musicNEWS:
Lost Beatles Recordings Found.
01-13-03
antiGUY
.
Police in England and the Netherlands recovered
more than 500 reel-to-reel tapes from The Beatles “Let It Be” sessions
during anti-piracy sweep on Friday.
Some believe that the tapes may contain
previously unreleased material from the Beatles. The recordings were made
during the famous “Get Back” sessions in 1969.
The concept of the project was Paul McCartney’s
brainchild. The idea was to film the band getting back to their roots by
writing and recording music together with a finale’ of the group performing
the new songs live in concert and releasing the recordings of the concert
as an album.
Unfortunately tensions within the band
as well as the poor conditions of the theatre they were using to film the
sessions sidetracked Paul’s idea and what happened instead was the camera
captured a fly on the wall’s view of a band in the middle of breaking up.
The Beatles tried to salvage the project by performing an impromptu concert
on the roof of the Apple Records building. Even those plans were spoiled
when Police forced the band to shut the concert down after only a few songs.
The group shelved the film and album project
and returned to their normal recording studio, Abbey Road, a few months
later to record their final album together, 1969’s Abbey Road.
The “Get back” sessions were later resurrected
in two separate projects. One the film was culled and put together as the
documentary that became “Let it Be” and producer Phil Spector rummaged
through hundred of hours or tapes to put together the songs that made up
the “Let it Be” album, which was released after the Beatles disbanded.
Now over 30 years later Police have recovered
over 500 tapes from those sessions and some believe that they contain songs
that have never been heard by the public. The tapes were seized when detectives
in England and The Netherlands arrested six people on Friday during a joint
investigation into music bootleggers.
"The tapes themselves are the only original
recordings made and may contain material which has never been previously
released," City of London police said in a statement.
"This fact renders the tapes to be priceless
to the record industry and collectors of Beatles memorabilia."
Police believe that the tapes were stolen
sometime in the 70’s and ended up in the hands of bootleggers. It appears
that the recovered tapes belong to the British record company EMI and they
are unsure at this point what will become of the tapes. The research to
verify that they are in fact the original recordings from the “Get Back”
session will take some time due to the volume of material recovered. But
it is believed the tapes could possible contain “dozens” of complete songs
as well as snippets of other unfinished tracks.
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