The Toronto Star interviews Canadian Beatles expert Piers Hemmingsen about his recording of the Beatles' Aug. 17, 1965, show.
...it wasn’t until he entered a city studio with his friend and business adviser John Brower and sound engineer Doug McClement on Sept. 12 that Hemmingsen realized he was sitting on a potential pot of gold.
“It sounds amazing,” Hemmingsen, 69, told the Star in an interview the next day. “The tape was recorded in a professional format called half-track and it’s in great condition.”
Translation: he’s feeling extremely optimistic because the tape containing the 30-minute headlining set in front of an estimated 17,000 screaming fans was recorded directly from the soundboard with an Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder and a six-channel Altec Lansing mixer.
“For 1965, it was pretty much state of the art,” Hemmingsen said.
And what that means is that the tape — two of them, actually, because he also has another reel featuring the four opening acts — is technically sound enough to be released for public consumption, should the Beatles’ business venture Apple Corps, which owns the commercial rights to the band’s recordings, decide to do so.
The irony is that both Apple Corps and Universal Music, parent company of the band’s original label, EMI Records, knew about the existence of the Beatles tape and passed when Hemmingsen first brought it to their attention in 2015.
“They flew me to London and I went to the Abbey Road Studios to play the tape to Giles Martin — son of producer George Martin — to see if they could include some that material in the authorized documentary ‘The Beatles: Eight Days a Week — The Touring Years,’ for director Ron Howard,” recalled Hemmingsen, who has either written or contributed to 20 books about the band and other acts from the British Invasion.
“But they deemed it wasn’t good enough quality.”
Martin and crew also apparently didn’t think to take the type of tape or the speed into account, because when McClement played the recording to produce one-minute clips for potential buyers, Hemmingsen said the difference from previous playbacks was “night and day.”
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