Artist: Paul McCartney & Cilla Black, John Lennon, and The Beatles
Title: The BZ Auction Tape
Lineage: Original cdr > EAC > Flac Frontend > JPGR
Tracks:
1) Paul McCartney & Cilla Black - Step Inside Love (session tape)
2) John Lennon & Kyoko
3) John Lennon - God (demo) & more
4) The Beatles - Ain't She Sweet
Here is a real treat. Some people from Bootleg Zone got together to bid on an original tape of The Beatles at Shea Stadium. Unfortunately, we lost that bid, but instead we were successful in bidding on this tape, presented here for the first time publicly. What we have here is a session tape of Cilla Black & Paul McCartney running through "Step Inside Love" under the direction of George Martin. The tape is unedited and unaltered. The sound is a little muffled, but I am sure some audio wizard will fix this at some point! The tape runs 24:48.
As a bonus there are three more interesting tracks. First is a tape with John Lennon playing guitar and singing with Yoko's daughter Kyoko. Second, a John Lennon demo tape featuring "God", "Yoko Ono Poem Game", When A Boy Meets A Girl" and "Well, Well, Well". Third, there is a great sounding mix of the Beatles "Ain't She Sweet" (recorded in 1962 during the Tony Sheridan sessions) which has a much fuller and more contemporary sound than any version out there. Is this a new remix from the master tapes? Details are vague.
The following notes are from Herbert who put this disc together:
"I really would like to thank everyone who contributed to this auction.
We all made it possible to secure some unheard stuff to the Beatles fans worldwide. Wow, I really think that has a special quality. But even a higher special quality for me is the circumstance that once I announced to manage this whole thing I got money floating in via PayPal. That, in fact, was an unbelievable experience to me. Receiving money from people that I don't know!!!! So thank you all again for your confidence.
I never will forget the day the auction started. It was in the early morning hours over here in Germany (I think it was around 5 am). I asked Bernhard (KenWood) for assistance and help because I feared to fell asleep. He went to his office in those early hours and we phoned us together and we both did the actual bidding together while speaking on the phone. So thanks again for that, Bernhard. What great conversation we had, it was like long time friends were chatting, even if we knew each other just from some BZ messages. I like that !
Let me remind all of you that we were originally trying to get the 3 tapes from the Beatles' Shea Stadium concert, which were recorded via the Shea's indoor sound system. 3 tapes with the complete concert incl. all of the opening acts, and with the Beatles concert without any overdubs.
The auction rules were quiet strange because the auction stopped just 5 minutes after the last offer for any of the hundreds of items that were auctioned that day. The complete show went on for at least 15 hours...
The Shea tape finally went for over $ 8,000.00 and we had no chance. Our highest bid was for about 6,000.00, if I remember that correctly.
Once we realized we had no chance for the Shea tape, we switched to the Cilla tape and we succeeded."
Also, his notes on the bonus tracks:
"The Kyoko tape is pretty surely from January 1970. John & Yoko visited yoko's ex-husband and his wife and Kyoko in Alborg, Denmark for nearly a month. This visit and a press conference from Jan. 5th is reported in "Eight arms to hold you", but this fun recording is not.
Of course this one is not a winner music wise (for me Kyoko seems to imitate Yoko a bit... and John is just playing some guitar chords), but it is remarkable to hear how John tries to take the little girl serious and how he is giving her a good time....
This tape was not available before. We got this tape out of an e-bay auction for less than US-$ 100.00, so I think that was a great deal Smile
The other side of this cassette tape has some of John's 1970 home recordings. It is mentioned in "Eight arms..." (page 35 at the bottom):
"A cassette compilation dated July 28, 1970 was part and parceled on The Lost Lennon Tapes radio series. Although the raw tape does not circulate, the running order included the following tracks: God (4 takes), Yoko Ono Poem Game, When A Boy Meets A Girl and Well, Well, Well"
All the tracks were published on Pegboy's "The Dream Is Over" without "Yoko's Poem", which can be found on The Lost Lennon Tapes (Program 91-30/4). The sound quality on this boots is better as on the complete tape we've now got, but, as was reported from howdoyousleep? earlier, the cassette tape is more complete.
Everything on the BZ auction tape CDR is taken from the original tapes and cassette without any manipulation. The tapes were transfered to DAT tape first to use the high quality DAT A/D-D/A converter instead of lower quality converters on PC sound cards. The new digital signal (now at 48 khz) then were transferred to CD standard (44.1 khz). All discs that were send out to the auction contributors were burned from this "original" source. This way they all are the same, not a 2nd hand copy."
And finally:
"In addition I will get a tape copy from the original master tape of the Polydor recording of “Ain’t she sweet”. Well, I’m not sure about that really, but the guy says it is the original tape he’s got and it is sounding better than the version on the “Bear Family” release"
So there you have it! Enjoy and SEED!