Arab Press

بالشعب و للشعب
Wednesday, Jun 07, 2023

The Beatles: How a schoolboy made the band's earliest known UK concert recording

The Beatles: How a schoolboy made the band's earliest known UK concert recording

The earliest known full recording of The Beatles playing a live concert in the UK, at the point they were becoming the biggest band in the nation, has been revealed by BBC Radio 4's Front Row, almost exactly 60 years after it was made.

The hour-long quarter-inch tape recording was made by 15-year-old John Bloomfield at Stowe boarding school in Buckinghamshire on 4 April 1963 when the band played a concert at the school's theatre.

They had been booked by fellow pupil David Moores, who had written to manager Brian Epstein.

Epstein, perhaps recognising the connection to an important Liverpool family - the Moores family owned the Littlewoods football pools and retail business - agreed to the booking for a fee of £100, and Moores raised the funds by selling tickets to schoolmates.

Bloomfield was a self-confessed tech geek keen to try out a new reel-to-reel tape recorder. Now in his 70s, he revealed the existence of the tape when I went to Stowe to make a Front Row special about the 60th anniversary of the concert.


On the cusp of fame


It was a unique Beatles gig, performed in front of an almost entirely male audience. And crucially, despite loud cheers and some screaming, the tape is not drowned out by the audience reaction.

It captures the appeal of The Beatles' tightly-honed live act, with a mixture of their club repertoire of R&B covers and the start of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting partnership, with tracks off their debut album Please Please Me, which had been released barely two weeks earlier, on 22 March.

They kicked off with the album's opening track I Saw Her Standing There and then segued into Chuck Berry's Too Much Monkey Business.

Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn and I are the only people to have heard the full recording after Bloomfield agreed to play it for the first time since the recording was made. Part of it was played on Front Row on Monday (3 April).

Speaking about its significance, Lewisohn said: "The opportunity that this tape presents, which is completely out of the blue, is fantastic because we hear them just on the cusp of the breakthrough into complete world fame. And at that point, all audience recordings become blanketed in screams.

"So here is an opportunity to hear them in the UK, in an environment where they could be heard and where the tape actually does capture them properly, at a time when they can have banter with the audience as well.

"I think it's an incredibly important recording, and I hope something good and constructive and creative eventually happens to it.

"I didn't even know this tape existed until you told me about it, and I think I had to pick myself up off the floor."


'From a different planet'
L-R: Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr and George Harrison, pictured in 1963


The band arrived late from a recording at the BBC Paris Studios and, used to playing two half-hour sets, rattled through more than 22 songs in an hour.

Remarkably, they are heard taking requests from the schoolboys, who shouted out the names of songs that had been released just two weeks earlier. The banter between the band and audience reveals John Lennon doing joke voices, the huge popularity of Ringo Starr, and the fact that George Harrison had lost his voice and was unable to sing.

Bloomfield said the show made a big impact on him. "I would say I grew up at that very instant," he said. "It sounds a bit of an exaggeration, but I realised this was something from a different planet."

Although Stowe was a boys' school at the time, some girls were watching the Fab Four from the back. "It wasn't until they started playing that we heard the screaming, and we realised we were in the middle of Beatlemania," Bloomfield said. "It was just something we'd never even vaguely experienced."


Tuck shop tour


Afterwards, the band were taken for a meal in the tuck shop and were shown Bloomfield's typically spartan dorm room.

In 2020, when the school put up a blue plaque to celebrate the Beatles' visit, Sir Paul McCartney recalled how shocked they'd been. "Good old working class boys like us had never visited an establishment like Stowe and we were shocked to see the stark living conditions," he said.

Bloomfield has kept the recording for all these years, but had never publicly revealed its existence until now.

Visiting the school theatre again, he said he was embarrassed to have made the tape, but seeing the Beatles had changed his life and he found it emotional listening to it again, 60 years on.

AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Arab Press
Close
0:00
0:00
US and European Intelligence Agencies Uncover Evidence of Ukrainian Role in Terror Attack on Nord Stream Pipeline
Nvidia Joins Tech Giants as First Chipmaker to Reach $1 Trillion Valuation
Drone Attack on Moscow's Wealthiest Neighborhoods Suspected to be Launched by Ukraine
AI ‘extinction’ should be same priority as nuclear war – experts
Prominent Hacker Forum RaidForums Suffers Substantial Data Breach
Nvidia CEO Huang says firms, individuals without AI expertise will be left behind
WPP Revolutionizes Advertising with NVIDIA's AI Powerhouse
Olam Group Faces Setback in Saudi Arabia Agribusiness Unit Listing
Kuwait Open to Negotiating Visa Ban with Philippines
Goldman Sachs Cuts Israeli Shekel Forecasts on Politics, Intervention
Iran to Unveil New Hypersonic Missile
Two US Employees Fired For Chasing Robbers Out Of Store As They Broke ''Company Policy''
Pfizer, the EU, and disappearing ink - Smoke, Mirrors, and the Billion-Dose Pfizer Vaccine Deal: EU's 'Open Secret
The Sussexes' Royal Rebound: Could Harry and Meghan Markle Return to the UK?
A provocative study suggests: Left-Wing Extremism and its Unsettling Connection to Psychopathy and Narcissism
France Arrests 10 on Suspicion of Failing to Respond in Time to Migrant Drowning
Neuralink Receives FDA Approval for First-in-Human Clinical Study
Is Saudi Arabia the holiest place in the world? Ancient Hebrew Inscriptions from "The Mount Sinai Stand" Discovered in Saudi Arabia
Bernard Arnault Loses $11.2 Billion in One Day as Investors Fear Slowdown in US Growth Will Reduce Demand for Luxury Products
Russian’s Wagner Group leader: “I am not a chef, I am a butcher. Russia is in danger of a revolution like in 1917.”
TikTok Sues Montana Over Law Banning the App
Ron DeSantis Jumps Into 2024 Presidential Race, Setting Up Showdown With Trump
Saudi Minister of Finance Mohammed Al-Jadaan on the importance of economic integration among Arab nations
Talks between US House Republicans and President Biden's Democratic administration on raising the federal government's $31.4tn debt ceiling have paused
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad received a warm welcome at an Arab summit in Jeddah
Biden Administration Eyeing High-Profile Visits to China: The Biden Administration is heating things up by looking into setting up a series of top-level visits to Beijing by top officials in the coming months
New evidence in special counsel probe may undercut Trump’s claim documents he took were automatically declassified
Debt Ceiling Crises Have Unleashed Political Chaos
Weibao Wang, a former software engineer at Apple, was charged with stealing trade secrets related to autonomous systems, including self-driving cars
Mobile phone giant Vodafone to cut 11,000 jobs globally over three years as new boss says its performance not good enough
Elon Musk compares George Soros to Magneto, the supervillain from the Marvel Comics series.
Warren Buffett Sells TSMC Shares Over Concerns About Taiwan's Stability
New Study Finds That Secondary Bacterial Pneumonia Is a Major Cause of Death in COVID-19 Patients Who Require Ventilator Assistance
King Charles III being crowned.
'Godfather Of AI' Geoffrey Hinton Quits Google To Warn Of The Tech's Dangers
A Real woman
Vermont Man Charged with Stalking After Secretly Tracking Woman with Apple AirTag
Elon Musk Statements About Tesla Autopilot Could Be 'Deepfakes,' Lawyers Claim. Judge Evette Pennypacker Does Not Understand How Far and Advanced This Technology Became
Ukraine More Prepared for Counterattack as Reinforcements Arrive
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni Discuss Migration, Defence, and Ukraine
China Unveils Construction Road Map for Lunar Research Station
AT&T's Successful Test of Satellite-Based Phone Call Raises Possibility of Widespread Coverage
CNN: "Joe Biden is asking for four more years — when 74% of Americans think the country is heading the wrong way“
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan Cuts Short Live TV Interview Due to Health Issue
US Congresswoman threaten Twitter Files journalist with arrest
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh slams New York Times' pro-government stance and treatment of sources
Enough is enough: it's time to end the war in Ukraine. While Russia may be to blame for starting it, Russia is not the one refusing to stop it
Fox News Settles their case with Dominion Voting Systems for a staggering $787.5 MILLION
21-year-old Massachusetts Air National Guard member Jack Teixeira has been arrested for leaking classified Pentagon Documents
Bank of America cuts short conference after outrage at Ukraine comments
×