Category: The Beatles

Podcast – Let It Be Better

Across The Universe – Remix from Multitracks

 

RECORDED: CAVERN CLUB

AUGUST 22, 1962 (Some Other Guy – single microphone – quality: poor)

SEPTEMBER 5, 1962 (Some Other Guy/Kansas City – 3 Microphones – Quality: Good

OCTOBER-DECEMBER 1962 (EXACT DATE UNKNOWN) (REHEARSAL)

 

TRACK LISTING:

1. Some Other Guy (Version 1)

2. Some Other Guy (Version 2)

3. Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey
4. I Saw Her Standing There (Lennon/McCartney) (2:50)
5. One After 909(version 1) (Lennon/McCartney) (2:42)
6. One After 909(version 2) (Lennon/McCartney) (12:40)
7. Catswalk(version 1) (Lennon/McCartney) (1:35)
8. Catswalk(version 2) (Lennon/McCartney) (1:20)

 

RECORDED: 03 September, 1963, 2:00 – 4:30 p.m.
TRANSMITTED: 10 September, 1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m.
ANNOUNCER: Rodney Burke
PRODUCER: Ian Grant
GUEST GROUP: Johnny Kidd and the Pirates

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TRACK LIST:
1. POP GO THE BEATLES
2. TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS

3. TILL THERE WAS YOU

4. A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues – Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
5. Dr. Feelgood – Johnny Kidd and the Pirates

6. LOVE ME DO
7. SHE LOVES YOU

8. I Can Tell – Johnny Kidd and the Pirates
9. I’LL GET YOU
10. A TASTE OF HONEY
11. THE HIPPY HIPPY SHAKE
12. POP GO THE BEATLES

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NOTES/SOURCES:

It’s been widely accepted in the bootleg community (yes, that really is a thing) that someone messed up the edits in this program prior to it being aired.  Track listings also seem to vary between source tapes ranging from Yellow Dog,  Great Dane, Purple Chick (who never seem to get anything right) etc.  Liner notes from one source says: “After track 2 Paul announces “Till There Was You”, and it is also listed in the BBC archives. But in fact “Too Much Monkey Business” is followed by “Love Me Do”, and this really seems to be the way the programme ran”.  It goes on to say “Also, track 6 is not indicated in the BBC archives. It is very likely that some mistake occurred at the BBC during the preparation of this show”.   I call “bullshit”.  In 1998, a box of several reels turned up with songs spliced from various BBC performances but with no ID Tags or identifying information regarding the source shows. One of them was an unheard (seemingly) performance of “Till There Was You”.  It was put out as a “bonus disc” accompanying a box set some time that year. I’m willing to bet that’s our request from PGTB #13.  The production sounds the same as the other tracks.

With or without “Till There Was You”… the whole show seems a little “Paul-Centric, in balance and tone. Producer Ian Grant had an engineer who had overdriven the board, as every available source copy seems to have the same issues, but their copies are recorded fairly nicely at a decent volume.  This indicates to me that whoever sat next to Ian Grant didn’t know how to properly record Rock & Roll. The vocal mics seem to be the most distorted.  Cleaning this one up was a bit of a challenge.  However… I am fairly certain this is the actual, true and correct running order, with Till There Was You added back to the sequence.  The tracks have been de-noised as much as possible and re-equalized to a more realistic frequency balance.

Final note: AT LAST!! They had a decent guest group!

