode also had no FM source from the Yellow Dog taper, and in 1987, the LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.5” included tracks 8, 9, and 12 from the same taper as the Yellow Dog AM source of “Pop Go The Beatles” episode 10. In the special program “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB” in March 1982, tracks 9 and 15 were aired from the improved “Bush House Tapes”. (However, the intro to track 9 was missing.) In 1994, tracks 8, 9, and 15 appeared on “LIVE AT THE BBC” with perfect sound quality from the Margaret Ashworth source. In the 2003 Yellow Dog BBC box set, tracks 8, 9, and 15 were copied from the 1994 “LIVE AT THE BBC,” tracks 12 and 10 and 11 with guests, and the MC before track 13 were released for the first time on CD, including unreleased parts, from the tape source used for the LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.5.” The MC before track 14 was recorded from a different AM source, making its first appearance. The main track 14 was released on CD from the tape source of “OUTTAKES 2” (TMOQ). Track 14 was released in 2013 on “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2” in a mysterious edit in which the MC part was replaced with the one from the 4th series, with higher sound quality than the Margaret Ashworth source. In this work, the 8th, 9th, 14th, and 15th songs are remastered versions of the Margaret Ashworth sound source, the 10th and 11th are from the Yellow Dog AM sound source, the 12th is from the upgraded version of the Yellow Dog AM sound source released by fans, and the 13th is from the FM source of the 9th series, and they are compiled with the longest and best sound quality ever. The Margaret Ashworth sound source of this time is about 1% faster than the actual performance, so here we corrected it and focused on recording the entire program at a more accurate tape speed. This time’s “She Loves You” is a version that has been sacred among core maniacs for many years as “the four songs that cannot be heard in the pop go the Beatles performance songs” (the 1st “From Me To You”, the 11th “She Loves You”, the 12th “I’ll Get You”, and the 13th “Till There Was You”). The 12th episode, “I’ll Get You” and the 13th episode, “Till There Was You”, were later unearthed and can now be heard. This “She Loves You” is a Yellow Dog AM recording, and the take where the song fades out immediately after the start of the song after John and Paul’s MC is the same as the 9th episode of the series, so we decided that the 9th version was repeated in this episode and included this version in the relevant section. Unfortunately, the opening MC before 8, the ending MC after 15, and the two guest songs that would have been broadcast between 13 and 14 have not been excavated. There are some severely damaged parts on the existing master tape of “Ooh! My Soul”, and in “LIVE AT THE BBC”, the damaged part is replaced by the 4 seconds from 1 minute 2 to 5 seconds at 0 minutes 32 seconds of “Ooh! My Soul, Wah!”, but in this work, the original version from the pre-production version of the album is used to restore the original version without editing. When comparing this with “LIVE AT THE BBC,” you can see that the position of Paul’s “Wah!” shout is different. Also, the high-pitched range, which was overemphasized in “LIVE AT THE BBC,” has been slightly suppressed. This time, the damage to the tape in this section has been made less noticeable by waveform processing. In the 1994 original version of “LIVE AT THE BBC” and the 2013 remaster, the endings of the songs can be heard until the end, and all cross-fading between each song has been abolished, but not all the songs have been remastered from the original tape. For songs such as “Ooh! My Soul,” “Keep Your Hands Off My Baby,” and “Honey Don’t,” which require a lot of effort to restore the EQ and dropouts, the audio from the 1994 Peter Mew version is used, and only the endings are spliced ​​in from the original tape to return them to the original length. When checking the waveforms of these tracks, only the endings that were added have different waveform shapes, and a big difference in sound quality can be seen. The 1994 “LIVE AT THE BBC” sought to create a sound similar to the first and second albums in the UK, and applied equalization processing/noise removal that felt excessive in a sense to the sound quality of the original BBC tapes, which tend to make each instrument part sound thin in one take recordings, whereas the 2013 “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2” was produced in the direction of “eliminating the feeling of processing as much as possible”, so depending on the storage condition of the master, the songs may require the same processing as the 1994 version, and although there is no noticeable hiss, the high frequencies give a rather muffled impression. (This tendency is especially evident in the 11th to 15th takes of Pop Go The Beatles. Also, the 2013 remastered version of “LIVE AT THE BBC” adhered to the 1994 version’s equalization policy to a certain extent. This is because Peter Mew retired from his career and left EMI in August 2013, and the