JAKARTA - The earliest full recording of The Beatles playing live performances in England was found nearly 60 years after it was made.
As the BBC News reported on Wednesday, the one-hour-long quarter-inch cassette recording was made by John Bloomfield at Buckinghamshire's boarding school in Buckinghamshire on April 4, 1963 when Fab Four appeared there.
Bloomfield, which is now 75 years old, was only 15 years old at the time. He revealed the existence of the footage when journalist Samira Ahmed visited mirid to create a special program for Radio 4's Front Row to mark the show's 60th birthday.
"It was a unique Beatles show, performed in front of an almost all-male audience," Ahmed wrote of the discovery. And most importantly, despite the loud cheers and screams, the recording was not drowned by the audience's reaction.
The list in the footage consists of songs from the debut album The Beatles Please Please Please Me, which was released on March 22, 1963, as well as several cover versions of the legendary group R&B.
The song I Saw Her Standing There was performed live before the band switched to the 1956 song Chuck Berry Too Much Monkey Business. They also heard requests from students, and joked between themselves on the sidelines of the track.
Part of the historic footage was played on the April 3rd edition of Front Row.
Ahmed and Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn are the only people to hear the full recording after Bloomfield agreed to play him for the first time since it was made six decades ago.
The opportunity presented by this footage, which was completely sudden, was fantastic because we heard [The Beatles] right at the top of the breakthrough towards complete world fame," Lewisohn told the BBC. And at the time, all the audience footage was covered in screams.
So, it's an opportunity to listen to them in England, in an environment where they can be heard and where the footage really catches them well, at a time when they can also joke with the audience.
He went on to say that the tape contained a "very important record", adding: "I hope something good and constructive and creative will eventually happen."
Lewisohn said he didn't even notice the footage was there, "and I thought I should get up from the floor".
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