RECORDED: 16 July 1963, 3:00 – 5:30 p.m.
TRANSMITTED: 06 August,1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m.
ANNOUNCER: Rodney Burke
PRODUCER: Terry Henebery
GUEST GROUP: The Swinging Blue Jeans

 

TRACK LISTING:

1. POP GO THE BEATLES
2. I’M GONNA SIT RIGHT DOWN AND CRY
3. CRYING, WAITING, HOPING
4. KANSAS CITY/HEY!-HEY!-HEY!-HEY!
5. TO KNOW HER IS TO LOVE HER
6. TOO LATE NOW – THE SWINGING BLUE JEANS
7. THE HONEYMOON SONG
8. TWIST AND SHOUT
9. POP GO THE BEATLES

 

SOURCES:

The “Pop Goes The Beatles” intro comes from Purple Chick, one of the few things they sourced properly. Yellow Dog has a longer outro to “To Know Her Is To Love Her” so, I merged that ending into the Great Dane source tape. “Great Dane” was the source tape for the other tracks, the exceptions are some pieces which were used to repair dropouts which appear on Masterfraction, and have the benefit of the longer endings from Yellow Dog restored as well.  The dialog pieces in between tracks came from a rare Condor collection that was in my personal library, and were used only because the other sources were positively horrible-sounding.  “Too Late Now” and the guest spot was supposedly sitting in the BBC library and that’s where some members of Purple Chick claim they sourced it.  I can’t verify that, but I’ll take it… as it is complete and of decent quality. As usual, I worked heavily on the songs, removing as much hiss as I could without washing out the top half of the recordings.  Everything was re-equalized as professionally as possible. Some patches were made on “Crying, Waiting, Hoping” where dropouts occurred. “Twist And Shout was a train wreck and required extra work to sonically restore it as much as possible.

RECORDED: 06 March, 1963, 8:00 – 8:45 p.m

TRANSMITTED: 12 March, 1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m.

ANNOUNCER: Ray Peters

PRODUCER: Peter Pilbeam

 

THE TRACKS:

 

1. Instrumental – The Northern Dance Orchestra

2. MISERY

3. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET

4. PLEASE PLEASE ME

5. Warmed Over Kisses – Ben Richmond

6. Waltz In Jazz Time – The Northern Dance Orchestra

7. Avalon/S.O.S – The Northern Dance Orchestra/The Trad Lads (Fragment)

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

This was The Beatles’ last appearance on Here We Go.

 

BONUS POINTS:
This show features the only live audience performance of “Do You Want To Know A Secret”

 

SOURCE TAPES:

Unlike most Beatles’ BBC sessions, this recording comes directly off an original open-reel copy, via a single generation bump to copy it from the original owner of the tape, who still retains possession of it. As such, you are hearing a second-generation-from-source recording (two analog and two digital generations which don’t count), which is closer to source than any of the released “Beatles at the BBC” recordings.  However, the tape is shedding oxide and was poorly spooled.

GRUMPY NOTES:
When I was gathering information about the tape, and who’s dicked around with it since its discovery in 1994…  I stumbled upon the liner notes from Great Dane Records, the first ones to get the tape out there. “The tape was salvaged by a recording expert in the UK, who transferred it onto analogue cassette while performing some minor tweaking.” This is why I hate bootleggers… because they think they’re also audio engineers.  First of all.. there’s where your hiss is coming from, mostly. Not the source tape, but the shitty cassette bump. Second, there’s no such thing as an “audio expert” who would be fucking stupid enough to master to a cassette tape at 1 7/8ips, with no noise reduction… from a 15ips source.  Audio Expert My Ass.  Bootlegger with a half-assed cheap cassette deck.  That’s the real deal.

OUTCOME:  I UN-did this “expert” asshat’s “tweaking”… tried to reduce the noise where possible, and re-edited the other sections of the tape that were discarded by Great Dane Records but obtained by Purple Chick (yeahhh… I know.  Don’t go there), and equalized the two recordings before merging them together, so that they, at least, matched, sonically.

RECORDED: 04 April, 1963, 11:00 a.m – 2:00 p.m.

TRANSMITTED: 24 June, 1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m.

