A previously unheard, hour-long recording of The Beatles playing live in 1963 has been unearthed. The recording, which is the earliest known audio of the band playing in The UK, was made on April 4, 1963, at a school in Buckinghamshire.
The recording was made by then 15-year-old schoolboy John Bloomfield at Stowe boarding school, where The Beatles performed after another pupil, David Moores, wrote to manager Brian Epstein and requested that the band play at the school. Epstein asked for a £100 fee, and Moores raised the money by selling tickets to his schoolmates.
Bloomfield only revealed the existence of the recording as the 60th anniversary of the show approached, and part of the tape received its first airing on the BBC Radio 4 show Front Row last night.
“The opportunity that this tape presents, which is completely out of the blue, is fantastic because we hear them just on the cusp of the breakthrough into complete world fame,” Beatles expert Mark Lewisohn tells the BBC (opens in new tab). “And at that point, all audience recordings become blanketed in screams.
“So here is an opportunity to hear them in the UK, in an environment where they could be heard and where the tape actually does capture them properly, at a time when they can have banter with the audience as well.
“I think it’s an incredibly important recording, and I hope something good and constructive and creative eventually happens to it. I didn’t even know this tape existed until you told me about it, and I think I had to pick myself up off the floor.”
“I would say I grew up at that very instant,” says Bloomfield, who recorded the show on quarter-inch tape. “It sounds a bit of an exaggeration, but I realised this was something from a different planet.”
An excerpt from the Front Row broadcast can be heard below, while the full episode of is online at the BBC website (opens in new tab). A recording of The Beatles talking backstage after the Stowe show was auctioned in Japan in 1997.
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