reality is that at the time of the production of “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2” and the remastered version of “LIVE AT THE BBC”, EMI probably did not have staff in-house who could perform the same high-level restoration as the 1994 Peter Mew version. (Explanation 3) The first appearance of the Beatles special on the UK’s Bank Holiday was broadcast on December 26, 1963. A special version of “From Me To You” in which “Me” was changed to “Us” became the title and theme song of the program. Contrary to what is said in many sources, the theme song of the program, “From Many people believe that “Us To You” was the only song that was repeatedly used from the first recording.In fact, each episode uses a new take of the theme song, so the take of “From Me To You” is different for each episode. The sound source of this program, first 33, appeared on AM sound source in 1984 on “DIRECTLY FROM SANTA CLAUS, RARE UNRELEASED BEATLES TRACK”. In 1988, all the songs were released on FM sound source on the LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.8”. (Although 29 fades out.) “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” is a hit song by the show’s host, Australian singer/comedian Rolf Harris, with the lyrics replaced by the Beatles members, and the two sang and performed together in the studio when the program was recorded. In 2009, 24, 30, 32, and 33, which had better sound quality than the Yellow Dog version, were rebroadcast on the Bank Holiday Special, which became a hot topic. In 2013, “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2” included 30 and 33 from the new source. “BOOTLEG RECORDINGS 1963” included high-quality versions of the new sources 25 and 27, as well as the Yellow Dog sources 26 and 28, which also attracted attention. There are several variants of the high-quality rebroadcast version of “I Want To Hold Your Hand”, and the version aired on the 2009 Bank Hody Special (32 and 33 were also aired in 1996 before that.) The first B-melody “Inside…” is the harmony part taken from the second B-melody, and the second B-melody is a repeat of the edited B-melody from the first B-melody mentioned above. In the 2013 “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2”, the first B-melody is in the normal state without the replacement of “Inside…”, and the second chorus is a repeat of the first B-melody without harmony, which is different from the special program. The version recorded here is from the same master as the official release, but the first B-melody is recorded without harmony, and the second B-melody is recorded in the original state without editing, and the sound quality is good, making it a very valuable version. This “I Want to Hold Your Hand” also has hand clapping overdubbed on the A-melody. The composition of Yellow Dog Box is 24-31 and 34 recorded from the tape master of LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.8”, and 32 and 33 have been replaced with the 1996 rebroadcast version. This work compiles 24, 25, 27, 30, 32, and 33 with new sources, and the rest with Yellow Dog sources. The intro of 24, which was not cut off on the LP “THE BEATLES AT THE BEEB VOL.8”, is missing one phrase at the beginning for some reason in the Yellow Dog box. Since the good sound quality 24 also has a cut-off at the beginning, this work has been restored within an acceptable range so that it can be heard smoothly. It seems that the good sound quality version of the officially released “Money” also had a cut-off at the beginning, so George’s guitar in the intro is filled in from the Yellow Dog source, and the main source is switched from Ringo’s snare “taka-kata-kata” fill-in, but it is connected very nicely. The recording takes of the program theme 24 and 34 are different. The presenter, Rolf Harris, was arrested on indecent assault charges in March 2013, prior to the release of “ON AIR – LIVE AT THE BBC VOL.2”. It is possible that the song “Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport” from this show was planned to be included on the album, but this incident may have led to the song’s inclusion on the album being suddenly cancelled. DISC 1 Pop Go The Beatles #08, August 6, 1963 Recording: July 16, 1963 BBC Paris Studio, London Producer: Terry Henebery Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: The Swinging Blues Jeans 01. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 02. I’m Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry (Over You) 03. Crying, Waiting, Hoping 04. Kansas City / Hey-Hey-Hey-Hey 05. To Know Her Is To Love Her 06. Too Late Now (The Swinging Blues Jeans) 07. The Honeymoon Song 08. Twist And Shout 09. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme Pop Go The Beatles #09, August 13, 1963 Recording: July 16, 1963 BBC Paris Studio, London Producer: Terry Henebery Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: The Hollies 10. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 11. Long Tall Sally 12. Please Please Me 13. She Loves You 14. You Really Got A Hold On Me 15. Searchin’ (The Hollies) 16. I’ll Get You 17. I Got A Woman 18. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme Pop Go The Beatles #10, August 20, 1963 Record: July 16, 1963 BBC Paris Studio, London Producer: Terry Henebery Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: Russ Sainty & The Nu Notes 19. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 20. She Loves You (from PGTB #9, Aug. 13, 1963) 21. Words Of Love 22. My Whole World Is Falling Down (Russ Sainty & The Nu Notes) 01. Long Tall Sally 02. She Loves You 03. Glad All Over 04. Twist And Shout 05. You Really Got A Hold On Me 06. I’ll Get You Pop Go The Beatles #11, August 27, 1963 Record: August 1, 1963 Playhouse Theatre, Manchester Producer: Ian Grant Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: Cyril Davies Rhythm & Blues All Stars with Long John Baldry 07. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 08. Ooh! My Soul 09. Don’t Ever Change 10. Country Line Special (Cyril Davies Rhythm & Blues All Stars) 11. My Babe (Long John Baldry) 12. Twist And Shout 13. She Loves You (from PGTB #9, Aug. 13, 1963) 14. Anna (Go To Him) 15. A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues 16. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme Pop Go The Beatles #12, September 3, 1963 Record: August 1, 1963 Playhouse Theatre, Manchester Producer: Ian Grant Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: Brian Poole & The Tremeloes 17. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 18. From Me To You 19. I’ll Get You 20. Twist And Shout (Brian Poole & The Tremeloes) 21. Money (That’s What I Want) 22. There’s A Place (from PGTB #5, Jul. 16, 1963) 23. Do You Love Me (Brian Poole & The Tremeloes) 24. Honey Don’t 25. I Can Tell (Brian Poole & The Tremeloes) 26. Roll Over Beethoven 27. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme DISC 3 Pop Go The Beatles #13, September 10, 1963 Rec: September 3, 1963 Studio 2, Aeolian Hall, London Producer: Ian Grant Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: Johnny Kid & The Pirates 01. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 02. Too Much Monkey Business 03. Till There Was You 04. Love Me Do 05. She Loves You 06. A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues (Johnny Kid & The Pirates) 07. Dr. Feelgood (Johnny Kid & The Pirates) 08. I’ll Get You 09. A Taste Of Honey (taped for #14) 10. I Can Tell (Johnny Kid & The Pirates)e Pirates) 11. The Hippy Hippy Shake 12. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme Pop Go The Beatles #14, September 17, 1963 Recording: September 3, 1963 Studio 2, Aeolian Hall, London Producer: Ian Grant Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: The Marauders 13. Playtime – Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 14. Chains 15. You Really Got A Hold On Me 16. That’s What I Want (The Marauders) 17. Summertime (The Marauders) 18. Misery 19. Lucille 20. Bad To Me (The Marauders) 21. Always On My Mind (The Marauders) 22. From Me To You 23. Night Train To Memphis (The Marauders) 24. Boys 25. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme Pop Go The Beatles #15, September 24, 1963 Record: September 3, 1963 Studio 2, Aeolian Hall, London Producer: Ian Grant Host: Rodney Burke Guest Group: Tony Rivers & The Castaways 26. Pop Go The Beatles – Intro Theme 27. She Loves You (from PGTB #13, Sep. 3, 1963) 28. Ask Me Why 29. Abilene (Tony Rivers & The Castaways) 30. Devil In Her Heart 31. I Saw Her Standing There 32. Sure To Fall (In Love With You) 33. Twist And Shout 34. Pop Go The Beatles – Outro Theme DISC EIGHT Saturday Club #6, October 5, 1963 Record: September 7, 1964 Playhouse Theatre, London Producers: Jimmy Grant, Bernie Andrews Host: Brian Matthew 01. Saturday Club Theme 02. I Saw Her Standing There 03. Memphis, Tennessee 04. Happy Birthday Saturday Club 05. Brian Matthew Intro 06. I’ll Get You 07. She Loves You 08. Lucille 09. Saturday Club Outro Easy Beat #4, October 20, 1963 Recorded: October 16, 1963 Playhouse Theatre, London Producer: Ron Belchier Host: Brian Matthew Recorded in front of a live audience 10. I Saw Her Standing There 11. Love Me Do 12. Please Please Me 13. From Me To You 14. She Loves You The Ken Dodd Show, November 3, 1963 Recorded: October 9, 1963 BBC Paris Studio, London Producer: Bill Worsley Host: Ken Dodd Recorded in front of a live audience 15. She Loves You (introduced by Judith Chalmers) Saturday Club #7, December 21, 1963 Record: December 17, 1964 Playhouse Theatre, London Producers: Jimmy Grant, Bernie Andrews Host: Brian Matthew 16. All My Loving (from LP) 17. This Boy 18. All I Want For Christmas Is A Bottle 19. I Want To Hold Your Hand 20. Till There Was You 21. Roll Over Beethoven 22. She Loves You (from Saturday Club #6, Oct. 5, 1963) 23. Chrimble Medley (Shazam!) From Us To You #1, December 26, 1963 Record: December 18, 1963 BBC Paris Studio, London Producer: Bryant Marriott Host: Rolf Harris 24. From Us To You – Intro Theme 25. She Loves You 26. All My Loving 27. Roll Over Beethoven 28. Till There Was You 29. Boys 30. Money (That’s What I Want) 31. I Saw Her Standing There 32. Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport 33. I Want To Hold Your Hand 34. From Us To You – Outro Theme