ANNOUNCER: John Dunn

PRODUCER: Bryant Marriott

GUEST GROUP: Karl Denver Trio

 

TRACK LISTING:

1. SIDE BY SIDE

2. TOO MUCH MONKEY BUSINESS

3. BOYS

4. WHEN DAYS ARE GONE – KARL DENVER TRIO

5. I’LL BE ON MY WAY

6. FROM ME TO YOU

 

SOURCE TAPES:

“Side By Side (intro)” was taken from a white label vinyl LP that dates back to the early 90’s. Why did I do this, you may ask? The Yellow Dog version had a nasty glitch… and all other sources were a combination of the Silent Sea tapes and BBC Trailer. The former kept an edit to fix the silenced gap, and the latter kept all the tape hiss.  Most bootlegs used an edited version of the two, but I always thought it sucked.  So I made my own edits and de-clicked the LP during re-equalizing the track.   The rest of the show was sourced from tapes Yellow Dog provided, with the exception of “When Days Are Done” from the Karl Denver Trio, which was sitting in the official BBC Archives, for some inexplicable reason.  What hasn’t been preserved is their 3rd number, “Love Me Do”.  Nobody can seem to locate it… like… ever. So much for preservation.  If someone actually finds this take… I’ll include it in an update.

Welcome to my Fantasy BBC Sessions.  A brief disclaimer… the recordings used in the production of this little blog post were free-range recordings… and not the copies that were used by Capitol/EMI/Apple records in the production of their Beatles at the BBC releases.  All recordings utilized here are for the purposes of discussion and as historic examples of recording and production techniques used by the BBC, and later reproduced for official release. Further, they’re a teaching tool to show us what is possible with modern-day digital recording and enhancement technology, and therefore constitutes “fair use” under copyright law.

Now, in keeping with my ongoing theme of grumpiness… allow me to tell you what I really think of the official reconstruction and releases of the compiled Beatles at the BBC CD’s.

Back in 1994, there was a promotional campaign that read “On November 30, Apple Records will take you back in front of the radio, listening to the Beatles like never before”.  Now I have to admit, that was one hell of a tempting offer. Having collected every BBC session that was rediscovered up until that date… I was certain that EMI/APPLE, the powers that be, and George Martin would surely take those tapes… or perhaps cleaner copies, and enhance them, restoring them to a realm of glory that surpassed everything that I have heard thus far.

So I couldn’t believe my ears when I pressed “play” on my trusty old CD player and discovered that, aside from some minimal noise reduction… the tapes were basically a digital core dump… straight to compact disc, with one exception, tons of mid-range.

My theory on that is simple: Only old-timer engineers and producers are ever entrusted with a Beatles project.  Think about it… up until that point…it was absolutely true. Seasoned old professionals only mix vintage material one way: Dial back the bass, mute the high end…and jack your mid-range up to 11.  Because that’s how you safely mastered a good LP record.  We don’t want too much high or low end… because that might cause some deep shit at the factory. It’s just a boring fact… the sonic characteristics of mastering to vinyl involves applying compression, limiting, and an array of other techniques that absolutely fucking kill a decent master recording. Old codger engineers just automatically gravitate towards mixing for the worst case scenario… instead of the best.

And then there’s George Martin, who at that point was suffering significant hearing loss… need I say more.

So after hearing Apple Records put me “back in front of the radio”… my thoughts were “screw this… I don’t wanna be in front of the radio… I want to be in the front of the studio…

So, I’ve gone back the the best tape sources I could find, and I began digitally patching drop outs, wrinkles and areas where you could tell the oxide practically flew off those poorly stored, age-old disintegrated reels of history. Then I began applying re-equalization and very light noise reduction. Finding tapes with defined endings to songs that weren’t cut off too soon… that was a major challenge as well. But soon… the project came to life… and so did the performances.

And what I’ve learned during the process of cleaning up these pieces of music history… is that there’s actually a lot of life left in these tapes that nobody seems to know about. There’s Paul’s bass… and you can coax it out of those muted frequencies if you try.  There’s Ringo’s bass drum… and a clear high hat that rings out. On “Lonesome Tears In My Eyes… there’s a squeaky bass drum pedal, or possibly the seat Ringo’s sitting on. The BBC version of “Oh My Soul” was released with a nasty drop out and tape damage evident in the second solo…. our version is patched and is using a cleaner source tape. There’s a lot of gems hidden on those sessions that are just waiting to be dusted off and polished.

