An audio recording of an hour-long show performed by Beatles exactly 60 years ago was disclosed through the BBC website by the person responsible for having made the entry in an amateur way.
Regard a performance the group gave at the Stowe Boarding School for Boysin the county of Buckinghamshire. The Beatles were already in the ascendancy and just two weeks ago they released Please pleasehis first studio album.
a historical tape
The record was made by a 15-year-old named John Bloomfield, who wanted to test how his brand new tape recorder worked. He today he is 75 years old and revealed the existence of the recording when journalist Samira Ahmed interviewed him for a special on the concert’s 60th anniversary.
According to Ahmed, “It was a unique show, because the audience was mostly male, and although there is applause and some cheering, the group is not covered by the howls of the fans, as is the case in other places full of girls.”
This material thus constitutes the oldest complete concert of the Liverpool quartet available, because although there is a live album from December 1962 at the Hamburg Star Club, these are records obtained over several evenings.
The brand new testimony reveals that the concert lasted an hour in which the group performed 22 songs, in a repertoire that mixed songs from their debut album Please pleasereleased two weeks earlier, plus some covers by R&B artists like Chuck Berry (Too much monkey business), which the group used to display on their long pilgrimage through nightclubs.
A show for £100
As Bloomfield told the BBC, The Beatles performed for a £100 fee and they were hired by another student named David Moores, who was in charge of selling tickets to raise the money.
He also recalled that John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had been delayed because they had come from a recording session at the BBC studios in Paris.
“I would say I grew up right then. It sounds a bit exaggerated, but I realized it was something from a different planet,” Bloomfield said, recalling the feelings he experienced at the time.
In addition to being the group’s first complete live concert, The tape is an invaluable testimony to capturing the group at a time when what became known as “Beatlemania” began to explode..
In 2020, the Buckinghamshire school posted a plaque commemorating the Beatles’ visit.
Source: Clarin
