One possible explanation is that since the 'Decca Audution Tapes' boot is a copy of 'Yellow Matter Custard' the name of the original might have been used instead. I've done that before when describing this album, because it's confusing to call it by its name.
this is a repress from 1975 (for more info https://www.beatleg.online/yellow-matter-custard-tmoq) (hope this link is not against this forum's rules - it contains very detailed info regarding Beatles unofficial LPs from way back when)
Here, for one... Even for the famous-by-then Beatles, as late as 1966, the vibraphone version of "I'm Only Sleeping" exists only as a fragment because most of the session was taped over.
That was having the tape running during rehearsal, then spooling back and recording the "proper" session over it. It wasn't pulling a previous session out of the library and reusing the tape for a new session.
Taped over because they put the master tape back in "circulation" for reuse, or because the Beatles simply ran tape while arranging/rehearsing, and they taped over themselves?
Correct. Mine was an earlier release with a paper cover glued to a white cover. Couldn’t find a photo of that.
Fair point, but we still have "EMI engineer Peter Bown . . . states that it was common practice to erase and reuse multitrack tape at EMI," which responds to the question "Where has it been indicated that tapes were reused?" In the same thread, George Martin is quoted as saying "we didn't keep outtakes" during the Beatles' early days (and the session tapes for the first two albums are indeed incomplete in EMI's archives). I have no way of knowing how Emerick got the tape - bought, given, "fell off the back of the truck" - and I have no way of knowing whether the tape still contains (or ever did contain) recoverable content that matches the writing on the box. I hope the tape has exactly what they say, and that they reach an agreement allowing the contents to be released. But it doesn't appear to have been EMI policy in 1962 to retain every tape, even from artists who (at the time) had exactly zero commercial track record to justify the trouble and expense. Perhaps this is, in part, a defense mechanism - if the tape turns out to be unplayable, or blank, or something unrelated, or a needledrop of a fifth-generation off-air BBC bootleg, there will be less of a letdown if one starts from more skeptical assumptions. Let's hope the legal action answers these questions eventually.
It seems that a COPY of that session was made at the time. So Besame Mucho (if indeed the one was June 6th) ...did not HAVE to come from Geoff Emerick. Anyway...those that are far more knowledgeable than I...please chime in. Who was the copy for? (Ardmore and Beechwood?) The following comes from Recording the Beatles (Ryan and Kehew) and is a Ken Townsend quote. We did that test, and the tape went into the library. And about a week later, Norman says to me, ‘Here Ken, what’s the name of that group we had in last week? I’ve got to send a tape down to Manchester Square.’ I said, ‘The Beatles’. I mean, he’d actually forgotten the name of the group! Ken Townsend Recording The Beatles, Brian Kehew and Kevin Ryan
EMI had a storage problem back then. It wasn't a question of erasing outtakes to re-use tape, but simply not having the space to store tapes that were no longer needed. EMI soon got more storage space and were able to keep more tapes.
John also traded his acetate of "What's The New Mary Jane" (45 edit) and acetate of "How Do You Do It" for some Beatles bootlegs he didn't have, with either one bootlegger or two.
It would be interesting to know if John Barrett and Geoff Emerick knew each other (and if so, had they ever worked together (e.g., on "Sessions"))? It could be argued that Barrett's work might have been useful in selecting tracks to use on "Sessions". Do we know if "Sessions" was compiled 100% within Abbey Road, or were tapes taken to AIR (or somewhere else) and worked on there? Couldn't it be possible that Geoff may have taken the infamous tape in the early eighties?
No. It was not in the archive at the time of John Barrett’s work. No reason why it would have been either.
If sessions tapes were discarded — one way or the other — in the early days, how is that so many outtakes from the Please Please Me album day survived?
OK, so conscious choices? Or just by chance? Do those 1st album outtakes exist as original tapes stored by the record company or did the bootlegs feature copies or stolen originals? Did the iTunes release from a few years ago answer some of these questions?
It’s unclear how/why some reels survived, but everything bootlegged was noted as existing in the archive by Barrett.
Of course, I forgot about Barrett. The idea that nothing extra related to “She Loves You” survives (as far as we know) yet there are multiple takes of “Misery” reminds me of friends who didn’t take good care of their baseball cards.
Especially so if "Ernie" Emerick had made a souvenir out of it in his youth...!!! I've raised a question about where "Sessions" was assembled: is it known where that work was done? You have to wonder if other mixes were made that didn't make the final track-list (and if so, what do we know of these?). I've also raised a question about the possibility of John Barrett and Geoff Emerick knowing each other (and their separate efforts overlapping e.g., did Emerick use Barrett's notes). I wonder, too, if John Barrett might have been involved somehow with the preparation of that stereo EP of rarities that came with the boxed set of EPs in about 1981 or 1982.