My goal was to make those tapes sound like they were recorded with top-end equipment in a place equal to EMI Abbey Road, circa 1962. And yes, I realize I set the bar very high. But I work better that way. So, without further delay… these are selections from my Fantasy BBC Album… Let’s call this “Volume One”, shall we? I have a feeling there will be more to come. After all, we ARE talking about “The Beatles”.

RECORDED: 10.07.1963, 1:30 – 3:30 p.m.
TRANSMITTED: 30.07.1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m.
ANNOUNCER: Rodney Burke
PRODUCER: Terry Henebery
GUEST GROUP: The Searchers

 

TRACK LISTING:

  1. POP GO THE BEATLES
  2. MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
  3. DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET

  4. SWEETS FOR MY SWEET – THE SEARCHERS

  5. TILL THERE WAS YOU
  6. MATCHBOX
  7. PLEASE MR. POSTMAN

  8. DA DOO RON RON – THE SEARCHERS
9. THE HIPPY HIPPY SHAKE
10. POP GO THE BEATLES

 

SOURCE TAPES:

For the most part, Yellow Dog and Masterfraction were used as the source tapes because the generation bump was probably the lowest between those two sources. Someone once wrote in a bootleg catalog that the YD releases have slightly longer fades, but, in truth, that was nit-picky, because they’re only mostly a second longer, or less, When it was significantly more, I edited them into the remaster. There was a vinyl release called Broadcasts that had this take of “Til There Was You” without the wow and flutter caused by tape drag that is evident on other releases, so I used it here, because it was noted that another boot source had done the same thing. I think ours came out better because the source was cleaner and required only light de-clicking in one spot.  All songs were normalized and re-equalized.

RECORDED: 01 June, 1963, 9:30 a.m – 1:30 p.m.
TRANSMITTED: 18 June, 1963, 5:00 – 5:29 p.m
ANNOUNCER: Lee Peters
PRODUCER: Terry Henebery
GUEST GROUP: Carter Lewis and the Southerners

 

TRACK LISTING:

1. POP GO THE BEATLES
2. A SHOT OF RHYTHM AND BLUES
3. MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE
4. A TASTE OF HONEY
5. SURE TO FALL (IN LOVE WITH YOU)

6. GREENBACK DOLLAR – CARTER LEWIS AND THE SOUTHERNERS

7. MONEY (THAT’S WHAT I WANT)
8. FROM ME TO YOU
9. POP GO THE BEATLES (OUTRO)

 

SOURCE TAPES:

The Yellow Dog tapes had the best sounding source dubs and included newly discovered segments, although “From Me To You” is slightly longer on the Great Dane source tapes, which also has a more complete version of the show outro. These two were all merged into the best presentation possible for this show. However, I wasn’t satisfied with the overall equalization of the music tracks. I was (and still am) even less enthralled with the tape quality of the chatter in between numbers. I decided the focal point was the music, so I spent a great deal of time re-equalizing the tracks and applying very light noise reduction, just enough to reduce the hiss but not “overkill” like so many “wanna-be” engineers do, washing out the entire upper frequency range of the recording itself.  It’s a delicate balance. So, in instances where you notice tape hiss… live with it.  I would rather hear that, than hear Ringo’s cymbals washed away and eroded. Wouldn’t you?  Please note that this is not a 100% complete restoration. There is a bit of banter from Lee Peters (about 15 seconds, right after “A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues”) regarding Ringo’s birthday that was not included. The sound quality was so poor that you could not understand most of the highly muffled words.  If a cleaner source becomes available, I will gladly restore that portion back into the mix. Also noteworthy, I do not use EMI/APPLE remastered/equalized digital sources. I like to go back to the source tapes as much as possible.  I don’t care at all for how the BBC collections were mastered.  With all the ego I have in my very being… I have to honestly and arrogantly say… I think I could have done better.  Even in 1994.  So there.