Beatles' 1962 Hamburg tapes headed to auction for $300,000

What’s being described as the master tapes of the Beatles performing live in Hamburg, Germany, in 1962 not long before Beatlemania exploded worldwide is going to auction April 1 and is being offered for about $300,000.

The tape, recorded at the Star Club in Hamburg’s red light district and said to be missing for nearly 40 years, will be offered by London’s Ted Owen & Co. auction house. According to the London Guardian, the original tapes, which include nearly five hours of live performances of 33 songs, were made by the Star Club’s stage manager, Adrian Barber, who had been asked to document the Fab Four’s live show by another Liverpool musician, Ted “King Size” Taylor.

Much of the material on the tapes was released in 1977 as a two-LP set titled “The Beatles: Live at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany — 1962,” which the Beatles tried unsuccessfully to block. Those recordings have since been widely bootlegged.

It captured a historically important early chapter in the Beatles story — just four months after Ringo Starr replace Pete Best as the group’s drummer, solidfying the lineup — but the recording quality was poor. The material consists largely of the Beatles playing rock and R&B hits from the 1950s but included a couple of John Lennon-Paul McCartney compositions: “I Saw Her Standing There” and “Ask Me Why.”

By: Randy Lewis

Source: LA Times

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