The Beatles: One of the greatest bands in history. Nearly unmatched in creativity, unsurpassed in musical talent, unrivaled in their sheer understanding of how to make music that will last as long as there are people around to listen to it. They were, as the English journalist Derek Taylor wrote, "amazing and marvelous and... forever young."
So it is always just incredibly exciting when something like this happens:
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.
The dating of the tape is significant. The band's landmark "Please Please Me" had just come out two weeks before. The catapult of superstardom had already been launched; the Beatles were well on their way to becoming the most popular band in world history.
And yet they played at some little boarding school theater? Why? Because they had already been booked there and they wanted to keep their engagement. Good lads.
Perhaps most notably, the band played before what was a largely all-male audience. Why is this significant? Well, generally, when there were a large percentage of females in the audience of a Beatles show, it tended to get very loud.
Having a bunch of stodgy old upper-class British teenage boys in the stand means the audio quality of the recording is uncommonly good:
"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."
That kind of recording is like solid gold to a Beatles fan.
