Liner notes:
The Beatle's
1st LIVE RECORDINGS
HAMBURG, GERMANY, 1962
JOHN. PAUL, GEORGE, RINGO
VOLUME ONE
Side One
1. Where Have You Been All My Life 1:55
Cynthia Weil & Barry Mann - Screen Gems EMI Music Inc / BMI
2. A Taste Of Honey 1:40
Bobby Scott & Rick Marlow - Songfest Music/ASCAP
3. Your Feets Too Big 2:20
Benson and Fisher - Fisher and Morley Music/ASCAP
4. Mr. Moonlight 2:05
R. Johnson - Lowery Music/BMI
5. Besame Mucho 2:35
T. Velasquez - Peer International/BMI
6. I'm Gonna Sit Right Down And Cry Over You 2:40
J. Thomas & H. Biggs - Coblin Music Co./BMI
7. Be-Bop-A-Lula 2:28
G. Vincent & T. Davis - Lowery Music, Inc./BMI
Side Two
1. Hallelujah I Love Her So 2:08
Ray Charles - Belinda Music/BMI
2. 'Till There Was You 1:59
Meredith Wilson - Frank Music Corp.,/ASCAP
3. Sweet Little Sixteen 2:44
Chuck Berry - Arc Music/BMI
4. Little Queenie 3:53
Chuck Berry - Arc Music/BMI
5. Kansas City/Hey Hey Hey Hey 2:09
J. Lieber, M. Stoller & R. Penniman - Halnat Pub./Venice Music/BMI
6. Hully Gully 1:39
F. Smith and C. Goldsmith - Arvee Music Co./BMI
This is it. Inside this package. The first recording of the Beatles - Live - Including Ringo. Along with every bit of the slop, energy, ad libbing, clowning, mocking and excitement that makes a live club band what it is...and what made the Beatles become what they became.
For those are the Beatles. This is the history. The raucous vitality of rock n' roll in its early years. You must hear this.
Lennon's irreverent, caustic wit. McCartney's "Little Richard" voice. Ringo's famous Boomp-Pa-pa-Bom-pa rock 'n' roll beat. Harrison's leads and vocal harmonies. Without studio retakes. Without over-dubs or synthesizers. The real Beatles. Real rock 'n' roll.
This album is a collector's item. It captures an explosion of energy. A rollicking Saturday night. Hamburg, Germany, 1962. The Star Club.
Every Beatlemaniac's fantasy. Seeing and hearing the Beatles Live! In a club where the audience is part of the performance. They got so big so fast that few from the U.S.A. ever had the experience.
Gather your friends, turn up the volume, and have it!
- Steven Rossi
And for those of you who want all the background of this recording, here it is.
Liverpool singer, King Size Taylor originally recorded this first tape of John, Paul, George and Ringo for a lark. The tape was subsequently lost and not rediscovered until 1972. The Beatles' original manager, Allan Williams, found it in a deserted Merseyside office "beneath a pile of rubble on the floor."
Williams immediately launched a campaign to have the tapes released, but even once legal obstacles had been cleared, a larger one remained: the tape had been recorded with a single microphone at 3-1/4 ips on a Grundia home tape recorder, and the verdict of almost everyone who heard it, including the Beatles, was the sound quality was that the sound quality was absolutely hopeless.
But when you're dealing with a property as hot as this one, miracles can be made possible. Lingasong Records, which had obtained rights to the tape, decided to invest some $100,000 (as much as it had cost the Beatles to record Sgt. Pepper, their most extravagant work) in the most ambitious "reconstruction" job in the history of the recording industry. The monaural tape was painstakingly converted into a 16-track master recording.
Producer Larry Grossberg, Billboard reported, separated the information track-by-track using Burwen, dbx, and Dolby noise suppressors, UREI compressors and limiters, Orban Parasound and API silibance controllers, API equalizers, Kepex noise gates, Audio Design spectrum analyzer, and an Orban stereo synthesizer.
A special group of new Ashley parametric equalizers capable of suppressing frequencies of .05 of an octave was extremely valuable in recouping practically all the rhythm tracks and bringing out substantial lead voices and background vocals when they were apparently drowned out by general extraneous sounds....
Despite the performers' own objections , aired in court too late to have any effect, the Beatles' nightclub performance came as a fascinating counterpoint to the sounds of Beatlemania at the Hollywood Bowl.
© 1977
The Beatles ForeverNicholas SchaffnerStackpole books
Pickwick's acquisition of these tapes presented their studio with the same problems faced by the Lingasong people. Fortunately, most of the glaring technical atrocities were remedied by the 16 track transfer and remix. But the vocals were still less than ideally recognizable. Armed with their own battery of equalizers and noise gates, Pickwick's engineers carefully altered the original tonal balance to allow the vocals more prominence in the final mix.
We happily present it to you!
Cover Art: Christine Moore
Remastering Engineering: Steven Vining
© 1979, Pickwick International, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
A product of Pickwick International, Inc. Pickwick Records Division,
7500 Excelsior Boulevard, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55426
Distribue au Canada par/Distributed in Canada by Pickwick Records
of Canada, Ltd., 106-108 McMaster Avenue, Ajax, Ontario, Canada L1S 2E7
These recordings have been previously released by Double H Licensing Co.
Warning: Unauthorized reproduction of this recording is prohibited
by Federal law and subject to criminal prosecution.
1st Live Recordings is a two-volume album series released by Pickwick Records in 1979 containing live performances by The Beatles. Adrian Barber, the stage manager at the Star Club, on the instructions by King Size Taylor, the leader of The Dominoes, another group from Liverpool, recorded this on a Grundig home tape recorder at 33⁄4 ips in December 1962, probably during three performances at Hamburg's Star Club on 25, 28 or 29 and 30 December. Though even The Beatles thought the sound quality was too poor for anything to be made of the recording, Lingasong Records spent about $100,000 rebuilding the sound into a 16-track master. The result of their effort is this recording. This recording includes Ringo Starr on drums, making this the first live recording of The Beatles. This same recording was previously released as Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962 by Lingasong Records. Pickwick's version has been slightly altered to allow for more prominence in the vocals.
ReplyDeleteTwo songs on the set, "Be-Bop-A-Lula" and "Halleluja, I Love Her So," feature the Beatles performing the instruments while Star-Club waiter, Horst Fascher provides the vocals. Another cut, the only track on the set to not appear on the original Lingasong release, "Hully Gully," does not include the Beatles at all. Rather, it is a recording by Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers who performed at the club the same night.